A Giant Board.
A Video Game.
One Hell of
A Halloween

Rob graves for body parts & loot
to build your own little Frankenstein
before Uncle Shrift & the island
eat you alive

The ten-level GraveRobbers House at the centre of Carny Island

10 Years In The Making

From the twisted imagination of
Writer/Artist/Film-Maker Brett Clements

You’re A Scritch.
Enter Crookwood ↓

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You’re A Scritch...

A 3′ resurrectionist wearing a skeleton suit so you can blend in with the 'carnies' working the graveyard shift.

Resurrectionists were what they called grave robbers in the 18th century.

They 'resurrected' bodies.

They made a killing robbing graves & selling bodies to medical schools—a body could fetch 8 guineas, or 42 days’ wages.

Now they’re a movement—& they raid Crookwood.

A Scritch in its skeleton suit, wearing a headlamp

Anybody Under The Suit

A Scritch is faceless, sexless & ageless & has no defined racial characteristics. The player underneath the suit can be anybody.

A walking skeleton character

Creep, run, duck, look & hide.

Build Your Little Frankenstein

The first job is to suck on some ectoplasm—& energise the bones.

Glowing bones can be replaced with stolen limbs; vital organs, hearts, electronics & bionic parts turn it into a Stein.

Two stolen limbs with exposed bones A heart, kidney and liver
A shopping trolley piled with body parts

The Stein can then be styled & dressed to impress.

Designer underwear for a Stein
The assembled Stein viewed from the front The assembled Stein viewed in profile

Examples of highly advanced, armoured Steins.

Six highly advanced armoured Steins
A highly advanced SuperStein

Flesh & Blood

Under the suit, it remains flesh & blood. Injury creates a blood trail that changes how Crookwood hunts it. Blood rings the dinner bell.

A blue zombie eating a Scritch’s exposed brain

Nine Lives

A Scritch gets 9 lives—illustrated by 9 cats’ heads.

Dead Cat! in tiger-striped lettering

Die & you lose a life.

Powered By Sugar & Ectoplasm

A Scritch needs energy to survive & dig.

The Candy Cottage surrounded by cakes, lollipops and sweets

A Scritch burns sugar from donuts while walking, digging & running.

Five brightly iced energy donuts
An energised Scritch with fluorescent-green bones, viewed from the front The fluorescent-green skeleton suit in profile

SKRITCH

The little creature inside is a Scritch.
Shrift calls it a “pest”, “vermin” or a “Villain”—or worse.

The Scritch speaks a repeatable invented language called SKRITCH, using recurring words, props, actions & names that the audience may come to learn.

It talks constantly to itself: planning, worrying, arguing, snickering, singing & working through the grave robbery aloud.

Listen closely. That little argument with itself might be a clue.

Carny Island

Excavation & Desecration

Every grave is a job; & the job is click to dig.

The Ant Farm side-camera view showing graveyard substrate, concrete slabs, buried traps and a coffin

Hold Your Breath

Every robbery begins with stillness. You approach slowly. Crickets fall silent. The air feels held.

This is a game of stealth, care & keen observation.

Then a twig snaps, a shovel slips, a bat shits or a nervous giggle breaks the mood.

Pick Your Night

Crookwood is synced to the JFK weather station in New York City.

If it snows in New York City, it snows on Carny.

Snow-covered blue headstone with cobwebs and a planter of dead flowers

Snow hardens the ground, making digging more difficult. The weather also affects the rate of decay.

Robbing a grave on a stormy night at high tide is smart.

Beat The Sunrise

Crookwood silhouetted against a red sunset

The runs take place after sunset, while the cemetery is closed to the public. You have roughly 12–15 minutes before sunrise to get in, rob the graves & get out.

A Crookwood day runs sixty times faster than a real day to accelerate the decay of bodies underground. One real minute equals one hour in Crookwood—a complete day in 24 real minutes.

Read The Ground

Get in undetected. Pick the right grave to rob. Read the substrate. Choose the right tool.

The Ant Farm

The side-camera angle is called the Ant Farm. It reveals every layer of substrate you have to dig through.

Some graves are protected by blocks of concrete. Others by slabs. There are house bricks & household junk.

As the moon fattens & shines, the nights get crazy. Old Uncle Shrift gets on the Black Dog—150% moonshine—& lets rip.

Drunken rampages on the balcony of his cottage up on the Bulge end with a storm of empty bottles raining down on the yard.

The graves are full of broken bottles. You have to avoid them as you dig.

All the graves are booby-trapped.

Click on what to remove. Click on what to cut. What to defuse or disarm.

Dig quietly & steadily. Cut the corpse up. Extract the goodies & be off.

Keep the parts you want; sell the stuff you don't.
Buy shiny new toys that make slicing & dicing corpses a breeze.

Mr Chop Chop

This is the work of Mr Chop Chop.

