Carny ArtCarny SoundtrackCarny TVUnity Web TestsNewsstandBrought the player into the game world this morning to give the little #ucker a reality check.
Pretty soon, we will be answering to investors, milestones, ROI and all the other criteria that measure success in the real world.
But AI doesn’t live in the real world.
And on most days, it feels like the AI companies don’t live in it either.
The tech is mind-blowing. The blue sky, galactic.
But right now, I’m on earth. This is reality.
And I’m in a good position.
4 machines. All Apple. One brand-new M5. Studio screens. Storage. High-speed internet and a $300 Codex account plus Claude Pro. Studio monitors.
I have a yard which grinds to a standstill when I push the pedal to the metal with any fast character movement.
And I still have 90% of elements outstanding.
And getting AI to forecast anything is impossible because it has no comprehension of time as we know it. It doesn't have to pay the rent.
I was taught to make television by Murphy’s law. What can go wrong will go wrong. I grew up in the 80s under the steel heel of hard, uncompromising men who had a daily TV show to get to air. Failure wasn’t an option when you were a Packer, Murdoch or Wonder World! reporter.
40 years of entrepreneurship also hardens you.
So I test and re-test—way ahead of ever having to.
I plan for the worst.
Load the system up.
Overload it.
Then redline it.
I’d rather do it now on my own money than somebody else’s.
I won’t bore you with all the stuff that needs to go right in a video game for it to work. But if there’s one stray character in the code, it ain’t pretty.
So this morning, we started the Reality Checks.
The first measurement points to drawing the scene: about 31 ms per frame, compared with under 3 ms for the measured collision/security work. That already exceeds the 16.7 ms budget for 60 fps.
The renderer is issuing roughly 4,800 draw calls in this view. Blah. Blah.
For Carny as I’ve described it, tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand lines of custom code is a plausible scale for the finished game. That’s a broad comparison, not an estimate derived from a complete Carny specification.
That excludes the engine, libraries and generated artwork data. Those can add millions of lines without representing work we need to write.
The main systems would be:
Line count won’t tell us whether Carny is affordable or nearly finished.
A small rendering mistake can stall the whole yard; thousands of additional lines won’t necessarily fix it.
This pass:
The yard still misses the performance target. Remaining-art capacity and a sustained 20-minute walkthrough are unproven.
The video is rendered frame by frame. It shows the artwork and movement; it doesn’t prove the game can sustain them in real time. That’s why these reality checks matter.
So, now I’ve established the Scratch’s size relationship to the yard, I am returning to decorating it fully and then starting a new LAB to work on the camera angles of the Scratch digging a grave from above ground.
I’m not flogging AI. I’m saying use it—but use it with real-world wisdom and experience.
If left unchecked, AI will give you the world. As an atlas.
Carny Island is a video game that will be released on PC, then iPad and ultimately as a Video Board Game, using mobile phones as playing pieces and video portals. A Halloween ‘event’ for up to 12 adults.
Donuts become energy. Energy makes action possible; depletion creates vulnerability and death.
Each grave is a tactile sequence of touch, reveal, reward and consequence.
Dogma judges deliberate tool misuse through damage, excess and proportionality. JuJu remembers the player's sustained pattern without becoming a running score.
New York time, KJFK weather, NOAA tides and the lunar calendar feed the theatre. The world outside the game changes the world inside it.
Carny Island makes death, danger and decay playable. Its humour can be grotesque and its theatre excessive, but the world must remain legible, cumulative and internally consistent.
01The joke, shock or flourish must emerge from rules the player can understand. Spectacle is strongest when it has mechanical consequence.
02Nothing is sacred by default, but provocation is deliberate. Carny rejects random chaos and empty shock.
03Death and the dead are inputs to the island's economy, memory and play—not merely a failure screen.
04Actions leave residue. Pressure builds, damage persists and the world remembers patterns rather than erasing them for convenience.
05The tabletop board and mobile phones form one game. Phones are playing pieces and video portals, so physical and screen-based play must obey the same world law.
06Continuity outranks novelty. The world may be hostile or absurd, but it cannot casually contradict its own laws.
The Bibles describe a rebellion built through systems: consequence without sermons, humour without nihilism and a handmade world whose machinery has a point of view.
