Starbreeze Publishing, the publishing arm of The Darkness and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons developer Starbreeze Studios, has announced a publishing agreement with Double Fine Games to release its next game, Psychonauts 2. The game will be coming to both consoles and PC, with Starbreeze investing an additional $8 million in the project.
“Starbreeze is the perfect partner for Double Fine and our backers on Psychonauts 2,” said Double Fine CEO Tim Schafer in the official announcement. “Their expertise in not just developing and publishing games, but supporting them after launch, will be a great benefit for players of the game.”
Psychonauts 2 isn’t expected to launch until 2018, but fans can get their hands on the next chapter of Raz’s journey in just a few weeks — provided they own a PlayStation VR. Set between the events of the original game and its sequel, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin forces Raz to only make use of his psychic powers. Though it will help fill in narrative gaps, Starbreeze and Double Fine stress that newcomers don’t need to play it in order to enjoy Psychonauts 2.
Much of Psychonauts 2‘s funding came from the crowdfunding platform Fig, which also gives investors a chance to earn a profit from successfully funded games. Double Fine raised more than $3.8 million by January of last year, calling the game “fully funded” at the time.
The extra funding from Starbreeze would seemingly put the Psychonauts 2 budget on the same level as the original game, which Schafer said cost about $13 million to make in 2005. He added that the game only managed to sell about 400,000 at the time, and that this wasn’t enough for the studio to turn a profit — the original game was published by Majesco, which left the game industry in December of 2016.
