Psychonauts 2 marks a crucial point for developer Double Fine Productions from where the first-party Xbox studio will be exploring new possibilities and potentially new intellectual properties.
Speaking with GamesIndustry in a recent interview, president and CEO Tim Schafer stated that Double Fine Productions wants its next game to be “something completely new that will be completely surprising to people.”
Any developer would be hailed for having such ambitions, but Double Fine Productions has already made a name for itself for creating some of the most original games out there. Schafer wanting to do something completely new has to do with breaking away from nostalgic projects which Double Fine Productions has been working on for much of the last decade.
From remastering some of its classics like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle to creating new adventures like Broken Age to pushing a sequel to a 16-year-old Psychonauts game. Schafer has loved every bit of it but from here on, he and his team are gunning to branch out to explore newer avenues.
“All of this has been in some ways looking back on comfortable things,” said Schafer. “And it’s been rewarding. I really enjoyed doing those remasters, I loved making an adventure game, and I loved making Psychonauts 2. But I think the team and I are really excited about doing something completely new that will be completely surprising to people.”
Schafer however is not sure just how creative (and original) his future projects will be when compared with heavyweights like Psychonauts 2. He is sure about one thing though and that is the importance of ensuring the happiness of his team as they are pushing quality games.
“The two things for me are the quality of the games we put out and the happiness of the team,” said Schafer. “If in five years we’re making really great creative games and we still have a lot of our team hanging out and happy to be working at Double Fine, that’s my main metric. And so far, I think we’re shipping a really good game and the team’s really happy and proud of it.”
Double Fine Productions intends to take up multiple projects in the near future. Schafer shared that there was a point during the development of Psychonauts 2 “where we had all hands on deck to finish the game, but we’re definitely going back to multiple projects afterward.”
Psychonauts 2 picks up immediately after the conclusion of Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin and follows Raz as a newly graduated Psychonaut with powerful psychic abilities. Its early reviews are as impressive as expected and the public will get to experience all of that praise in person when the release takes place soon for Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, PlayStation 4, and PC.
