Rock, Paper, Shotgun

We mentioned earlier that Tim Schafer would love to make a Pyschonauts 2, but can’t get the funding. Well, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson spotted our story and suggested to Schafer that they should work together to make it happen. Multimillionaire Persson clearly has the funds to do this, and everyone in the world with their brain in the right place wants to see a sequel to one of the most joyful games of all time, so this is a thing that might actually happen.

Clearly at the moment this is a tweeted offer, not a signed contract, but it’s a massively exciting one. Tim, say yes!

Update: Minecraft-master Markus ‘Notch’ Persson has been publicly trying to get Tim Schafer’s attention today, saying “Let’s make Psychonauts 2 happen” and confirming to us that he’s serious. Who knows what, if anything, will come of this – but how exciting, eh?

Ah, the fine art of reporting on non-events: not news as such, but they make us go all misty-eyed and slightly sad. In this case, it’s Double Fine’s Tim Schafer revealing that he would gladly make another Psychonauts game, but no-one will give the studio the money they need for it. Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!
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Gentlethings, prepare to perform your happy dance. Unexpectedly and suddenly, Psychonauts-makers Double Fine have ended their silly sabbatical from PC games, and announced that they’ll be releasing their Halloween-themed RPG Costume Quest on Steam. When? Why, it’s there right now.

Happy, happy days. And hopefully CQ is but the first of many of the Tim Schafer-headed studio’s titles due to return to the motherland. In fact, they imply as much below.
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Psychonauts unexpectedly updated itself on Steam today, adding achievements and cloud saves. For our Macintosh brethren, there’s super-exciting news in that the game is now available on OSX, so you too can neglect to buy it. To ensure that your portable iDevices won’t be jealous when they see the mindscapes you’re traversing, Doublefine have also released a Memory Vault Viewer app, which has all the memory slides with new commentary by Tim Schafer and Scott Campbell. Along with the other Steamy updates, there’s also a difficulty tweak to one area of the game. Guess which one? I’ll tell you, but only if you click for more.

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Via Tim Schafer’s twitter, here’s Inceptionauts. Psychonaut visuals with Inception dialogue. Bless. Watch it below…
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You need no more information than this. Until Thursday Steam has one of the loveliest games ever, Psychonauts, for £1. It’s hilarious, it’s so beautifully written, and it’s bursting with invention and ideas like nothing else. And if you want to complain that the platforming is often a bit dodgy, I reply with: IT’S ONE POUND. A pound.

A pound. (Or two dollars.)

Once upon a time this platform game came out that no one cared about. Mark Donald was the editor of PC Gamer at the time, and it was given to me because it came from that guy who used to do adventure games, and I’m the adventure game guy. It was down on the magazine’s flatplan for a page. Psychonauts or something. Not knowing anything about it, and with absolutely no PR foretelling us about it, I installed it with confused expectations. Within a couple of hours I called Donald and said, “This needs more than a page.” By the next day I had bargained it up to four pages. Which was all the space they had left. Psychonauts was something special. And is now available for $10 on Good Old Games.

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Which is something I seem to saying quite a lot lately. Seeing that Psychonauts has just appeared for free (until Dec 31) on Gametap, but only to US folks, makes my urge to emigrate keener than ever. Anyone in New York or San Francisco want to hire a scruffy, bitter games hack? Bah. Anyway, go play one of the best electric videogames of the last few years for absolutely nothing, you spoilt bunch of bastards.

If any of our European readers are yet to sample the unique wonders of ex-Lucasarts genuishead Tim Schafer’s most recent game, then you should turn your eyes Steamwards right now. Yes, it costs money. In this case though, money can buy you happiness. Possibly even a rarefied form of love, too. Oh, and if you do want to install Gametap in the futile hope that a magical, wonderful error will occur and let you play Psychonauts, you will at least find that you can play the first three Hitman games, Tomb Raider: Legend and Cannon Fodder for no-groats (but ad-supported no-groats).

Update – hopes cruelly dashed. See bottom of post for more.

Eagle eyes have spotted this image on the Double Fine upcoming projects page:

While this is indeed glad tidings for any fan of games possessing character, humour, grand variety and adept storytelling (let’s not mention the irksome platforming emphasis during this time of celebration), we don’t have any idea what this is. It could be a sequel, it could be a DS or PSP remake, it could just be a graphically-tweaked rerelease to cash in on the original game’s ever-swelling cred. But it is more Psychonauts. (Note to self – bloody get around to writing up that bloody Psychonauts retrospective at some point).

Thank you Tim Schafer, thank you.

That said, damn you Tim Schafer, damn you, for making your next game, Brutal Legend, console only. Given it was PC guys that sang Psychonauts’ praises the loudest, it’s a sad decision.

Update – as has been snootily pointed out in comments, it’s since been revealed that the pic’s just a teaser for an eventual About page on Psychonauts. The image on the site has been fully-colourised to reflect this. Boo. I would say that Double Fine probably shouldn’t have stuck a mysteriously darkened image on a page previously only containing a link to a press release about an upcoming game, however.

(Tinfoil hat)Either that it or it was a secret experiment to gauge interest in another Psychonauts game…(/Tinfoil hat)