Perhaps the clearest evocation of that is Hollis' Hotstreak, wherein Raz deliberately manipulates the mind of a Psychonauts agent so she'll allow him to go on an important, possibly dangerous mission.
Instead, Psychonauts 2's worlds are designed to communicate a specific idea at a conceptual level, one which builds over the course of the player's time in that place. This wonderful phrase was coined by Matthew Castle in his review of Psychonauts 2 to differentiate from the concept of 'environmental storytelling' which has been mocked into oblivion by a thousand jokes about putting skeletons on a toilet. These are specific, cumulative references designed to tell the player what is happening in this particular mind. And not in a vague way, like how other games use floating islands as an all-purpose metaphor for a fracturing reality or mentality. Moreover, everything within these spaces serves a purpose, either functional or representational. The same goes for the disgusting tooth-doors in Dr Loboto's mind, or the prismatic rainbow bridges in the Psi-King's rekindling consciousness. For example, in Ford's Follicles, the liberally scattered hairdryers are not just silly set-dressing, they can be used to create new pathways through the level. Firstly, like a dream, each world has its own functional internal logic that makes sense while you're in the dream. But there are several features of Psychonauts 2's dreamlike worlds that prevent them from feeling like randomness for the sake of it. Such wild variation could easily descend into incoherent nonsense. Some of the ideas Psychonauts 2 cranks through could serve as the basis for entire games. There are worlds made of hair, worlds made of teeth, cooking gameshows with hand-puppet hosts and anthropomorphic food. Its levels are a delightful medley of bizarre visions, a whirling carousel of fantastical, grotesque and carnivalesque spaces. Even Dishonored 2, which has some of the best level design around, reverts to floating islands for its "Void" sections.
It's a trope you'll see everywhere, from games like Arkham Asylum and Spider-Man, to Doom Eternal and Bioshock Infinite. Most mainstream video-games struggle with surrealism, evidenced by how many of them resort to floating islands as shorthand for 'weird'.
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