Double Fine's PsychOdyssey is a 32-episode docuseries that chronicles the creation of the 2021 platformer Psychonauts 2, from its early brainstorming sessions to its final release. Or so it was—it's now 33 episodes, as a new 94-minute episode has just been released that looks back at the game, its reception, and the release of the documentary itself.
If you have any interest in video game development, you should watch the documentary from the very beginning. Even if you're not interested in development or video games, I think it would be interesting to watch a team of genuine, talented people working together to make something complex and joyful. It's a credit to Double Fine that the documentary honestly portrays many of the things that went wrong with the project: personnel disagreements, departures, crisis, and more.
This final section returns to these challenges with the benefit of hindsight, first through a series of postmortem meetings held at Double Fine following the release of Psychonauts 2 and then through the lens of the documentary’s release, including discussion of some of the documentary’s most dramatic moments, such as the fallout (and disagreements) that followed the hiring and eventual departure of Psychonauts 2’s original project leader.
Double Fine hasn’t announced a new game in the three years since Psychonauts 2, and there’s been some debate about what the now-Microsoft-owned studio will do next. The general gist: a return to smaller games and continuing to be weird with ambitions to make the weirdest games on Game Pass.