Take a ride on the Crookwood Express before we shut it down
One of the last times you can ride. She breaks down soon.
Journal entry ↓Writing, art and creative direction; collated from the development briefsCrookwood. Run 1. 24mm lens. September 8, 2026. — full circuit with Come Home To Crookwood.
Take a ride before we shut it down
It will be one of the last times you can ride. She breaks down soon. Take a ride on the Crookwood Express before we shut it down. For this demo, the camera is on the ghost train, with a 24 mm lens. But for Crookwood Stage 1, the train has broken down, and the player — a three-foot Skritch in a skeleton suit — is on foot.
September 8 — the 24 mm run
The latest film follows the complete circuit from the tunnel and back, with the purple game UI and Come Home To Crookwood. Shrift blinks on the superboards using the original Fresco motion frames. The yellow billboard lamps flicker intermittently, while the searchlights sweep across the yard. The UI starts with the lantern, 6,000 kJ and two cat lives already spent.
Starting the build
The Crookwood Yard is based on track designs from ghost trains of old, wrapped in a lighting envelope. Bringing that to life involved establishing the track, the premise for exploring the yard on foot, and writing a lighting brief called Staging a Crookwood Night.
The tracks are just stubbed in, and new art is coming. Finished beam work and foundations are still to come. The basement hasn’t even been started beyond the space and the route through it. This walkthrough does not include all the film flats, booby traps, dunk towers and hiding places. It is about 10% of the available art. Then add the player, the threats and Shrift.
Slow down. Look. Listen.
Carny Island is not a play-at-warp-speed shoot ’em up. It requires stealth and observation. By the time this yard is finished, it will be a visual assault and a killing zone.
A Villain has to sneak in. Hide. Rob graves, quietly, and get out before sunrise. Our challenge is slowing down a world that has no patience and teaching players to use stealth to win.
Hiding and surviving for the longest is winning. But you can’t just hide out in Crookwood and run the clock up. That’s bullshit.
The searchlights rake the yard
If you get caught out in the open and exposed, you get hunted down and killed. But this has to be fair. The searchlights will come from Shrift’s Cottage and the Hex RocketWitch Force Base. They need to sweep a pattern, with hedges positioned so the Villain can scurry from one row to another.
I’ve designed the hedges so they look landscaped. The two-dimensional art should work for us because both sides present as hedges. The Villain is only three feet tall. The hedges need to offer cover, hide the gap between the ground and the cyclorama, and enhance the layout of the graves.
The Morgue, Vinnie’s Mausoleum and the Chapel are structures the Villain needs to be able to walk up to and into. The pizza shop and funeral parlour aren’t playable in Game 1. I don’t mind Shrift’s Cottage and the Hex base looking larger than life.
Plenty of ways to die
The security cameras feed a control room inside the Bulge, which you will see in cutscenes. The idea is that when a Villain trips a noise bomb, the cameras and searchlights swing towards the place it was triggered. The bomb-bay doors in the ceiling swing open, and a bomblet drops.
That’s just one way to kill a Villain who trips a noise bomb. There are also boner patrols, brain-eating zombies and rocket witches. Plenty of ways to die.
The Friggin Fickle Wrecking Ball of Fate drops from the cyclorama wall and is winched up in the centre. The turret rotates five degrees each time the ball is winched up. The dunk towers need to be out of its range. The Howling Forest is made from gobos with claws; its agreed study zone is on the western edge, between the Hex base and the Pizzeria.
The fun is playing and dying and building a Stein. We will build a stunning world to navigate, made largely from film flats and props. Then, over the course of nine lives, we will destroy it. The basement is another area to explore. I wouldn’t go there: it’s full of Carnies.
The yard in numbers
The current containment envelope is 70 × 70 metres: 4,900 m². The upper floor, excluding basement openings, is approximately 4,460 m². The 68 × 68 metre basement adds 4,624 m², sitting 2.9 metres below the yard. Combined gross floor area is approximately 9,084 m².
The corrected row study contains 293 graves: 289 on the yard floor and four on the Hump. The graveboxes are back to their original 4 × 7 ft proportions. The earlier enlarged footprints and distorted headstones have been corrected; their old area estimates no longer describe this layout.
The complete ride circuit is approximately 312 metres. The track is 1.6 metres wide, with a reserved corridor of 2.2 metres. The clear aisle between the above-ground row reservations is 0.90 metres; the minimum gap between basement box bodies is approximately 1.00 metre. The proposed Howling Forest study zone is approximately 210 m², including existing graves.
These are modelled dimensions, not a verified measurement of navigable space. The original 50 × 50 metre studio brief was 2,500 m²; the current model extends beyond that footprint.
Where this demo stands
Production note: this is a visual development study. The latest review includes smaller cover hedges, patterned searchlights, stars, security cameras and a test response to a noise event. Building entrances are being tested; finished interiors, enemies, the complete bomb-bay attack and the wider trap system are still to come. The measurements describe the model, not finished gameplay. The row study uses plain provisional bases below the original graveboxes; these preserve the tight basement passages while the authored foundations are still to come.
Look at what we have created. Before we add the monsters. Before we trip the light show and launch the rocket witches. Before we unleash The ShapeShifter and Uncle Shrift. And the storms. Before we add the Ecto (the plasma the Villain needs to energise), before the Ghosts come out. Doesn't the place send shivers of excitement and dread up your spine? Carny Island. Is it a party for a funeral. Yep.