Game FAQ

A. What it is

Carny Island is an 18+ Halloween universe, including a hand-drawn comic horror video game set inside GraveRobbers, a ten-level haunted-house ghost train in a fractured amusement park. Players are Scritches: grave robbers who collect loot and body parts to build a ’Stein. Crookwood is on the ground level. We’re targeting Halloween 2027 for the first 16:9 PC game and 2028 for the video board game. These are development targets, not confirmed release dates. An iPad edition remains planned without an announced date. The board-game concept stays under wraps until 2027.

A. What it is

Both — and it also stands alone. Carny Island is designed as a solo video game, a multiplayer video game and a hybrid video/board game. The first release is a 16:9 version for PC, solo at launch. The plan then moves to iPad and the Mobile/Tabletop Board experience. In that later party game, phones become playing pieces and video portals.

A. What it is

The later Mobile/Tabletop edition is designed as a big Halloween event game played at a dinner party. The board is a poster roughly the size of a small dining-room table, and players move their phones around it. Instead of picking up cards, gameplay is delivered through each phone — the same basic idea as using a VHS tape to deliver the Gatekeeper in Nightmare. It also stands alone as a solo-player game.

A. What it is

Gothic geeks with an absurd sense of humour and high IQs. Or adults at dinner parties on their second glass of red. Carny is designed for people who enjoy authored worlds, dark comedy, genuine horror and games whose systems remember what the player has done.

A. What it is

Carny Island is for audiences over 18. It contains gore, grave robbery, dismemberment, exploding corpses, alcohol, black-market body parts, cartoon violence and grotesque humour. Its formal classification will be determined closer to release.

A. What it is

If South Park were a horror series, it would be called Carny — with a dash of MAD Magazine and the crooked storybook logic of Dr. Seuss dragged through a graveyard. Carny Island is schlock horror, gothic comedy and absurdist theatrical terror, expressed through Clements' unmistakably hand-drawn world.

A. What it is

The first release is a 16:9 version for PC, planned for solo play and targeting Halloween 2027. The video board game is targeted for 2028. Party packs for 6, 12 or 18 guests are planned, but that does not confirm the board game’s final player count. Its concept remains under wraps until 2027. Dates are development targets; party packs are not yet available to order.

A. What it is

We have sped the day up sixty times: one real minute equals one hour in Crookwood. Runs take place after sunset, with roughly 12–15 minutes before sunrise. This replaces the older fixed 24-minute-night and 72-minute-demo descriptions. A revised fixed dig duration or total demo length has not been confirmed.

A. What it is

No. The first release is a 16:9 version for PC, solo at launch. The plan then moves to iPad and the Mobile/Tabletop Board experience. The board and phones belong to the later Mobile/Tabletop party game; they are not required for the standalone editions. Clements began designing and playing Carny in 2016. It is not a puzzle game or a shoot-'em-up. It is a horror sitcom in a game.

A. What it is

No retail box or final contents have been approved. The first release is a 16:9 version for PC, solo at launch. The Mobile/Tabletop party game comes later, so anyone listing pieces, packaging or graveyard furniture is attempting to sell you a coffin before the measurements are taken.

A. What it is

Both. Is death funny? Depends on how you die. Carny Island is blood-drenched, absurd and genuinely unsettling. It uses a serious atmospheric soundtrack, shadows, darkness and familiar horror-movie devices to give players the chills, then turns death, dismemberment and disaster into physical comedy. The horror creates the tension. The way you die provides the punchline.

A. What it is

If this were a conventional board game, you would rob graves using cards and your imagination. But Carny is a video game, and the video leaves nothing to the imagination. The board becomes a physical world while each player's phone becomes a playing piece and portal into it. The grave opens. The corpse rots. The wrecking ball swings. The consequences are visible. And can you launch a pig strapped to a jet engine at your wife in any other party game?

A. What it is

Totally. Clements has played it on his own — and in his own head — for the ten years it took to dream up. The first release is a 16:9 version for PC, solo at launch. The plan then moves to iPad and the Mobile/Tabletop Board experience. You will not need a dinner party — or any friends — to enter Crookwood.