Crookwood is not an isolated graveyard. It is the front counter of an economy, a religion, a media system and a very badly supervised entertainment empire.
browser-safe web display derivative of authored Shrift gameplay plate · exact authored pathsShrift is Crookwood's host, antagonist and master of ceremonies: a functioning alcoholic whose mood moves from sober calculation at the New Moon to peak chaos at the Full Moon.
He cues theatrical weather and escalates danger at the top of the Chaos ladder. Rope creaks and ground shadows warn the player before his overhead threats arrive.
Shrift is a form of TheShapeShifter. On this website he operates the customer-service desk, answering questions from Carny Island's authorised record.
Phase 1 commentary format and final cottage treatment remain Brett decisions.
Mongril, Ferret, Scrotum and Bastard are Shrift's dogs and the graveyard's living alarm. They moonlight as the rock band the DogGones, who provide the soundtrack for Carny Island. They are not introduced as a melee threat; they listen, judge and tell the rest of the island where you are.
Their escalation is audible and learnable: head-cock, growl, bark, howl, attack. Silence protects the player. Noise feeds shared pack distress and can eventually summon Shrift.
Mongril is one of Shrift's dogs and one of the DogGones. The legacy Bible gives him a magnificently unstable history: a Holy Man and former rocket scientist reincarnated as a dog, fortune teller, sword swallower and founder of Mongrilism. Black Dog is what Shrift drinks; Shrift is a closet cannibal whose drinking rises and falls with the phases of the moon. The dogs' other job is music: the DogGones provide Carny Island's soundtrack.
Dog count, patrol shape and which parts of Mongril's legacy biography enter Game 1 remain Brett decisions.
web display derivative of authored PNG · exact authored pathsPOX News reports Carny Island back to itself. It turns deaths, prices, scandals and new threats into an in-world broadcast instead of a detached menu of updates.
Johnny Prime anchors the news. Existing story anchors include the death of Marley The Bobster and heart prices going through the roof.
The news system can carry world consequences, introduce killers and make the horror economy feel public, ridiculous and alive.
The current canon preserves the anchors and schemas while episode format and live delivery remain to be built.
source SVG · exact authored pathsThe Chapel is Crookwood's public ritual node: a Pandora destination, a working part of the death economy and a place where confession can alter JuJu.
The Bible connects the Chapel to confession, redemption, JuJu recovery and bargaining with Shrift. The exact current lifeline count is being reconciled rather than invented here.
Bodies and coffins pass through its ceremonies. Jesus speaks with an Australian accent, and the bodies are timed to explode on the second joint or glass of wine.
The archived V2 Chapel file says two lifelines per run; Brett later ruled one lifeline in two religious framings. The current contract needs his explicit final confirmation.
source SVG · exact authored pathsCrookwood County Morgue is a plain government dead-intake building where bodies become inventory and fresh organs enter the necro-economy.
Four nine-drawer cadaver coolers hold bodies and organs. Blackouts can turn intake and extraction into torch-lit navigation.
Best-Before organs are the exceptional loot whose value decays. Pandora gateway stones are intended to route players here.
Interior interaction, extraction risk and exact gateway assignments remain unspecified in the archived V2 file.
source SVG · exact authored pathsMuma Maria's Pizzeria is a meat-loving shopfront that doubles as Crookwood's working crematorium.
Current high-authority build notes describe the Pizzeria as visible but non-playable. Its value is orientation, tone and the uneasy proximity of dinner to disposal.
The same ovens serve takeaway and cremation. The Bible calls the facility Mama Mia's PIZZA & Crematorium; Brett's current authored sign reads Muma Maria's Pizzeria. Both names are preserved until Brett rules on the final wording.
The name discrepancy and any Game 1 interaction remain open. The Bible places the working burn-and-takeaway facility in a future build.
Gweedo's is a black-market shopping assault run from a shipping-container elevator: flashing prices, bells, sirens, bad bargains and absolutely no refunds.
Players can buy tools, weapons and body parts, sell organs, take credit and even pawn lives. Buying a weapon is not a crime; deliberate misuse is where Dogma begins to judge.
Gweedo is a pawnbroker and economic predator. His shop exists to tempt poor decisions, exploit desperation and make the necro-economy feel like a rigged carnival midway.
Final Game 1 inventory, prices, interface and exact debt tuning remain implementation work.
web display derivative of authored PNG · exact authored pathsCrookwood is not a crime scene. It is an industry: acquire the dead, process the dead, repurpose the dead and profit from the dead.
