Jake Balentine
Professor St. Colon
CSCI 180
8 October 2012
The Deconstruction of Tim Schafer’s Psychonauts Tim Schafer is known for his fusion of humor and games. Fueling standout games, such as Grim Fandango, Brutal Legend, and Full Throttle, with humor, Schafer provides a significant bonus for the player, rewarding them with hilarious cutscenes and dialogue after completing a challenging task. This humor-induced gameplay is reiterated in Schafer’s cult classic, Pyschonauts. Produced by Majesco and developed by Double Fine Productions, Schafer’s Pyschonauts is a 3-D action-adventure platformer that tells the story of Razputin “Raz” Aquato, an ambitious, young boy with psychic powers and pair of trusty goggles. Recently escaping from his family circus, Raz sneaks into a “top-secret,” summer camp used to train fledgling, psychic children to master their powers and eventually become “psychonauts,” specialized agents who use their psychic powers to fight evil. Attempting to absorb as much knowledge as he can in the little time before his father arrives to take him home, Raz soon discovers that evil and deception are afoot at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp and he must use his newly acclaimed psychic powers to save the day. To teach and entertain the player, Schafer manipulates particular designing attributes to enhance the experience of Pyschonauts: game goals, key features, target audience, game structure, main characters, and art direction. Game goals are the purpose of a game. What is the player meant to complete or accomplish? What is the player meant to learn? In Psychonauts, the ultimate goal of the game is to progress through the entire storyline, by completing levels and missions assigned to Raz. Subsequent goals aside from progressing through the entire storyline include leveling up, obtaining collectables, completing side missions, and acquiring vaults, luggage, figments, and cobwebs to enhance your psychic abilities. These subsequent goals advance the overall goal of the game due to the fact that in order to progress the story, the player must level up and gain materials to achieve new powers and complete particular tasks. In one example, Raz must learn the telekinesis ability to float on a stream of air to proceed to the next part of the level. The subsequent goals do not conflict with the overall goal of the game, but instead enhance the overall goal, making the narrative more compelling and fueling more hours of gameplay into the overall experience. Key features are features within the game that compose the gameplay together and are the tools the player use to complete the set goal of the game. Of course, the main key feature of Psychonauts is movement and jumping. This is how the player navigates the in-game world and jumps from platform to platform or dodges obstacles. Psychonauts exhibits a heads-up display, featuring Raz’s health, lives, and ammo for psychic abilities. If the player loses all of its health, the player loses a life. If the player loses all of its lives, then the player is kicked out of the level and must restart from a certain checkpoint. If the player loses all of its ammo, then Raz will not be able to use the psychic ability until its ammo has been replenished. These features increase the challenge of Psychonauts and give the player negative feedback for losing. One other key feature Psychonauts offers is the ability to attack and use psychic powers. This feature is necessary for the player to defeat particular enemies, such as censors, psychic animals, or bosses, and the completion of particular levels. Some psychic powers, such as levitation, enhance the player’s navigation, allowing for them to explore certain areas they were not able to before. Also, the player can manipulate the camera anyway they please, which enhances the player’s sight of field, helping navigation and the awareness of threat. To ease the accuracy of attacks, Raz can lock-on to targets, keeping the camera pointed at an enemy at all times. By using these key features, the player experiences the game by completing levels, progressing the narrative, leveling up, and learning new psychic abilities. Psychonauts is played in a 3-D, open-world environment. The player can roam as they please and in whatever manner they desire as they play the game. Exploration is a dire asset of gameplay, but in order to proceed through the game, the player must complete a set list of chronological missions by mastering certain levels and skills or by gaining a needed psychic ability through leveling up or fulfilling a task. Most levels take place within the player or another individual’s psyche, which is accessed by a tiny door that attaches to the individual’s forehead. Each person’s psyche is detailed by the owner’s own characteristics or fears, such as calculating Sasha Nein’s cubist, orderly mind or Coach Oleander’s chaotic, exploding battlefield within his brain. Upon completing a series of platforming levels within the psyche, Raz generally faces a boss, representing the hidden pains or anxiety of the psyche’s owner. Also, psyches are full of collectables, such as vaults or figments, that increase Raz’s Psy Rank. As the player progresses through Psychonauts and as they learn fresh psychic abilities, the structure of the game is enhanced with new challenges that take advantage of Raz’s newly acquired powers and skills. One main reason for the success of Psychonauts is its zany cast of characters and its art direction. The hero of Psychonauts is Razputin Aquato. Raz is the main protagonist of the story and the only playable character in the game. Preceding the events of Psychonauts, Raz escaped his family circus, feeling his father disapproved of his psychic abilities. Having an abnormally strong psychic mind, Raz travels to Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, in order to achieve his full potential of becoming a pyschonaut. The rest of the characters of the game are the camp’s staff and children, all of which are goofy and ludicrous in their actions and personas. Aside from Razputin, protagonists include Ford Cruller, world famous leader of the psychonauts whose suffers from complete amnesia whenever he is not in close proximity to a supply of Psitanium, and Sasha Nein, a cool and calculating psychonaut who stands as a voice of reason amidst the insanity of the others around him. In the conflict with the protagonists, the main antagonist of Psychonauts is Coach Oleander, the head coach at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp gone mad due to his unstable and traumatized mind. Haunted by the memory of his father murdering his beloved bunny in front of him and rejected from the military due to his size and stature, Oleander devised a plan to take over the world by placing the brains of psychics into psychic-powered death tanks. Oleander is assisted by the deranged Dr. Loboto, an ex-dentist with a prosthetic claw used to extract the brains of Raz’s fellow campers. Pyschonauts boasts an inane and silly art style. It could be described as “cartoony,” with characters’ body parts being exaggerated to the point of being ridiculous. Bobby Zilch sports a massive and unkempt afro while Lilli Zanotto lacks a visible nose and has an abnormally large head. The point of this art direction is to enhance the humor and ridiculousness of the game. The game could have been executed using different visuals, but the comedy of Pyschonauts would be seen under a different light. To conclude, Schafer’s Psychonauts is an entertaining game due to its comedic relief, unforgettable characters and dialogue, and its challenging gameplay. By detailing Razputin conquering the hidden monsters of one’s psyche, Schafer proposes the theme of conquering your demons. Also, Psychonauts is a coming of age tale for Razputin, as he transition from being young and naïve to becoming a powerful psychonaut. By defeating the subconscious fears of his friends, Raz allows the player to become a psychonaut and retain a fully immersing experience full of laughs and adventure.

Work Cited

Koster, Raph. A Theory of Fun for Game Design. 1st ed. Phoenix: Paraglyph Press, 2004. Print.
Double Fine Productions. Psychonauts. Edison, New Jersey: Majesco, 2005