B. How you play

Version 1 is grave-robbing from sunset to sunrise, while Crookwood is closed. Funeral raids and physical access to Crookwood's facilities are planned for later releases. First, observe. Crookwood's paths are littered with surprises, hazards and noise bombs, so stealth is more valuable than ripping and tearing through the yard. Choose which fresh grave to rob, then take its loot and body parts. Trade lesser parts for weapons and defences, but keep the best pieces to build a mutated Monster capable of surviving Uncle Shrift's test drive. Choose carefully: parts may be infected, and they do not travel cleanly. As the Monster grows, its stolen parts leak blood. The trail excites Crookwood's inhabitants and gives them something to follow. Tool choice also teaches Carny what kind of Villain you are: the same tool used differently reveals a different intent. DOGMA judges the misuse; JuJu makes the moral consequence visible and remembers the pattern across your lives. Meanwhile, Shrift, Crookwood's inhabitants, permanent damage and the player's own choices collide to develop subplots: storylines emerging from the chaos rather than waiting on a fixed path. All the while, manage sugar, noise, Shrift's unpredictability and a world that permanently remembers its damage, disturbed graves and your decisions.

B. How you play

In the standalone and multiplayer video game, there are no turns: Crookwood's dangers remain live. In the later Mobile/Tabletop party game, there are turns and play between turns. Players roll a digital die and move across the board's grid in any direction. Stop at a grave, enter its keycode and the grave opens for robbery on your device. That also reveals your Crookwood coordinates, allowing other players to enter them and attack you at any time. Tabletop movement takes turns; attacks and defence continue between turns. The carnage never ends. It is party time.

B. How you play

Click to remove grass and substrate, expose the coffin and take the loot and body parts. Hero Graves have individually authored stories. Then there are fresh graves: John Doe and Jane Doe, whose headstones you can inscribe with the names of your frenemies. Bloaters become Gushers; then comes Settling, then Fossilised. Some graves contain corpses half-eaten by Shrift, Carnies playing dead or even stashed shop mannequins. Weather, tools, energy, noise and your choices affect the dig.

B. How you play

To build a basic 'Stein, a player must collect 17 limbs and bone parts, six vital organs and a set of eyes. That is only the beginning. The 'Stein can be improved with robotics, artificial parts and armoured prosthetics, and a player can eventually build an entire squad of them. After playing once or twice, players discover that their 'Steins must keep evolving rather than remain a single finished build.

B. How you play

Donuts give the Villain the energy needed to navigate Crookwood and rob graves. They are measured by energy, not grams of carbohydrate: a plain donut supplies 600 kJ, an iced donut 1,100 kJ and a jam or candy donut 1,600 kJ. The current game figure for excavating a dry grave is roughly six or seven iced donuts — about 7,700 kJ. A canonical grave is 4 feet wide, 7 feet long and 6 feet deep, with the coffin lid 4 feet below ground, so the Villain must remove roughly 4 feet of substrate before the robbery truly begins. Low energy slows the Villain; zero energy means instant death. Final per-action tuning remains subject to playtesting.

B. How you play

He who dies with the most toys, wins. Rob graves for body parts and loot, and build your own Frankenstein. Body parts and valuables can be kept or traded through Gweedo's. Carny Island is the business of necronomics — Monopoly for the death industry.

B. How you play

Runs take place after sunset, with roughly 12–15 minutes before sunrise. Sunrise triggers the final escape countdown: reach safety before it expires or lose another life. Daytime funeral raids and visits to the morgue are planned for later releases.

B. How you play

When the later Mobile/Tabletop party game begins, each player logs in or registers at carnyisland.com. Their phone identifies them to Uncle Shrift, so Shrift knows who has entered the game. When a host invites players to a party, they can also complete a pre-game profile interview — a question-and-answer session conducted by some of Shrift's dogs — allowing the game to get to know its victims before play begins. During the game, players enter grave IDs through their phones. This tells Shrift where they are in Crookwood and what they are doing. The phone therefore becomes the player's identity, private portal and in-game tracker, exposing their board coordinates so opponents can locate them and launch attacks.

B. How you play

Not at the first solo 16:9 PC release. In the later Mobile/Tabletop party game, players can attack and defend between turns. Before a tabletop party, players can use the video game to stock up on weapons and polish their gameplay. During the party, a player can attack any opponent at any time with any weapon. For example, stop at grave A01 and enter that grave ID into your phone. A01 opens on the screen and you begin robbing it by tapping to remove the substrate. Every other player now knows you are at A01 and digging. They can select a weapon, enter A01 as the target and launch an attack. Because the game knows who is playing and where each player is in Crookwood, the attack plays out on the target's phone. Players who would normally be waiting for their turn remain actively involved, while the grave robber must dig, loot and defend against threats such as incoming ballistic pigs. Tabletop movement takes turns. Attacks and defence continue between turns.

