A surprise final episode of the Psychonauts 2 documentary series has dropped more than a year after its initial release

After releasing a 22-hour documentary last February on the making of Psychonauts 2, Double Fine and 2 Player Productions are back with a surprise final episode that covers the game's reception, how the team recovered afterward, and what might come next for the Microsoft-owned studio.

From the jump, it's a much more bittersweet affair than you might expect given Psychonauts 2's extremely positive reception. Contributor Matthew Castle gave the long-awaited platformer an 89% score in our review back in 2021, writing that it was "a glorious return to one of gaming's most inventive and empathic universes."

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But the game's development was a long and difficult one, as chronicled in the first 22 hours of PsychOdyssey documentary released last year, and this final episode is a somewhat haunted by creative conflicts and staff departures that occurred during Psychonauts 2's long gestation. There's also a long section about how staff crunched on the project, and how even a studio run with good intentions and a collaborative work culture can tacitly incentivize or encourage its developers to take on unsustainable workloads.

It's hardly all doom and gloom though: Developers at Double Fine note that Psychonauts 2 experienced fewer staff departures than other projects in the past, and there's a sense that everyone, from the rank-and-file to studio leadership, wants to learn from Psychonauts 2 and ensure that Double Fine's future development cycles are less fraught.

And we've gotten the slightest of peeks at what Double Fine's future might entail: Among a selection of smaller-scale games currently being worked on, company founder Tim Schafer has been working on a new prototype with a small team, though it remains an open question whether it will be ultimately pursued as a full game.

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.