Double Fine PsychOdyssey · EP11: “Not Doing the Typical”

[@Vitreia]

I love Tim acting like the office oracle who just appears at times to say "I wrote a thing."

[@RenaRena01]

It’s so hard not to be precious about your own ideas in design. Naturally it feels brutal or personal when others don’t agree but I think it’s part of the process to eventually arrive at even better ideas. 100% easier said than done though.

[@nbuuck]

Seeing the tears around departures from the office or company was easier than seeing the tension in the creative process visible here. It's a regrettable intrinsic.

[@georgec354]

100% agree. I think Amnesia Fortnight might have come at the perfect time. When an idea doesn't ring well, sometimes the best thing to do is table it and walk away and see if new ideas form or if the brain takes a shining to the previous idea.

[@dommernation1343]

Holy crap. The 3 ravenous gods sounds just like the cooking level.

[@josh0156]

That prototype game was the inspiration for that level.

[@THEBIGZED]

I'm playing the game now and just came to the game show cooking level. Kind of wild how that cameraman's idea ended up in the game.

[@burnout713]

Incredible.

[@nonlegend]

Being creative is easy, until it becomes your job.

[@candlerunner]

Love the idea of a Negative Halloween where you cosplay as a normal person

[@KaeWinters]

In Japan they have 地味ハロウィン (jimi Halloween), it's one of my favorite things ever. It's where you go to a Halloween party dressed as something incredibly mundane and relatable and it's just the best.

[@jcruzalvarez26]

the meeting about the terracotta planter, screaming internally

[@MFKitten]

That's just how creative differences play out in real life. Sometimes you have to try harder to convince others who aren't seeing the potential. Playing in bands, trying to sell the other people on musical ideas can be like that!

[@LeoMafraArt]

The tension was so dense you could cut it with a knife, but Tim made a great point. I think a lot of the troubles with the level concepts so far is them thinking too pulled back rather than a player sized experience which is characteristic of 3D platformers. Also they are at the perfect point to be discarding ideas rather than later down the line. Excited to see their progress towards final version!

[@kells4315]

It's SO REAL. My game is a 3d 3rd person game and I constantly have to redesign things once I see it from the player camera. This level was an awesome thought, but would work better in a zoomed out fixed camera style game

[@jimmyryan5880]

It looked cool from the concept art but you don't see the game from that angle, time was right you'd just see a village and have no idea what it looks like from outside.

[@burnout713]

I loved it.

[@minerharry]

13:26 “That’s… ..o. o-… offensive” ok James is my new favorite (Edit: added timestamp)

[@FaustoRomano9]

That's so cool that what eventually became the Compton brain started out as Asif's amnesia fortnight idea

[@michaelrusso558]

Coming from more traditional business-oriented software development, it feels crazy to work on half-baked ideas before you really know what you want, throwing so much stuff away until you have something "good". But that's what makes games development so different/interesting.

[@scalylayde8751]

Bob Zanotto’s level is my absolute favorite and it’s fascinating to hear the early concepts for it. The results, with memories at the bottom of bottles, juxtaposed with a sunny castaway vibe on the surface, were so poignant.

[@rafalemos1]

It's so cool that his backstory went into Helmut. It's so cool.

[@lenorkhide2873]

Bob and Helmut were my two favorite levels. It's cool to see that they had to work so hard as a new team and in the end made my fav brains! Loving this series, and it got me to download and replay the game, even tho I already got the Platinum on it! I really really hope to see more Psychonauts in the future! (Maybe even another VR experience??)

[@curtisbme]

It is incredible to see that they don't even have Helmut backstory and level figured out, let alone his and Bob's relationship. We rarely assume that the thing we love, that was amazing, was not part of the plan all along. I mean, all he has is that Helmut is a Viking.. Nothing about that amazing 60's musical part or why they will do the Bob wedding cake level.

[@tylerhaas5824]

"negative Halloween" is such a stellar ad lib, I sometimes come back to this video just to hear it again.

[@HappyDoomsday]

It's already 11 episod, but i wanna rewatch all again. Very catchy, hard to stop watching. Cool series. Great work (all thumbs UP)

[@wallacelovecraft8942]

18:49 I think so too. Like it's cool to do a game jam with your co workers, but I think the best thing is for them to just have a 2 week vacation. But I also think it would be amazing to work on a small cool game with some people who also think the small project is cool. Like, maybe if we became friends then we could work on something together, outside of work.

[@Cazamalos]

This is so good, I would pay to watch this kind of inside documentary on a game with dozens of studios across the world working simultaneously.

[@CaptainFram]

Tim seems like such a genuine person. I'm watching this and I'm crying for seemingly no reason. Turns out that people, for the most part, are awesome.

[@nooooooooope3809]

Seriously, just seems like a thoughtful dude with a lot of depth.

[@Meta5917]

Thank you so much for making this series... It's such an education in game design and development.

[@Liversh0t]

I love seeing the creative meetings, as someone who struggles in those settings its great to see how everyone pitches ideas, but also how they discuss the details and the criticisms of those ideas

[@mchepen]

that pitch thing is like Raz, getting inside other people's brain and see wtf is in there... thats cool

[@Droxcy]

This studio man. No matter how tough and treacherous the day gets still come out at the end of the day killing it. Would love to be on this team 🥲

[@minerharry]

That Fred cruller jumpscare in the intro tho 👀

[@Zorklis]

James level getting thrown out in real time was hard to watch. The whole flower pot idea is more subtle than the pile of dishes idea.

[@aaronfrazier524]

Very interesting hearing scrapped concepts

[@GoblinDepartment]

Zak seems like a great design leader. And James' saga with Helmut's brain is the exact struggle I had as a junior designer - it's a blast, but there's so much weird, abstract learning.

[@Chechocrafter]

It's so funny that Zak's idea of the Mario-like candy level is literally one of the nightmare levels from Ratatouille

[@burnout713]

26:36 is classic. Straight out of The Office.

[@ketvector4469]

Soooo… what is Negative Halloween?

[@G00berella]

James is great.

[@spectrumunit]

I like the Psychonauts 2 documentary so much! Now I only have to find some time to finally play the game... The release kind of went past me at the time but it seems I have to do some backtracking to do! :)

[@KaeWinters]

Do it! I had to pause the documentary to replay it because I got so nostalgic for it. Plus the creative meetings make so much more sense when you can recognize the little fragments that became full levels and concepts.

[@Extragear-gv8qq]

awesome

[@allanjensen8324]

Negativ halloween 😂

[@brandtreppond2167]

I got serious "the office" vibes here. AF reminds me of Michael Scott's unusual management style

[@tartoras]

the amount of awkward tension in this series has been a great replacement for the cringe we lost went The Office went away

[@YourGoodTwin]

The fact that we're on episode 11 and just now get a warning about spoilers for the game says A LOT about the grueling process of game development.

[@Cressup]

There have been plenty of game spoiler warnings earlier than this episode...