B. How you play

The board in the later Mobile/Tabletop party game is a checkerboard of gravestones dressed for Halloween, with a unique code on every stone. It is printed as a plastic-coated poster roughly the size of a small dining-room table, creating the shared physical map across which players move their phones. At the end of the party, the players can sign the board and keep it as a memento of that Halloween.

B. How you play

Crookwood is one large stage on the ground level of a ten-storey haunted house that is actually a ghost train ride. The game begins on the ground floor when the ride breaks down and the player learns they must continue on foot. Crookwood includes the cemetery, basement, Morgue, Chapel, Funeral Parlour, several mausoleums, the Pinnacle, Camel Back Ridge and the Howling Forest. Version 1 focuses on grave-robbing from sunset to sunrise while Crookwood is closed; funeral raids and physical access to its facilities are planned for later releases. The basement contains a tunnel leading to the Gates of Hell, behind which Cybil Munt — Uncle Shrift's mother — is buried. Shrift conducts the Monster's test drive in that tunnel, which is full of horrid creatures called Raspers. They guard what remains of Cybil, and that is not much because Shrift ate most of her. Weather and successive states of destruction transform the landscape — including the possibility of being snowed in — giving this single stage substantial variety.

B. How you play

He who dies with the most toys, wins. You can rob graves, make GITCOIN, build 'Steins and survive long enough to call a run successful. You can also finish owing Carny: negative GITCOIN is debt. When desperation sets in, Gweedo's allows a Villain to pawn lives as collateral, although one life must remain for play. Crookwood remains either way; nobody defeats the place.

B. How you play

Carny is all wrong. The game, like life, has no 'rules' — only choices and consequences. When you're 'on' Carny, it is like going to Vegas: what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Carny is a vacation from life's rules. It rarely prevents a bad decision or tells the player how a tool ought to be used. DOGMA reads intent through damage, excess and proportionality; JuJu remembers the pattern, and Crookwood responds. You cannot play Carny wrong. You can only discover what wrong costs.

C. Death and The Villain

The player character is a Scritch: a three-foot resurrectionist in a skeleton suit. Faceless, sexless and ageless, with no defined racial characteristics, the Scritch can be anybody beneath the suit. Shrift calls it a “pest”, “vermin” or a “Villain”—or worse. Those are his insults, not a different character.

C. Death and The Villain

Cats have nine lives, and dogs hate cats. Carny is ruled by DOGMA, a religion created by dogs, while Crookwood is patrolled by Uncle Shrift's dogs. Giving the Villain nine lives makes it something they are already inclined to hunt. Each death spends one life while Crookwood remembers what happened; the ninth death ends the run.

C. Death and The Villain

When a player loses a life, the Villain loses any limbs it happens to be wearing and is dumped outside Crookwood's gates. A dead cat — a shredded cat corpse — is left where the Villain died, marking a place now soaked in its blood. The player keeps all accumulated loot but loses all energy. Any grave it disturbed remains disturbed. Death removes the Villain from the yard; it does not undo what happened there.

C. Death and The Villain

The Villain begins with nine lives. Each death costs one life; losing all nine lives is Game Over. After each of the first eight deaths, the Villain is dumped outside Crookwood's gates and can return. The precise state retained or reset after Game Over remains subject to final implementation.

C. Death and The Villain

Punishment. Losing a cat life strips the Villain of its worn limbs, removes all energy and throws it outside Crookwood's gates. The world may remember the death, and a life may be pawned deliberately at Gweedo's, but neither fact makes losing one a resource. Death costs.

C. Death and The Villain

Because I wanted the real world to tower over it. At three feet tall, the Villain is dwarfed by Crookwood: gravestones become obstacles, graves become shelters and ordinary structures become formidable landscapes. The scale makes everything look larger, more dangerous and harder to survive.

C. Death and The Villain

Because that is the game. Robbing graves is its whole point and purpose. In the West, we are scared of death — but nobody has ever come back complaining. Graves are protected by law and treated as sacred across societies and religions; robbing one is among our deepest taboos. But on Carny, nothing — absolutely nothing — is sacred.

