Real Art. Real Heart.

The video games industry has changed. I believe for the better.

Yes. Unscrupulous operators are using AI to rip and mash games up left, right and centre. And as more slop hits the wall, real art and real heart emerge.

For me, the opportunity is to bring the writing, artwork, animation, music and mechanics together, and get the game into people’s hands while it continues to evolve. There is a considerable amount of work involved. There are also possibilities opening up that make this a very exciting time to be making games.

Carny Island has a particular voice. It comes from the same imagination that brought you Nightmare and ATMOSFEAR, and from the years I have spent creating this island and its inhabitants. The tools help me build it. The choices about what it should feel like remain personal.

That is what this Game Build and Development Log is intended to share. I want you inside the making of Carny Island, able to follow its progress and play a part in what happens next.

Take the opening we are working on.

You arrive beneath a pink sky. The sun moves behind the Graverobber’s house. There is time to look at the place before the words appear. You can then scroll through the introduction yourself, at your own pace, while the house remains in front of the text.

We dissolve into night.

The weather conditions tell you how the island feels: the temperature, wind, tides and the phase of the moon. The earth is soft. These details begin preparing you for the business ahead.

Then you learn something else about the place.

A Carny day spins 240 times faster than the real world… so you can watch the bodies rot.

And then the island asks you a question:

“Who would you like to bury today?”

This is where your involvement changes. You have been watching, listening and reading. Now you have a decision to make.

The headstone begins with RIP. A name. Born. Died. An epitaph: say something ‘nice’ about them.

We are building the option to speak those details into the form. I want the act of naming somebody to feel immediate. Give them a name, give them a few words of remembrance, and allow yourself a small moment of solemnity.

Then the batshit lands across the name.

Carny Island has its own sense of occasion.

The next screen is IdentiCorpse, where the physical details begin giving that person a body. Their first name can follow them into the game’s data, through burial, decay, digging them up and the harvest.

Rob graves. Build Frankenstein.

That connection matters to me. By the time you reach the cutting, you have already made decisions about this person. You supplied the name on the stone. You buried them. You came back.

There is humour in that, and something a little uncomfortable. Both belong here.

This is the journey I want to build: curiosity, recognition, amusement, then a growing sense of responsibility for the person you have put into the ground. The opening needs to earn each step. The art, timing, sound and interaction all have work to do.

We will be publishing our first few games on the App Store very soon. My ambition is for that to begin a journey quite unlike anything that has ever been done before.

You will be able to follow it as it develops.

And it begins with a name.