Neil Gaiman Joins The Game-Making Biz

Earnest Cavalli

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Neil Gaiman Joins The Game-Making Biz

[youtube=WQn-napv3zo

[B]Sandman creator Neil Gaiman is working on a videogame called Wayward Manor, and he'd like to tell you all about it.[/B]

Wayward Manor is an upcoming PC, Mac and mobile device game. Why should you be excited? Because it's being written by best-selling author and latter-day goth culture icon Neil Gaiman. I mention his macabre leanings not in jest - I love Bauhaus as much as any twentysomething with crippling emotional problems - but because they seem to perfectly fit the game's premise.

Have a look at Wayward Manor's official description:

Wayward Manor is a puzzle/adventure game hybrid that invites players to solve the mysteries of the mansion any way they choose. You play as a disgruntled ghost, trying to reclaim your house from its newfound owners. This dysfunctional family of misfits and eccentrics have stifled your power and brought their own abysmal possessions into your humble abode. Each level is a playground for scares where players absorb fear to take back control of the room. If you want free reign over your mansion once again, you must uncover their deepest anxieties and drive them mad with fear using your wits and their hideous belongings.

It may not be as epic as some of his other works, but that's definitely a Gaiman story.

According to Mashable [http://mashable.com/2013/07/25/neil-gaiman-game/], who discussed the game with Gaiman, Wayward Manor's story spans a number of decades, in which your relationship with the house you inhabit becomes a key plot point. "I was playing around with an idea essentially about a man and a house over a period of 200 years, thinking how much more fun it would be if the story of this relationship was actually something you could get involved in," Gaiman states.

While Gaiman offers scant details on the game's content or story direction, he does offer the following: "Normally in a game, if you're in a haunted house, you are going to be walking through it intrepidly with your flashlight, your bell-book and candle, and your copy of the Necronomicon and you keep going until you find the ghost."

"In this one all you want to do is be left in peace with your lovely house and be left alone. I don't want to give anything away but it's safe to say you were killed in the 1880s and you were killed for a reason."

If you'd care for more explanation, hit "play" on that clip above. It's basically Gaiman himself introducing Wayward Manor and explaining why any of you should care about his upcoming game. Gaiman then goes on to explain the unique funding scheme behind this game - think of it as a privatized Kickstarter - pointing out that there are a number of rewards (up to and including dinner with Mr. Gaiman) for those willing to drop money toward Wayward Manor prior to its release. You can find full details on the prize tiers on the game's official site [http://whohauntsneil.com/welcome/#shop].

There's currently no official release date for Wayward Manor, but it is expected to debut in December of 2013.

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Fiz_The_Toaster

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Jan 19, 2011
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Why, yes, I will throw all my money at this because Neil Gaiman is awesome at story telling and making great characters.

So, yes please!
 

Morsomk_v1legacy

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Jan 30, 2013
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Ahh...interesting. A video game created from the vision of Neil Gaiman? This sounds very intriguing to me and I will buy it as soon as it is complete.
 

Hagi

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I must say, I admire this guy's attitude.

First decide on the story to tell and the experience you want to convey, then decide on the medium that best fits it. Instead of the other way around and ending up with what's supposed to be an interactive experience yet's compromised for a much too large part of cutscenes and quicktime events.
 

BehattedWanderer

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Jun 24, 2009
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Whaaaaaaat.

Dreams do come true.

This is one of those instances I'd love to tell past me about when things got hard. Man do I wish I had that 10k for the dinner. I've so many distinct questions I'd love to ask him.
 

Poodleboy

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Yay to the associated big name for the project but is it just me that is finding the funding/marketing model a bit worrying. Publisher funded but with crowd funding style perks/pre-orders. This seems like an alarmingly effective new step in the war against our wallets. I just hope the big publishers aren't watching. Can you imagine if you believed the hype for some of the recent big names and decided to go with buying a "perk"/investor level pre-order of Colonial Marines for example?

I am excited about the potential of a game from the mind of Neil Gaiman but i'm also excited to here what Jim Sterling thinks of this marketing model.
 

CriticalMiss

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It sounds a lot like this game:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/SuperFlashBros/haunt-the-house

Though I can imagine a fully developed game will be more fleshed out and might look prettier, it's still fairly similar. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to flame-proof my house against the oncoming storm.
 

CGAdam

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The Doctor is using fire instead of sonics now?

$10,000 for dinner, plus hotel and travel. It feels weird to even consider that, but there it is.

I'm sure I'll try this on idevice, at least. I wonder if the guy in question was a southern slave owner (killed in 1880s, for a reason)? Or maybe there's some more European reason.

Looking forward to finding out.
 

NimrodXIV

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So... it's 'Haunting Starring Polterguy' (anyone remember that one?) written by Neil Gaiman?

 

PurpleLeafRave

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CriticalMiss said:
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to flame-proof my house against the oncoming storm.
Did somebody say 'oncoming storm'?


OT: Neil Gaiman has written some of my favourite books, and my favourite episode of Doctor Who, so I will support him with pretty much anything.
 

Captain Booyah

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Just a heads up: if anybody is interested in the basic premise of this game, you might want to check out Ghost Master. It's a campy, cartoonish strategy game in which you control a team of various ghosts with different powers, and your "aim" in the missions is usually to scare away the inhabitants of the house / drive them to insanity by any means necessary, with the later missions usually being certain challenges (e.g. avenging a death) that require more strategic thinking. It came out sometime in the early 2000s, but it's aged fairly well and has some solid gameplay. I think you can buy it pretty cheap on Steam.
 

Bat Vader

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Love Neil Gaiman's works. I am pretty sure the story is going to be awesome but hopefully the gameplay will be as equally as awesome. I think either Bioware or Obsidian need to hire Neil Gaiman to do the story for their next game.
 

Racecarlock

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And he would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling journalists!

I hope Bill Murray doesn't move in the house we haunt.
 

likalaruku

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Looks a bit like American McGee's Grimm.

Speaking of which, it would be interesting if Gaimen & McGee got together to make a nice cartoony macabre horror survival game or cartoony dark humor action adventure game.