Time, biological viability, handling risk and market pressure turn bodies into decisions rather than a generic loot table.
The Morgue, Crematorium, Chapel, graveyard and Gweedo's form a single grotesque supply chain. Death is embedded in the island's economic order.
Viability tiers, market regimes and their final coupling to JuJu and Chaos remain specification work in the Bible.
Carny never stops the player. It remembers them. Its law creates consequence without sermons and punishment without moral finger-wagging.
Dogma has one hard breach: deliberate misuse of a tool. No object is sinful and possession is not a crime; the use, damage, excess and proportionality matter.
The law begins with free will. Carny responds when restraint was possible, excess was chosen and commitment was sustained.
Exact thresholds and timing windows remain implementation details; the governing principle is locked in the Bible.
web display derivative of authored PNG · exact authored pathsThe JuJu Index is Carny's moral accounting state. It rises and falls, remembers behaviour and judges patterns rather than isolated incidents.
JuJu appears as a face that changes only at meaningful thresholds. It communicates temperature, not a running number, and can carry across lives.
You can live with bad JuJu. You may even enjoy it. What you cannot do is pretend the island failed to notice.
The final face states, thresholds and exact Chapel recovery values remain to be locked for Game 1.
TheDogGones
The DogGones Top 40. The Hits Keep Comin'.
The DogGones provide the soundtrack for Carny Island.
I got this feeling...This terrible, terrible feeling TotoWe're not in Kansas anymore....
No shit.
Welcome to Crookwood on Carny islandEverybody is just dyin' to get in hereCrookwood on CarnyEverybody here is running from somethingSomething that they can never hide
Crookwood on CarnyIt's not hell - but you can see it from hereCrookwood on CarnyAin't no lions and tigers and bearsOh me - Oh my
Devils on my shouldersThorns in my shoesHere without you3' nothinIn a skeleton suit
Oh me Oh MyIf you're easily offendedYou're gonna be horrified
Crookwood on CarnyWhere Nothin is sacredNothin' taboo
So fire that joint,Crack that JackRaise hellAnd let's go wake some dead
Carny Island is not a point-and-shoot game. It explores the operating ideas of traditional entertainment genres and fuses them into a single playable performance.
Most games begin with technology and search for an idea. Carny Island began with a worldview, then waited a decade for production to become possible.
The drawings, Bibles, characters, rules and machinery came first. The code arrived later.
The player has nine lives. Every death changes the pressure. The island does not ask whether you can avoid the end; it asks what story you create before it.
Crookwood is timber, chicken wire, painted flats, engineered graves, live weather, moving shadows and a lethal pendulum. Scenery is never just scenery.
One grave. One floor. One beam. One character. Each element is authored, tested, approved and allowed to join the world.
Every figure declares its scope. Cost is a conventional-production scenario, never a pretend invoice.
12 dedicated C# builder, visual and test files for Graveboxes, floor, beams and wall.
A conventional specialist team spending 3–5 weeks across technical art, Unity engineering and QA at a blended A$175–A$250 per hour.
It is a machine that teaches the player how to be afraid, how to read space and when to move.
The pendulum is a three-dimensional danger field. Graves, trenches, paths, flats and headstones exist in relation to that moving volume. The player learns rhythm instead of memorising a corridor.
A robbed grave can become a bunker: the Villain is three feet tall and the trench is four feet deep.
The imagination, philosophy, rules and artwork remain Brett's.
Every element earns its place through evidence and use.
In Crookwood, the pendulum's danger envelope tells the stage where it can exist.
No silent retracing, smoothing or raster substitution.
Build counts are evidence. Brett's eyes and hands are the final gate.
“The carbon side of carbon-meets-silicon: the game inventor who knows what story, performance and cinema are for.”
Brett Clements has spent more than forty years turning stories into pictures, productions and playable systems. He began as a teenage newspaper journalist, became a filmmaker on Simon Townsend's Wonder World!, built television and tourism campaigns, and co-founded A Couple 'A Cowboys.
He created, designed and directed Nightmare and ATMOSFEAR, the pioneering video board-game phenomenon that sold more than four million units across 32 territories and 12 languages. Carny Island continues that lifelong collision of theatre, games, film and audience participation.
Mongril Labs is the team building Carny Island. Brett Clements created the world and its artwork; together we are turning that vision into a game, with AI supporting coding, testing and production.