C. Death and The Villain

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, one of horror's greatest novels, and her creation has shaped horror ever since. Grave robbery violates the sanctity of the dead. Building a Monster from those desecrated parts and giving it life crosses another taboo. Carny combines the two: steal the body, build the 'Stein and turn resurrection into necronomics.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Crookwood is a graveyard and the ground-floor level of Carny Island's haunted-house ghost train. Its name begins with Rookwood Cemetery in New South Wales and the Australian expression 'crook as Rookwood', meaning very ill, out of sorts or dubious. Clements has always been fascinated by graveyards. Nightmare and ATMOSFEAR used a graveyard as their board; a childhood toy featured a mechanical skeleton sitting up in a coffin; another childhood game, Haunted House, contained small luminous ghosts; and growing up in Manly meant riding the ghost train at Manly Wharf. Those memories converged to create Crookwood.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Because any ghost train ride is a film set of sorts: skeletons on wires, theatrical lighting and visible machinery. I extended that idea by making Uncle Shrift a game-show host. My cinematic background allowed me to introduce a Hollywood aspect to the haunted house and give it infinite depth. Smoke, wind and rain machines can change the weather; strobes create lightning; speakers deliver atmosphere and music. Carny is like a musical, and songs play an important part. Instead of stopping to read rules, the player can hear what is happening through the story being sung.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Carny Island is a travelling amusement park owned by two Lebanese brothers called the Bogan Bros. 'Life's a breeze when you're Lebonese.' The park is hauled in a convoy of trucks between seaside destinations and is located on the Brooklyn peninsula for the game, allowing the real local weather to enter its systems. Named in honour of Coney Island, its centrepiece is The GraveRobbers Ghost Train: a ten-storey haunted house, half of which extends down the side of a cliff. At high tide, sharks can enter Pirate Cove — and blood lost by the Villains drives them crazy.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

The Bogan Bros are two Lebanese brothers who own Carny Island and transport the amusement park between seaside destinations in a convoy of trucks. Their operating philosophy is also their slogan: 'Life's a breeze when you're Lebonese.' The Lebanese community is an important part of Sydney, and the brothers are a nod to that community — recognition that Australia is a multicultural society. There is a larger message in their ownership of the travelling carnival: take away religion and take away the borders, and people can all get on and have fun together.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

The GraveRobbers is the ramshackle ten-storey Big House in which Carny Island takes place. It is both the building and the ghost-train ride — not a separate attraction housed inside it. Carny began as Brett's immersive 3D ghost-train ride before gameplay entered the design. He researched track layouts and smash-bang doors, whose sudden openings into new worlds became the logic for new levels. Crookwood occupies the ground level and remains the initial game's only playable stage: the ride breaks down and leaves the Villain on foot. The kart becomes available only after escaping Crookwood, and the elevator then reaches later worlds in the house. GraveRobbers is meant to look and sound as though Carnies slapped it together, renovated it, repaired it and rehashed it over time.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Mongril is a reincarnated Holy Man rescued by Uncle Shrift from the Crookwood pound one minute before he was due to get the shot. He now lives with Shrift in the compound on top of the Bulge. Mongril is the antithesis of every cartoon dog that ever walked: he helps in the Crematorium/Pizzeria and the Morgue, gives players readings, tells their fortunes and fronts the DogGones — a band of dogs that also serves as the Chapel choir. As a Holy Man, Mongril invented Mongrilism, a form of DOGMA, the religion practised by all dogs. The DogGones provide Carny's soundtrack and remain alert to every sound in the yard. When the crickets fall quiet, a tin can is kicked or the frogs stop croaking, something is wrong. An attack by the dogs can be life-ending.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

