This week in video games: December 14, 2015

A sequel to the critically acclaimed Psychonauts is pretty much a sure thing, Disney Infinity gets some light-up figures, and two new video game development studios are opening in … Quebec. 

Psychonauts 2 is going to happen

Tim Shafer's Double Fine Productions has taken to crowdfunding to get a long-awaited sequel off the ground. Psychonauts 2 is anticipated to be released in the fall of 2018.

Through Fig, a game-focused funding platform, Double Fine is looking for US$3.3 million, which will be combined with its own funds and capital from an external partner, to come up with the estimated $10 to $13 million budget.

Less than two weeks into the campaign, and Psychonauts 2 is already more than 75 percent towards its goal. 

I've not previously backed crowdfunded video-game development as I think it blurs the objectivity lens of journalists and critics, but I've now broken that and am a contributor to the Psychonauts 2 campaign because I thought the first game was extraordinary. 

From my November 2005 review in the Straight:

Like the best cartoons, Psychonauts has the look and feel of children's entertainment while actually providing a weird experience that is somehow seditious and definitely grown-up. You play as Razputin (Raz), and you're at Whispering Rock Summer Camp, which doubles as a training ground for psychic agents. The game involves you entering the other characters' minds where you-literally-sort their emotional baggage, collect figments of their imagination, clear out mental cobwebs, and even crack open memory vaults to expose secret truths. Along the way, you pick up "positive mental health" in order to stay on track and use your "thought bubble" to levitate and as a shield. It's a bizarre, fun, and subversive world where the human brain is (as the game itself promises) "the ultimate battlefield and the ultimate weapon". 

Limited edition Star Wars figures for Disney Infinity

Looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer? Disney Infinity now has a series of Star Wars figures with lightsabers that light up when the characters are placed on the base. They cost $18, only $2 more than the non-light-up versions. 

The only hassle is that if you want more than one of these, you'll have to visit more than one store, as these are all retailer-exclusives.

• Luke Skywalker: Walmart
• Yoda: Target.com
• Obi-Wan Kenobi: EB Games
• Darth Vader: Toys “R“ Us
• Anakin Skywalker: Best Buy
• Kanan Jarrus: Amazon

Fallout 4 developer opens studio in Montreal

Bethesda Game Studios, which recently released the excellent Fallout 4, has opened a development studio in Montreal.  

Yves Lachance, formerly with Behaviour Interactive, is heading up the atelier, and they are hiring, with about half a dozen positions currently posted.

Bethesda had enlisted Behaviour to port Wolfentstein: The New Order to PS3 and Xbox 360.  

Behaviour also developed Fallout Shelter, the free-to-play mobile game based on Bethesda's popular open-world role-playing franchise. 

The new studio will be working on games for "console, PC, and mobile gaming" according to a release.  

Borderlands developer opening studio in Quebec City

Gearbox Software is also headed to Quebec. But rather than set up in Montreal, the developer of the Borderlands franchise and the upcoming Battleborn, have selected Quebec City. 

Sebastien Caisse and Pierre-Andre Dery will be co-studio heads. Caisse is a veteran of Quebecor Media and will be director of operations, while Dery will be creative director, having recently worked on the Skylanders franchise for Activision at the Beenox studio in Quebec City. 

In a release, Gearbox intimated that the new studio will be working on a title and "growing to full AAA production capability through 2016".  

No surprise that Gearbox is hiring for the new studio.