Crookwood. August 2026.
I have designed our world as network of 2, 2.5 and 3.d structures - a film set which is being constantly ‘set’ and ‘re-set’. Lit and re-lit. Each ‘flat’ opens up a scene the character (player) - a ‘Scritch’ (3’ person in a skeleton suit) walks into - while being harassed by a real prick of a funeral parlour operator called Uncle Shrift. My game design is not driven by platform, puzzle or shoot ‘em up. But more from my experience in designing social engagement around a board game. I have taken ‘social’ interaction and crammed into a mobile phone. It is just a bizarre, bent, interactive story that unfolds either as a PC game, a mobile game OR a Halloween Video Board Game, on a dining room table that uses smart phones as playing pieces using much the same logic as I did with Nightmare/ATMOSFEAR. The board? It is a plastic-coated table cloth. I haven’t invented anything new. No revolutionary code. I have just used what was already in the world very differently. And so, as me and my old mate Milt Barlow (who I’ve known and loved for 26 years) get ready to light this fucker up once more and hand it over to the world to have fun with, I can look back today and reflect on this: I didn’t draw all this for money. I couldn’t give a toss about that. As a cancer survivor, let me tell you that money is the furthest thing from your mind the day you get the diagnosis. I’ve made it. Lost it. Will make it again. But money has never given me the feeling that art and film-making have. And that’s why machines won’t replace us creatives. They’ll just help us bring our vision to the world without having to pay other people to pretend they care. Brett.