The idea to write about Compton's Cookoff came to me in a flash while I was looking at a draft of my colleague Holly's intro post for cooking week here at Game Developer. One phrase showed up: "cooking and performance anxiety"—that immediately made a beeline for my own gray matter, stirring memories of playing the Psychonauts 2 level wherein the player guides anthropomorphized audience members/ingredients (bear with me here) through a wild death trap of a kitchen to please harsh reality TV food judges and them..
. battle them. If that sounds wild, it's supposed to! The Psychonauts games are all about literally jumping into the mixed up jumble of characters' brains, helping them deal with psychological trouble.
There's a generous dose of humor here, and a lot of heart and empathy for every character in the world. Each level is a trippy, cartoonish vision of a character's mind, and Compton is a traumatized former psychonaut who has locked himself away for fear of causing harm to anyone ever again. He is all but eaten alive by his own anxieties, something I was immediately drawn to (my own OCD says hello).
Truly, what better way to represent that in an adventure-platformer like Psychonauts than a nightmare obstacle course kitchen that requires players to simultaneously juggle cooking tasks in different areas of the arena: a massive blender, a terrifying stove, a horrifying slicer—that's the subject of an especially cutting joke, given the ingredients' cheerful dispositions. I.