Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we start a new series on 2005's Psychonauts. We stay in the same year as our last game, and dive into a little of the prehistory of the game before diving into the game proper. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Coach Oleander's Brain

Issues covered: making something for someone else to own, spinning off from LucasArts, staying true to their persona, being a more open studio, documentaries about the studio, the possibility of the studio closing, how the game starts, a super stylistic game, clear identity, bringing individuality to each character, asymmetry, offending the efficient developer, hand-crafting everything, impeccable writing and voice acting, themes coming through later, trailblazing, an indie scene in San Francisco, changing guards at publishers, drawing on psychology for its setting, a cohesive and pure game, exploring two tutorial areas, customizing buckets of figments of imagination, building engine game and studio together, crunch-tastic development, a variety of action and platforming primitives, an underimplemented feel and polish, fighting the camera, systemic cameras that have trouble covering everything, a big swing, asymmetric multiplayer modes, mutators, an internal mail alias, voice over IP, what do you need to support an MP game post-launch, inventory tetris, risk to return to get a loot item, a vestigial element of games, forcing hard choices or loops, re-examining genre "defaults," informing our own work, Octavia's gadget system, giving more agency to the player, a shifting meta, a wide tunnel of known options.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Tim Schafer, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, LucasArts, Microsoft, Ed Fries, Majesco, 2015, Metal of Honor: Allied Assault, Infinity Ward, Call of Duty, Jason West, Vince Zapella, Nihilistic, Infinite Machine, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Phantom Menace, Dean Sharpe, Kalani Streicher, Broken Age, Unreal Engine, Kiln, Two Player Productions, Scott Campbell, Disney, Warner Bros, Studio Ghibli, Peter Chan, Day of the Tentacle, SW: Republic Commando, Beyond Good & Evil, Monkey Island (series), Spyro, Super Mario (series), Illumination, Braid, Celeste, Choice Provisions/Gaijin Games, Super Meat Boy, Team Meat, World of Goo, Crystal Dynamics, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Ocarina of Time, Ashton Herrmann, Unreal Tournament, Quake, Duke Nuke'em, Hunt: Showdown, Repo, Peak, Matthew, Outlaws, Aliens vs Predator, Starcraft, Matthew, Diablo, Animal Crossing, Resident Evil (series), Harley Baldwin, Halo, DOOM (1993), Maas, Project: Octavia, Troy Mashburn, Thief (series), Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time: more Psychonauts!

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