Camp Know Where

Where young minds learn to harness the impossible powers of their own brains.

Camp Know Where is the fictional setting of Psychonauts, a 2005 platform game developed by Double Fine Productions. It is a remote US government training facility under the guise of a children's summer camp, located in a crater created centuries ago by a meteor made of Psitanium, a fictional mineral that can grant or strengthen psychic powers. The camp is used to train young psychics to become Psychonauts, spies with psychic abilities, and is disguised as a summer camp for children. Only those recruited by the Psychonauts are allowed into the camp.

Quick Facts

Location

Remote US government training facility under the guise of a children's summer ca

Primary function

Training ground for young psychics to become Psychonauts

Key residents

Razputin Aquato
Sasha Nein
Milla Vodello
Morceau Oleander
Ford Cruller
Lili

Lore & Background

The camp is set in the fictional Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, a remote US government training facility disguised as a children's summer camp. Centuries ago, the area was hit by a meteor made of Psitanium, creating a huge crater. The Psitanium affected local wildlife, giving them limited psychic powers, such as bears with telekinetic claws, cougars with pyrokinesis, and rats with confusion gas. The Native Americans called Psitanium 'whispering rock' and used it to build arrowheads. When settlers arrived, the psychoactive properties of the meteor slowly drove them insane. An asylum named Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed was built, but within fifteen years it had more residents than the town, and founder Houston Thorney committed suicide. The government relocated the remaining inhabitants and flooded the crater, creating Lake Oblongata. The asylum still stands but has fallen into disrepair. The government then used the Psitanium deposit to set up a training camp for Psychonauts, disguised as a summer camp.

Reader's Guide

The game includes both the 'real world' of the camp and its surroundings, as well as a number of 'mental worlds' existing in the consciousness of various characters. The mental worlds have wildly differing art and level design aesthetics, with specific goals Raz must complete to resolve a psychological issue. Within these worlds are censors that attack Raz, and collectibles including 'figments' of imagination, 'emotional baggage' that can be sorted by finding tags, and 'memory vaults' that unlock slides providing extra backstory. Most worlds culminate in a boss battle that resolves the character's emotional distress and advances the story. Raz can revisit any world after completing it to find additional collectibles. Raz is given an item to leave any mental world at any time, and another that provides hints. Raz can take damage from psychically empowered creatures around the camp at night or from censors in mental worlds; due to a family curse, he is also vulnerable to water. If health is drained, Raz respawns at the most-recent checkpoint, but only a limited number of times within a mental world, indicated by remaining astral projections; if these are expended, Raz is ejected from the character's mind.