“IT WAS ALL ABOUT
EVOKING THAT SAME
WONDER, THAT
YELLOW SUBMARINE
FEELING, AS YOU’RE
NAVIGATING
THROUGH THE SPACE”
conventional Psychonauts level – with such
a distinctive aesthetic demanded a different
approach. “In the early days, we had access to
Oculuses and PSVRs and I was painting in
Quill,” Johnstone says. “I was thinking of
a world that was very green and had this very
shapey visual language, and that painting
ended up inspiring a lot of what this ended up
being. I’m traditionally a 2D concept artist,
but it was really helpful to our designers and
world-builders to get a sense of what this
world in particular would look like in a three-
dimensional space.”
As each world takes shape, the script goes
through a series of passes, too. “When the
interactivity of the level starts to really come
on, then I can do the real writing,” Schafer
says. And when a level is closer to completion,
playing through it again often prompts bonus
dialogue. “The artists will put in some
amazing visual thing, and I’m like: well, Raz
has got to talk about that,” he says. “There’s
a lot of back and forth between the level
designers and Tim. It’s all about building on
the things each of us puts in,” Johnstone says.
“I call it writing algebra,” Titre-Montgomery
adds. “We have to solve x at some point
before it’s all stitched together.” Schafer
laughs. “It’s like a big jam session of a
psychedelic prog-rock band.”
Double Fine staff are also invited to
contribute via a Slack channel for which
Schafer has invented a new adjective:
Psychonautical. “It’s basically weird, trippy
things that make you think about mind-
expanding experiences and alternate frames
of consciousness and all those kinds of things
as inspiration.” No idea was too out-there: if
the first game’s worlds broke conventional
design wisdom, Schafer wanted to push things
even further this time. “There were other
things like the music,” he begins; instantly we
hear the level’s melodic hook, played on an
electric violin, start another loop inside our
head, so quickly has it wormed its way in.
“Camden Stoddard, our audio director, and
Peter McConnell, our composer, were thinking
about psychedelic music,” Schafer says, as
we’re about to drift into a reverie. “It was
really fun watching Peter and Camden and
everyone talking about Crimson And Clover,
that one part where the reverb is really crazy,
and it adds so much to this level,” Johnstone
enthuses. “It was all about evoking that same
wonder, that Yellow Submarine feeling, as
you’re navigating through the space,” Titre-
Montgomery adds. “We really wanted to dig
into the psychedelic lore of the ’60s as much
as we could to evoke that feeling.”
That’s a lot of work for just one level.
Multiply that several times over and you