Carny TV

When your game involves robbing graves for body parts, resident serial killers are a must-have and The Claw never disappoints. The Claw is a vicious hand-puppet unleashed by BooBahBashBah.

Carny Island's resident mortician and a closet cannibal Uncle Shrift launches his premium Supper Club for discerning patrons. If you're a vegetarian, the Club is probably not for you. If you don't like excessive blood, gore and comic violence, this is not for you.

Welcome to Uncle Shrift's Supper Club, the video podcast on the making of Carny Island. Instead of just talking to camera, Brett Clements (creator of the Nightmare / Atmosfear video board game) gets Uncle Shrift, the mortician, umpire and closet cannibal who hosts Carny Island, to interview him. Carny Island is a hand-drawn comic-horror game about robbing graves for body parts to build your own little Frankenstein. You start as a three-foot resurrectionist called a Scritch and slowly morph into a monster as you feed on ectoplasm, body parts and organs. It all happens between sunset and sunrise in the graveyard of Crookwood, inside a ghost train in a New York amusement park. In this episode: • Ten years of storyboarding: 4,000+ Photoshop plates, 2,000+ gameplay animations and 100,000+ words of game bible • Hero graves, exploding graves and Vinnie the Pig • Building and retrofitting your "stein" • The roadmap: PC → iPad → Halloween party video board game • How it's being made: Procreate, Adobe Fresco, Buildbox, Unity, ElevenLabs and Suno, and why it's not AI slop • Teaming up again with Milt Barlow • Art as a safe place, and why sharing the mistakes is the way to start Every frame is hand-drawn. Uncle Shrift's voice is a clone of Brett's own voice, made in ElevenLabs. Lyrics are by Brett, set to music with Suno. CHAPTERS 00:00 Welcome to Uncle Shrift's Supper Club 00:47 Meet Brett Clements 01:28 What is Carny Island? 02:28 Welcome to Crookwood: the rules 03:57 Uncle Shrift, your host 04:47 The graves: hero graves & Vinnie the Pig 06:35 Desecrating graves 06:50 Build your stein 07:37 The roadmap: PC, iPad, board game 08:08 How it's being made: Buildbox, Unity & AI 08:57 "Carny is not AI slop" 09:22 Back with Milt Barlow 09:48 Who this podcast is for 10:09 Art as a safe place 10:59 Now the rubber hits the road 11:23 Sharing the mistakes #CarnyIsland #IndieGameDev #UncleShrift

My long-suffering wife Pony (total superstar) raking imaginary grass off an imaginary grave while I film on a drone so we can animate a 17-bone puppet. The puppet was drawn in Fresco; there's actually 11 different puppets that make up The Villain. It changes as it sucks on ectoplasm in the graveyard and loots graves for body parts. The Villain is a resurrectionist. They used to snatch bodies in the 18th century and sell them to medical schools. Made a killing. 8 guineas back then is about 10K US today. Carny Island is about a necronomics - our word for the business of death. www.carnyisland.com.

Updated the game play with the side camera. Dev log - www.carnyisland.com

“Don’t inhabit it; possess it.” The Glow — I Glow in the Dark. A rough first render of Carny Island’s basement: swinging practical lights, slatted shadows and ecto breaking through. A work-in-progress film study. Full Dev Log: https://carnyisland.com/diary/2026-09-10-the-glow Follow the build: https://carnyisland.com

One of the last times you can ride. She breaks down soon. Take a ride on the Crookwood Express before we shut it down. This full 24 mm run follows the complete circuit from the tunnel and back, with blinking Shrift superboards, faulty yellow billboard lamps, searchlights and the purple game UI. Music: Come Home To Crookwood. Art and creative direction: Brett Clements. A working visual development model; more art, threats and gameplay are still to come. Follow the build: https://carnyisland.com Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/1224633717 #CarnyIsland #Crookwood #GameDev #HorrorGames

