Psychonauts 2 gets greenlight as crowdfunding nears $4 million

By Mike Epstein Published January 7, 2016

Thanks for Funding Psychonauts 2!

The crowdfunding campaign to fund the development of Psychonauts 2 hit its $3.3 million goal, developer Double Fine Productions announced Wednesday. First announced last month at The Game Awards 2015, the sequel to the cult classic has raised $3.965 million as of Thursday, January 7.

Though Double Fine helped popularize Kickstarter and the current donation-based crowdfunding with its record-breaking campaign to make a new “Double Fine Adventure” game, which would eventually become the first part of Broken Age, the developer will combine seed money from crowd-investment platform Fig with private funding from an unnamed financial partner and some of its own cash to create its budget.

The company has already gathered the money needed to fund the game, but Double Fine will continue to take individual investments through Fig until the campaign ends on January 12.

“Every dollar we make goes into making the game better,” Double Fine founder Tim Schafer said in a video thanking campaign backers, “giving us more time to polish and make the game great. Because we don’t just want to make Psychonauts 2, we want to make an amazing, amazing Psychonauts 2.”

In Psychonauts 2, players will once again control Razputin — Raz, for short — who, having completed his training, goes to Psychonauts Headquarters. Based on the vague description of the plot, Raz will have to jump into the minds of his fellow Psychonauts to help them get over their psychological hangups and “uncover evil plots.”

Double Fine also announced in December that the studio would be making virtual reality spin-off, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, for PlayStation VR. According to Sony, Rhombus of Ruin will take place between Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2.

Though there’s no way to really know at this point, Double Fine Productions expects to launch Psychonauts 2 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, Mac and Linux in Fall, 2018.

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Michael is a New York-based tech and culture reporter, and a graduate of Northwestwern University’s Medill School of…

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