Level Analysis- Psychonauts: Sasha's Shooting Gallery (Part One)

As we gear up for Mental Health Month in May, let’s look at an environmental narrative taking place inside the brain of a psychic German scientist in one of the most beloved classics of all time: Psychonauts.

Level Design

Level design is one of the most crucial aspects of game development. It is the superior pillar responsible for holding a game aloft. Level design highlights the elements that make a video game shine; graphics, music, mechanics, gameplay, and pacing are only some of the aspects highlighted here.

However, one of the most overlooked details of level design is narrative. While storytelling through dialogue and cutscenes is easy enough to implement, some games go a step further and create levels around environmental storytelling; narratives are left for the player to uncover themselves rather than being directly communicated to the player. These stories are usually up to interpretation, leaving room for theories, themes, and patterns.

Many games excel in environmental storytelling, where the setting subtly tells the character’s story, and some of the best levels in games use aspects of this style. Ground Zero in The Last of Us Part 2, The Abyss in Hollow Knight, Fort Hateno in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and the entirety of INSIDE.

Psychonauts is a game that probably needs no introduction, but just in case you haven’t played it in a while or somehow missed this absolute gem of a game, here’s a brief introduction.

Psychonauts is an action-adventure 3D platformer developed by Double Fine Productions and released in 2005. Set in a retro-futuristic version of the 1980s, where psychic powers are a recognized and accepted concept. Not everyone is born psychic, and some are born with different abilities and specialties that are unique to them and their families, like the Boole family who can communicate and understand animals.

Players are placed into the adorably tiny shoes of Razputin “Raz” Aquato, a 10-year-old boy born with extraordinary psychic abilities. His family, like many others, is fearful of psychics, holding a hateful grudge towards them and their “tricks.” Despite this, Raz grew up idolizing the Psychonauts, an elite government agency of super spies that use psychic powers to save the world.

His dream is to become the most powerful psychic in the world and join the Psychonauts in their battle to protect the world from devastation.

One night, Raz runs away from his family’s circus and infiltrates Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, a top-secret government facility meant to hone children’s psychic powers. The summer camp is operated by three Psychonaut agents, Morry Oleander, Milla Vodello, and Sasha Nein.

Despite the high security and confidentiality of Whispering Rock, Raz manages to sneak in undetected. Impressed with his natural psychic abilities, the councilors allow him to stay and attend classes until his parents are notified and pick him up.

Lessons are not taught in classrooms but inside the minds of the councilors. Through astral projection, Raz is invited to enter the councilor’s psyche to learn new powers and train. By the time we get to the counselor we will be discussing today, we have only ever delved into two minds: Agent Oleander’s and Raz’s.

Oleander’s brain was a war-torn hellscape of paranoid delusions and secret plots. Meanwhile, Raz’s mind was a twisted forest shrouded in darkness and haunted by a horrific entity. We learn later that Oleander’s mind is less than sane, leading it to the state we find it in, while Raz’s mind results from a foreign astral projection on a still-developing mind.

Sasha Nein’s psyche, better known in the game as “Sasha’s Shooting Gallery,” is our first view of what a “healthy” and fully developed mind should theoretically look like.

Sasha Nein is a German Psychonaut agent and camp counselor at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp. Famous for his expansive intelligence and logical thinking, he is a scientist determined to uncover the mysteries of the human psyche, whose scientific endeavors often border on the edge of mortality. He is the partner of Agent Milla Vodello, balancing her energetic, empathetic energy with his calm, practical mentality.

Contrary to his renowned fame, Sasha is one of the less charismatic Psychonauts Raz encounters at summer camp. He is cold, apathetic, and introverted. Furthermore, despite his status as a camp counselor, Sasha doesn’t seem particularly fond of children the same way his fellow teachers are. The other kids are scared of him and his harsh teaching methods, with rumors of cruel and unusual punishments for those who disrupt class.

This is everything we know about Sasha Nein up to this point. By the time we enter his mind and begin the level, we can begin to uncover the many layers of the emotionally inept scientist.

Check out Level Analysis- Psychonauts: Sasha's Shooting Gallery (Part Two).