Double Fine Productions built a career on psychic kids and strange minds, so a Psychonauts game in virtual reality should have been an easy win. Instead, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin arrives as a seated, first-person puzzle game that trades platforming for clairvoyance. It was released for PlayStation 4 through PlayStation VR in February 2017, then on Microsoft Windows in April 2018, with versions for SteamVR and Oculus Rift. The story sits between Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2, and it is short, strange and often clever. It scores 7.7 out of 10.
Trailer, via PlayStation.
Truman Zanotto Is Missing
The game picks up right after the ending of Psychonauts. Razputin “Raz” Aquato has been recognized as a great PSI Cadet and asked to join his tutors as a full Psychonaut. Before he can go home from camp with his father, news arrives that Truman Zanotto, the Grand Head of the Psychonauts and Lili’s father, has been kidnapped. Raz, Lili, Sasha Nein, Milla Vodello and Morceau Oleander fly off in the Psychonauts’ jet to rescue him.
That setup matters because it gives the game a job beyond nostalgia. Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is not a side story with no consequences. It is the bridge between the first game and Psychonauts 2, and it treats the kidnapping of Lili’s father as the hinge. The team does not stumble into the Rhombus of Ruin by accident. They go there to get Truman back.
Raz Sits Down and Stays There
The biggest change is mechanical. Unlike the original Psychonauts, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is not a 3D platformer. It is a first-person puzzle-focused game similar to a point-and-click adventure. As Raz, the player always remains in a seated position. You interact with characters and objects using psychic powers such as telekinesis and pyrokinesis.
That seated design is the whole game. Many VR games use a “blink teleportation” mechanic to let players travel through a virtual world. Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin refuses. Instead, it requires the player to use Raz’s clairvoyance ability to see the world from the perspectives of the other characters in the scene, who also remain seated throughout. These mechanics solve puzzles, gain information and trigger events that push the plot forward.
It is a smart answer to a real problem. A seated Raz cannot run, jump or fight like a platforming hero, so the game turns his limits into the puzzle. You are not moving Raz through the room. You are moving your view through the people in it.
The Rhombus of Ruin and the Psilirium
Using his Clairvoyance ability, Raz discovers Truman is being held at an abandoned Psychonaut research facility in an oceanic region called the Rhombus of Ruin. The name is a play on the Bermuda Triangle. The facility was built to study a large underwater deposit of Psilirium, a fictional element variant of Psitanium that can distort psychic powers and create illusions.
That deposit is the engine of the plot. The team travels into the Rhombus of Ruin, but the jet crashes before they can act. Raz awakens tied to a chair in the chamber where Truman is being kept. Using his psychic abilities to explore the junk-filled ocean, Raz finds Sasha, Milla, Lili and Morceau trapped in Psilirium-induced hallucinations. Freeing his team from those hallucinations is the middle of the game, and it is where the point-and-click structure does its best work.
Dr. Loboto and the Psycho-Portal
After Raz frees his team from their hallucinations, he is pulled back into the chamber by Truman’s captor, the insane ex-dentist Dr. Loboto. Loboto kidnapped Truman on the orders of a new client. That client is never named in the material here, and the game leaves that thread hanging for Psychonauts 2.
By using a Psycho-Portal given to him by Morceau, Raz enters Loboto’s mind. There he fights a gigantic version of Loboto and enters his memories. Raz learns Loboto was once a psychic himself. His parents disapproved of his abilities and had him lobotomized. The process removed his psychic powers and drove Loboto insane, leading to his commitment at the Thorney Towers asylum.
That is a lot of backstory for a villain who started as a joke about dentistry. It also lands harder than it should. The Rhombus of Ruin is a comedy, but Loboto’s memories are not played for laughs. The game lets the joke character have a reason.
After Raz exits Loboto’s mind, Loboto seems to have a change of heart by releasing his team. Instead, he leaves Raz and the others and floods the base. They barely escape with Truman in tow. The game ends with the team flying back to their Motherlobe headquarters.
The Numbers
- Title: Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin
- Developer and publisher: Double Fine Productions
- Release: PlayStation 4 via PlayStation VR, February 2017
- Release: Microsoft Windows, April 2018
- Platforms: PlayStation VR, PC (Microsoft Windows), SteamVR, Oculus Rift
- Genres: Puzzle, Adventure, Indie
- Themes: Science fiction, Comedy
- Mode: Single player
- Perspective: Virtual Reality
- Score: 7.7/10
Release Schedule
| Platform | Release window |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 4 (PlayStation VR) | February 2017 |
| Microsoft Windows | April 2018 |
| SteamVR | Windows release |
| Oculus Rift | Windows release |
What the Seated Design Costs
The seated design is the most interesting thing here, and it is also the thing most likely to frustrate. Clairvoyance is a clever substitute for walking, but it is still a substitute. You spend the game looking through other people’s eyes instead of moving through a world. The junk-filled ocean and the abandoned research facility are built to be examined from a fixed point, and the puzzles are built the same way.
That is a real trade. Psychonauts was a platformer about movement, and Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is a puzzle game about attention. The game loses the running and jumping that made Raz fun to control. It gains a kind of intimacy. When you see the room from Lili’s perspective, or from Sasha’s, you are not just solving a puzzle. You are learning where everyone is and what they are stuck inside.
The Psilirium hallucinations are the best use of that idea. Sasha, Milla, Lili and Morceau are each trapped in a false version of the world, and Raz has to break them out. That is a story about psychic powers that actually uses psychic powers as a story device, not just a combat tool.
A Short Bridge With a Long Shadow
The game’s biggest weakness is its size. It is a bridge, and it plays like one. The story exists to move Raz from the end of Psychonauts to the start of Psychonauts 2, and the ending leaves the team flying back to the Motherlobe with Truman rescued and the new client still unknown. That is a deliberate cliffhanger, and it is also a promise the game does not keep on its own.
The Loboto section is where the game earns its place. A gigantic version of Loboto, a fight inside his mind, and then his memories: a psychic child whose parents had him lobotomized, whose powers were removed, who was driven insane and committed to Thorney Towers. That is the kind of turn Double Fine does well. It takes a comic villain and gives him a tragedy without softening him.
The comedy still works. The game is listed under science fiction and comedy, and it earns both. The Rhombus of Ruin is a joke name for a serious place, and the game knows it. Dr. Loboto is an insane ex-dentist. Morceau Oleander is still Morceau Oleander. The tone holds together because the game never asks you to take the silliness seriously.
What it does ask is patience. A point-and-click adventure in VR, with a seated protagonist and a clairvoyance mechanic instead of movement, is a slow game. Players who wanted Psychonauts 2 early will find a short, quiet puzzle box instead. Players who wanted a reason to put on a headset and look around a Double Fine world will find one.
The Verdict: 7.7/10
Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin is a good game with a narrow purpose. It bridges Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2, it gives Dr. Loboto a backstory that sticks, and it solves the problem of VR movement by refusing to move at all. The clairvoyance mechanic is the best idea in it. The seated design is the most limiting thing in it. The game is short, and it ends on a thread it does not tie.
That is enough. A 7.7 out of 10 is not a knock on Double Fine. It is a measure of what this game is: a clever, compact VR puzzle adventure that does one thing very well and does not pretend to be the sequel. If you have a headset and you want the story between the two Psychonauts games, this is where it lives. If you want the platforming, wait for Psychonauts 2.
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