7 September 2026 — Shadows of the Villain “We also created the shadows of the Villain on the tools. A really complex, cinematic blend of two light sources.” — Brett Clements A warm lantern, a moving headlamp, the original rake drawings and the Villain working the ground. This is a lighting and movement study for Carny Island, with music from the Crookwood show mix. The recording predates the latest headlamp refinement; the build is still in progress. “When I started drawing Carny Island, I was plugged into a bottle of chemo, starting a journey of a very different kind. The colour of art was one way I dealt with what I had to deal with.” “If it is in you, bring it.” Art and creative direction: Brett Clements. Follow the build: https://carnyisland.com #CarnyIsland #HorrorGames #IndieGameDev #GameDevelopment #Lighting

Draft  1 of Crookwood Yard before we start getting serious with more art and all the game play and characters. In 1991 - what seems like a few lifetimes ago now -  the late Greg Carmock and Ros Wilson, Milt Barlow, Phillip Tanner and I, along with a team of very talented actors and filmmakers, came together to give the world a Video Board Game called Nightmare & ATMOSFEAR. The game was licensed the world over by some of the most respected names in the industry. The late Tom Vernon (Trivial Pursuit). Michael Bucher (Spears UK) and very many others. I left Australia in 95 for the US to discover this thing called the Internet, and digital interactivity. That was the beginning of my journey to Carny Island. Milt and I are back together again. Older. Wiser. Battle scarred.  But we still believe in each other enough to take on the world again. When I started drawing Carny Island, I was plugged in to a bottle of chemo starting a journey of a very different kind. The colour of art was one way I dealt with what I had to deal with.  The end product is a testimony to the purpose of imagination. If it is in you, bring it.  https://carnyisland.com

6 September 2026, 06:15 AEST — Crookwood: the tunnel reveal We want to open coming out of the tunnel and into the yard at sunset. The Hex Witch Base is in the distance, with rocket witches taking off and silhouetted against the setting sun. This is a sightline study, not the finished opening. The yard orientation and ball size stay fixed. Rocket-witch flight is intended direction; music is Tunnel of Loove V3. Follow the build at https://carnyisland.com #CarnyIsland #Crookwood #GameDev #Lighting

6 September 2026, 06:15 AEST — Crookwood: the tunnel reveal We want to open coming out of the tunnel and into the yard at sunset. The Hex Witch Base is in the distance, with rocket witches taking off and silhouetted against the setting sun. This is a sightline study, not the finished opening. The yard orientation and ball size stay fixed. Rocket-witch flight is intended direction; music is Tunnel of Loove V3. Follow the build at https://carnyisland.com #CarnyIsland #Crookwood #GameDev #Lighting

This is my first attempt at 'coding' Carny's main game loop. I used CODEX Sol 5.6 on Medium on a Mac Studio for most of the build, which took about 2 weeks. I'm on a $300 personal program and maxed it out twice and had to wait for the reset. I didn't throw all the art and one long prompt at the machine but built it in layers. I did the background and coffin contents first. The the layers of substrate. The the threats. Now I know it is buggy and I'm publishing the link - warts and all - over at carnyisland.com - and adding the unvarnished report on it. The loop takes place inside a three-dimensional engineered Gravebox: dig through the substrate, expose the coffin, rob the corpse and survive the consequences. It is not the finished game. It is the baseline. I am building Carny Island as a solo developer and updating the WebGL game weekly. The gamer gets the mechanic. The wider world gets the meaning. The investor gets the trajectory. Carny Island was created by Brett Clements, inventor of Nightmare/ATMOSFEAR. Follow the build: https://www.carnyisland.com #CarnyIsland #SoloDev #IndieGameDev

Carny is a game about the business of robbing corpses. While eyeballs aren’t the big earners, you can make a few hundred bucks at Gweedos from a pair. This video explores the best technique for removal, using a small spoon. Art created by Brett Clements in Adobe Fresco as vector artwork, then finished in Photoshop and edited in DaVinci Resolve Studio. Music by Brett Clements. Visit https://carnyisland.com #CarnyIsland #IndieGame #DarkComedy #Animation #Shorts