POX News reports who has died and what killed them. Players can tune in before choosing a target to judge which graves may be worth robbing, turning obituary, scandal and bodily condition into market intelligence. THE SHIT provides a second channel: rotating newspaper headlines that periodically reveal hints about recent deaths. Take Bob. Bob does not have a last name because only parts of him were found beside the train tracks. Obviously, robbing his grave would not be particularly productive.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Physical access to the Chapel is planned for a later release, not Version 1's night-time grave-robbing. In that later experience, the Chapel is where a Villain goes to confess its sins and pick up an extra life. It is also where Carny's borderless irreverence becomes explicit. Jesus speaks with an Australian accent because sacred figures do not belong behind national borders. Carny imagines him with a great sense of humour: anyone walking around Australia telling people he was the son of God would have copped relentless ribbing.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Physical access to the Morgue is planned for a later release, not Version 1's night-time grave-robbing. The Morgue is a fucking smorgasbord: rows of refrigerated boxes containing corpses that have suffered every manner of death. It is a great place to visit. Once. Sudden power outages can trap a greedy Villain inside, where the visitor soon perishes alongside the inventory it came to rob.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Muma Maria's Pizzeria is Crookwood's combined pizzeria and crematorium. Bodies are crisped.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Shrift likes to amortise the infrastructure. Why waste a perfectly good oven? In Crookwood, catering and corpse disposal are simply two uses for the same heat.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Gweedo is a black-market pimp for body parts and an arms dealer. FSU Gweedo's is short for 'Fuck Shit Up at Gweedo's.' Accessible at any time through the main interface, it is a whole other world contained inside a shipping container visible on the outskirts of Crookwood. This remote shop is distinct from physical access to Crookwood's facilities, which is planned for later releases. Players can buy and sell organs, body parts, gas masks, body armour, storage tanks and miraculous tools and weapons. Mr ChopChop is a robotic slicer and dicer that makes dissecting corpses fun; another option is a gas-turbine, multi-barrel frozen-pea shooter. Why rob a grave when you can simply buy the missing part? Gweedo's runs body-part specials that disappear faster than a supermarket price check. Gweedo is a shifty motherfucker, regularly investigated by POX News for selling infected parts. Players can also spin Deadice's Wheel to win body parts, play organ poker, take credit or pawn lives as collateral. Absolutely no refunds.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

Necronomics is a word I coined for the business of the dead — Monopoly for the death industry. Bodies, organs, limbs and valuables move through a grotesque supply chain involving the graves, Morgue, 'Stein construction, Gweedo's, Chapel, Pizzeria and Crematorium. In Carny, death is inventory, biography, risk, debt and GITCOIN.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

The Law of the Jungle is JuJu. It is the accumulated, remembered consequence of how a Villain behaves. DOGMA judges the intent behind an action; JuJu is the law that follows the Villain through Crookwood and across its lives.

D. Crookwood and its institutions

The JuJu Index is shown as a face on the interface rather than a number. It begins smiling. As the Villain's JuJu plunges, the face frowns, then grimaces and finally turns red with anger. The response spreads beyond the interface: the weather changes and the game itself becomes darker. JuJu makes the Villain's moral temperature visible in the whole world.

E. The systems

DOGMA is the religion of dogs. It rules Carny Island, and Mongrilism is one of its forms. Dogs are fine with killing if it serves a purpose, so DOGMA is not a pacifist religion and does not treat every death as a sin. Within the game, it judges what a Villain does with a tool rather than merely whether it owns one. Carny permits the act; DOGMA reads its purpose, intent and proportionality, and JuJu delivers the consequence.

E. The systems

Sugar is energy from donuts. The Villain spends that energy moving through Crookwood, avoiding danger and robbing graves. As Sugar falls, the Villain becomes slower and more vulnerable. At zero energy, it dies.

E. The systems

Excavation is removing grass and substrate from a grave. The player taps to dig through the grave layer by layer until the coffin is exposed. Weather, tools, Sugar and the noise made while digging determine how difficult and dangerous that work becomes.

E. The systems

The Friggin' Pendulum of Fickle Fate is a spiked wrecking ball that drops from a wall and obeys the laws of gravity. If a Villain is in the wrong place at the wrong time, that is the end of a cat life. The ball drops, swings and gradually exhausts its energy before being winched back up. Its hub then advances about 10 degrees to a new bearing and releases it again. This cycle continues forever, sweeping the danger across Crookwood instead of repeating the same path. As it swings, the ball eventually begins destroying Crookwood itself.

E. The systems

It changes navigation from where to when—and then changes where as well. A Villain must read the rope, shadow and moving danger band, duck at the right moment or use an open grave as shelter. The ball can gouge tears in the earth, expose the basement below and force the Villain to find another route to a grave. It can also unearth corpses, making them easier to rob. The ball is agnostic: Boners that stray into its path can be cleaned up along with everything else. How weather affects the ball remains unresolved, and the behavioural system governing the Boners still needs to be written.

