Double Fine Productions is coming full circle with a long-requested return to the studio’s first game: Psychonauts. At the inaugural Game Awards, Tim Schafer announced the launch of a crowdfunding campaign on Fig for Psychonauts 2.
Psychonauts, released in 2005 for Xbox, PlayStation 2, and PC, was a 3D action-adventure platformer following Razputin, a young acrobat who flees his circus family to become a psychic secret agent. Based around the hub of a psychic summer camp where young telepaths are trained, most of the game’s action took place inside the minds of its various characters. Raz enters these psychedelic mindscapes to sort out their issues and do battle with their literal inner demons. It’s beloved for its solid gameplay, vibrant visuals, and wryly funny writing.
Veteran designer Tim Schafer launched Double Fine in order to create Psychonauts. The game was a commercial failure and critical darling when it launched. It has gained a steady following in the years since, actually selling twice as many copies in the last five years as it did in its first five years. Now considered a classic, fans have been clamoring for the sequel that the first game’s cliffhanger ending clearly implied. The pitch video features many members of the original creative team and voice cast. It also has an appearance by Jack Black, who starred in Double Fine’s Brütal Legend and will apparently also be joining the cast of Psychonauts 2.
The campaign aims to raise $3.3 million by January 7, 2016. This is an ambitious but not unreasonable goal, since that is how much Double Fine raised with its record-setting Kickstarter for Double Fine Adventure (which would become Broken Age). That campaign succeeded on the general desire for more 90s-style adventure games.
Schafer points out in the pitch video that the colorful 3D action-adventure platformer is another genre languishing in disrepair after a spate of excellent titles in the late 90s and early aughts like Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank, and Super Mario 64. This project has the added benefit of being a specific and beloved franchise, so success seems highly likely. At time of this writing the project has raised over $900,000 with 34 days to go, putting it well on schedule to meet its goal.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.