Nope, Double Fine aren't cooking up Psychonauts 3 yet, says Tim Schafer

Before the big Xbox Games Showcase aired earlier this month, some of the Xbox’s Twitter accounts seemed to tease that a Psychonauts announcement might be on the cards. The Xbox ANZ account tweeted an image of a noughts and crosses board that spelled out Psycho with three Xs. It was a rather confusing tease to say the least, and lo and behold, there was no Psychonauts 3 announcement during the showcase. Now Double Fine boss Tim Schafer has confirmed that he’s not working on it either.

In an interview with YouTube channel Cressup, the Psychonauts creator was asked about the social media post. “I’m not working on Psychonauts 3,” replied Schafer. Though he did hint that the studio could be ready to divulge some information soon: “We’re kind of at the ‘Willy Wonka closed doors’ phase. But soon we could open and cause a lot of harm to a lot of children, just like Willy Wonka.”

Double Fine’s recent (and brilliant) docuseries made it clear that Psychonauts 2 had a tough production, partly because of its scale. But Schafer said the studio’s problems were not “about big games versus small games," and feels "that’s a misconception about what happened" with Psychonauts 2.

He then points to other big games from the studio's past - such as Brutal Legend or the first Psychonauts - that were “admittedly very complex and hard to make, but didn’t have any of the acrimony that happened on [Psychonauts 2]." Schafer continued: "We’ll make big games again… we’re not right now.”

On the subject of what’s next, the interviewer name-dropped a deep cut from one of the team’s internal Game Jams: Kiln, a multiplayer game starring claypot warriors. Schafer only laughed in response and said that what’s next is “new” and “unannounced.” Although, Microsoft did file a trademark under Kiln last year. You can see some fun footage of the maybe-maybe-not in development Kiln from this episode of the docuseries.

That episode also randomly features Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward, who apparently did play a part in the sequel's mpreg easter egg.