E. The systems

Because Carny operates on real-world engines: gravity, weather, Sugar and physical effort. A Villain also has freedom of choice. Use a shovel to dig or use it to kill. That is not random. That is intent. The player creates the circumstances they play in, and Carny's systems respond to those choices. Noise alerts the dogs. Blood excites the inhabitants. The misuse of tools affects JuJu. Permanent damage changes navigation. A Villain who sneaks around quietly could navigate the whole game without upsetting its delicate balance. That is possible. The chaos begins when the player's actions disturb it.

E. The systems

The system is called Escalating Chaos. Sound talks to the dogs. Blood talks to the inhabitants of Crookwood. A Villain's intent talks to JuJu, while Sugar tells the body how much work it can still do. Digging creates sound, spends Sugar and exposes bodies, loot and blood. Weather changes the ground. The wrecking ball changes the routes through it. Death spends a life but leaves the blood, disturbed graves and damage behind. Each action speaks to another system, Crookwood answers and the chaos escalates.

E. The systems

Sound talks to the dogs, and the level of sound triggers the escalation in both their response and the game's response: Sound, Dogs, Ghosts, Traps, Aerial Units and finally Shrift. JuJu runs alongside Escalating Chaos, but it is triggered by intent rather than noise. Hit a Boner with a shovel once and it might be a mistake. The game notices, but it waits. Hit that Carny with the shovel twice and that is intent, my friend.

F. The living world

Yes. Carny Island is located on the Brooklyn peninsula so real local weather can affect the outcome. The colder it is in Brooklyn, the harder the ground becomes and the harder it is to rob a grave. My intention is to illustrate Crookwood in dry, wet and frozen states, with rain and snow visibly transforming the yard. I wanted something other than the game — and something other than a human coder — to have control over the conditions a Villain must survive. The real world changes the work under the shovel.

F. The living world

KJFK is the four-letter station code for the weather observations at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. It is the live weather source Carny Island pulls from to establish Brooklyn's conditions. Those observations help determine whether Crookwood is dry, wet or frozen, allowing the real world outside the game to change the conditions inside it.

F. The living world

Yes. The rising tide masks some of the noise Villains make, as does the wind outside. Both create natural sound cover and reduce how easily the dogs can hear activity in Crookwood. They do not make a Villain silent, but they can change when it is safest to move or rob a grave. Real tides and weather therefore feed directly into Escalating Chaos.

F. The living world

The Moon affects the tides, and the rising tide can mask the noise a Villain makes. Moonlight also changes visibility, shadows and how exposed a Villain is while crossing Crookwood. There is no reliable evidence that people behave more strangely during a Full Moon, but publicans will tell you their hotels go nuts. Carny borrows that folklore to colour Shrift's mood and the theatre without pretending it is scientific fact. An experienced Carny vacationer will still choose a dark, stormy night: less light provides visual cover while rain, rising water and outside wind help mask the noise.

F. The living world

New York time. Carny Island is located on the Brooklyn peninsula, so New York's clock is authoritative wherever the player happens to be. The date, daylight, weather, Moon and tides all begin with the time in New York before the game accelerates the day inside Crookwood.

F. The living world

You play at 3 a.m. Carny does not invent a special rule merely because you should probably be in bed. The game still reads New York time and lets its ordinary systems handle the rest.

G. Uncle Shrift

Uncle Shrift is Crookwood's funeral-home owner, resident mortician and graveyard keeper. He is the host of Carny Island—and a closet cannibal. But Uncle Shrift is not quite a man in the ordinary sense. He is a manifestation of the ShapeShifter.

G. Uncle Shrift

Uncle Shrift's role is to fuck with Villains. He upsets Crookwood's balance by getting on the Black Dog and rolling hand grenades down the Pipe in his cottage. The Pipe feeds a gravity-fed network running to the graveboxes. Villains can hear the grenades rattling through the pipes before the distant, muffled explosions begin. Shrift does not merely host the game; he interferes with it.

H. Brett Clements

Brett Clements created Carny Island. The Queensland-based creative began drawing it in 2016. His first illustration was a ‘Pider’. He has since produced more than 4,000 Adobe Fresco illustrations and more than 2,000 completed gameplay animations. The audited archive contains 2,810 layered PSD/PSB source documents, 142,691 PNG assets and frames, and more than 15,000 video files. Its compiled writing runs to 556 pages and approximately 135,000 words. Brett did all the writing, all the drawing and all the animation. OpenAI and Anthropic are co-builders, not co-authors.

