PlayStation VR exclusive Psychonauts spin off explained by Tim Schafer

Honestly, you wait ten years for a Psychonauts sequel and two come along at once. As well as the more traditional Psychonauts 2 currently crowd sourcing funds, we've also got The Rhombus of Ruin, a stand alone PlayStation VR exclusive.

Catching up with GamesRadar, creator and Double Fine boss Tim Schafer explains more about the game: "it’s set in the time between Psychonauts 1 and 2 [and] tells the rescue mission of Truman Zanotto [grand head of the Psychonauts] which is the cliffhanger that Psychonauts 1 ends on."

Compared to the original's more third person adventuring, this is "a little more puzzle-based and first-person". Although it's not entirely clear which person, with Tim explaining that series hero Raz "can go into other people’s points of view". Potentially it might not be an FPS Raz game specifically, more a remote viewing sort of thing.

We do know however that you're using Raz's psychic powers to solve puzzles. "He can burn things with his mind and he can use telekinesis, which is very handy, because I don’t like moving around too much," says Tim. The controls behind all this are still to be finalised with only a "some things are TBD" when we asked if the game will use the PS4 controller. A recent Sony dev talk on PlayStation VR showed just about every potential combination of DualShocks and Moves going as control options. That may well be the last thing the format needs to crack before launch.

As for that name? If you don't know what that is then let's get wiki on it which describes a rhombus as "a simple (non-self-intersecting) quadrilateral all of whose four sides have the same length."

"They’re gonna learn that," says Tim. "I’m here to teach people. It’s part of the common core curriculum to teach them what a rhombus is." Education aside, it all just boiled down to what sounded... funniest. "We went over all the shapes. What’s a funny shape? I mean, dodecahedron’s pretty nice to say, trapezoid’s a little funny, but rhombus is probably the funniest shape name I could think of. Say it, tell me you don’t enjoy the rhombus."

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I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for guides. I also write reviews, previews and features, largely about horror, action adventure, FPS and open world games. I previously worked on Kotaku, and the Official PlayStation Magazine and website.