Last October, Psychonauts 2 director Tim Schafer and project lead Zak McClendon showed off the game's first prototype gameplay. Set in a small camp area and white box of infinite nothingness, these interactions and animations were the tests that studio Double Fine wanted to perfect before working on an actual level of the game. Now, those ideas have blossomed into a demo of sorts, and you can watch Schafer and McClendon break it all down.
McClendon says in the video that the content should be considered pre-alpha, but that it "represents all of the gameplay systems, all of the art, and a few more new things - we got some cutscenes up and running, some characters up and running - all in one place and you can play through it." McClendon also estimates that this chunk of the game contains approximately an hour to an hour and a half of stuff, so it's far grander than the small test areas we saw before.
One thing you won't see are the brain levels. If you're not familiar, Psychonauts exists on two planes: the real world and the mental world. What you see now is the real world, the location that will act as Psychonauts 2's hub. But as you progress through the game, you'll enter peoples' minds, which often manifest as warped, exaggerated representations of said person's personality. McClendon says those are being worked on, but that they're still secret for now. Maybe next October?
As far as "cult classic game franchises that were recently resurrected" go, Psychonauts 2 is pretty high on the list in terms of fan anticipation. A straight sequel to the 2005 original (with Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin showing what happened between the two numbered games), Psychonauts 2 has been a long time coming. Judging by this video though, it looks like it's coming along excellently.