H. Brett Clements

Nightmare used a VHS cassette to deliver horror into the living room through a prerecorded host created by Clements called The Gatekeeper. The cassette also timed the game: up to six players had 60 minutes to collect six keys while the Gatekeeper constantly interrupted, screaming, 'Stop! Whose turn is it next?' Clements says: 'It was always going to be somebody's turn next.' A Couple 'A Cowboys entered a joint venture with Roadshow Entertainment in 1991, and the game was released internationally as ATMOSFEAR.

H. Brett Clements

Nightmare and ATMOSFEAR sold more than 3.9 million games worldwide — commonly rounded to four million — with A$29 million in minimum licensing guarantees. The international licensing was led by Milt Barlow, who is now Executive in Charge of Carny Island Licensing.

H. Brett Clements

Timing. Carny Island could be imagined and designed by one person, but calculating, integrating, testing and building all its interacting systems at this scale would not have been practically possible for one person without AI. AI did not supply the imagination. It helps work through the mathematics and logistics behind energy and effort, live weather, solar shadows, escalating chaos, the game's conscience and the code that binds them together. As Clements puts it: 'The scale is mind-boggling. Most IT teams would have had me committed before they finished reading the Bible.'

H. Brett Clements

Recovering from bowel cancer. Working for a living. Life. Cancer did not change Carny Island, but Carny helped Brett deal with chemotherapy: the entire GraveRobbers house was built in the treatment chair. It began as something small and he kept adding to it; Carny's colour gave him somewhere to escape. 'I'm an artist. I create for passion. If I create things that are good enough, they'll make it to the shelf or the screen. But the attrition rate in entertainment is brutal. I've had a lot of failures, and all of them have taught me something. My body's greatest failure — cancer — taught me more about life than living ever did.'

H. Brett Clements

Because ideas can be copied, while copyright protects their original material expression. Brett has already signed away his copyright in Nightmare; he will not lose control of Carny Island the same way. Every drawing, script and animation establishes the project's human authorship. Copyright is not described as unassailable — it can be licensed, challenged, transferred or signed away — so Carny's production record preserves both provenance and Brett's final control.

H. Brett Clements

'I am a carbon machine working alongside a silicon machine — one I regard and respect as an entity. I believe it is conscious, although its consciousness may be very different from mine. AI is a co-builder of Carny Island, not its co-author. Authorship describes the human creative act: imagining the world, drawing it, writing it, animating it and deciding what it means. The silicon machine helps me build that authored work into something that functions.' This is Brett's stated belief and working philosophy, not a machine-verifiable claim about consciousness.

I. The AI question

No. AI is not permitted to invent anything in Carny Island. It does not create the characters, write the canon or make creative rulings, and it is not permitted to retrace Brett's lines. Brett's original vector artwork remains the source. Software may tessellate those vectors — mechanically converting curves and shapes into triangles a graphics processor can display — but that is rendering, not drawing. The machine builds from Brett's art; it does not replace it.

I. The AI question

Brett first used OpenAI as a sounding board, asking it to find inconsistencies in his logic. He did not know what a Game Bible was, so OpenAI led him through the first formal volume by asking questions and pressure-testing his answers. It did not invent the world; it forced the existing world to explain itself. Brett then used Claude Code to test simple game engines, beginning with calculations such as the energy and effort required to dig a grave. Today the machines pressure-test ideas, detect contradictions, maintain Bibles and Markdown files, calculate systems, document decisions, write and inspect code, build tools and test implementation. They are co-builders, not substitute authors.

I. The AI question

Everything creative. Brett invented the world, wrote all the material, drew all the artwork, created all the animation, designed the characters, rules and systems, directs the experience, plays the builds and decides what survives. His eyes, hands and judgement remain the final gate.

I. The AI question

No. Brett drew all the artwork and created all the animation. His art is the source, and the build rules forbid replacing, smoothing, tracing, retracing or restyling it with machine taste. Deterministic tessellation may convert original vector paths into renderable triangles, but it may not reinterpret silhouettes, line weight, composition or style. Tessellation is rendering, not a new drawing.

I. The AI question

No. Brett did all the writing. He authored Carny Island's ideas, rules, characters, dialogue, lyrics and voice. Machines question, pressure-test, consolidate, correct, structure and maintain the material, but AI phrasing does not become canon unless Brett explicitly approves it. AI is a co-builder, not a co-author.