'Psychonauts 2' Release Date: Double Fine Shows Off Game's 'First Playable'
In its continued efforts to build "Psychonauts 2," Double Fine Productions has now managed to put together the "first playable" of the highly anticipated game.
This refers to an area in the game that is "fully arted up, fully playable chunk of gameplay with all the systems, art, gameplay, and tech working in the same place."
As pointed out in the "Psychonauts 2" update page, while it is a playable area, it does not mean it is final and ready to ship as "there's still a lot of work to be done."
Get Our Latest News for FREE
It does however represent a fully playable area that has all the things a level of the game should have: elements like player movement, combat, quests, experience, UI all working together with scratch dialogue and audio, some rough visual effects, textures, lighting, even a cut-scene. This means we can iterating on these systems so they can be as good as possible for the final game.
Gamers can check out the "Psychonauts 2" playable area in all its glory in a video shared by the team. The cutscene can be seen in there, featuring a conversation between Raz and Sasha Nein with placeholder voiceover work provided by the latter's character designer.
In the video, project lead Zak McClendon explained that the gameplay in the playable area is only an hour and a half long, but it will be the foundation of the future work that will come from Double Fine.
The team intends to put together a "playthrough milestone" for "Psychonauts 2" next, which will include a third of the game with much less fidelity. It will be the basis for the game's narrative pace.
Double Fine is also currently building for "Psychonauts 2" the internal levels that for the nonplayable characters although those will not materialize for a while.
"Psychonauts 2," which was made possible through Fig crowdfunding, is slated for release next year.