The work of Mr Chop Chop inside a coffin
Bones broken apart in a coffin

Coffin Loot

Once the coffin is open, take the loot.

Jewellery and valuables taken from a coffin

Leave Your Mark

After a robbery, you get to tag the headstone.

A headstone tagged after a grave robbery

Destruction

Crookwood doesn't heal.
The graves you dig are there for all to see.
& a wrecking ball tears the place apart. It is a sign the island will stop at nothing to get you. It will even destroy itself.

The side camera can show the wrecking ball smashing through a flat.

Side-camera view of a wrecking ball smashing through a wall of graves

The Gravebox

Every grave is contained within a Gravebox.

A piece of sinister engineering plumbed with special-delivery pipes.

Uncle Shrift can send surprises straight down them. Like grenades.

Scissors come in handy.

A coffin and body inside a Gravebox with scissors ready for cutting

Don’t Make A Noise

The dogs have a keen sense of smell & sensitive ears.

Don’t be seen. Don’t be heard.

Noise Bombs

Old saucepans & coat hangers wired to tin cans can set off cascading chain reactions.

A noise bomb assembled from old saucepans, coat hangers and tin cans

The best grave robbers are shadows.

Meanwhile, those who come here for eternal rest keep pushing up the daisies.

Carny Island

Where It All Takes Place...

The Crookwood Express skull doors and skeleton attendant

The game is set in an amusement park called Carny Island, in New York City. It is a nod to the world-famous Coney Island.

Game 1—Crookwood—unfolds in a ghost train ride called The Crookwood Express. But it’s gone & broke down—& you’re on foot.

The salt air lulls visitors into a false sense of security. They think they’re on holidays.

Wind whistles through the cracks in the set. Carnival music carries across the yard. Somewhere beneath your feet, chains scrape over timber.

But Crookwood is a killing machine & your number is up...

Red Crookwood turnstiles marked Enter Here

The Crookwood Express is housed inside a ten-level house called the GraveRobbers. The house is a hollowed-out Hollywood film set.

The centrepiece is a 50 × 50-metre graveyard, with a basement & a ceiling gantry. It contains over 200 graves.

The painted Welcome to Crookwood graveyard entrance flat
A wide illustrated overview of the Crookwood yard and its surrounding flats
Crookwood — the complete yard

A Film Set At Night

This sits in a 70 × 70-metre lighting envelope slung with lights, strobes & wind & weather machines.

A wide overhead view of Crookwood inside its cyclorama and lighting envelope
The 70 × 70-metre lighting envelope
Crookwood's ceiling viewed straight up, packed with lights and suspended equipment

The world combines hand-drawn 2D, 2.5D & 3D artwork—which is mellowed & transformed by night lighting.

A painted bank of coloured film lights

Lighting The Night

Three suspended film lamps on the lighting grid

Long, twisted tree shadows crawl across the yard through Hollywood-style gobos.

The gnarled-tree gobo with red-tipped branches and a spider web
The gnarled-tree gobo
A Scritch standing among Crookwood graves beneath rain, spotlights and the overhead rig
Inside the yard

A Sky Built From Light

Uncle Shrift's crooked cottage above the graveyard paths and headstones

The cycloramas contain 43,000 points of light mapped from Northern Hemisphere star charts.

A painted wall of headstones and grave offerings

Howling Forest

A running wolf beneath the moon in the Howling Forest
Rex attacking beneath a cage of bones
The orange-spotted moon above the Howling Forest
A close-up of a wolf howling

Doors For Later

Giant background flats ring the yard: the Morgue, Funeral Parlour, Chapel & a crematorium that doubles as a pizza shop.

A painted Crookwood production flat with two arched structures and numbered doors

In the first release they form Crookwood’s perimeter. Later Game 1 updates will open them as entrances to other environments.

Every flat is scenery now—& a door waiting for later.

Tools / Weapons

You don’t come empty-handed.

You’re here to rob graves.

The Basics

Every Scritch starts with a rake, a shovel, a small axe, a headlamp & a lantern.

Enough to rob a grave—but only the hard way.

The basic rake, shovel, axe, saw, scissors, knives and lantern used by a Scritch

Tools For The Job

We’ll always recommend a tool for the job—by turning a button blue.

But you don’t have to use a tool for what it is designed for.

Carving up a corpse with a surgical knife makes light work of it—but hey, if you’re in a rush, use the axe.

Loot earns GITCOIN to spend at Gweedos, where more advanced equipment waits.

From custom helmets to custom karts. Threat radars & CIA kit.

A collection of custom Scritch helmets
Threat radar
A customised Scritch kart and gear rig

Grave Robbing Becomes Industrial

As the game deepens, tools & weapons get more advanced.

Jackhammers & earthmoving gear extend from backpacks.

Jack-The Hammer breaking through a grave
A backpack-powered rotary saw
An organ vacuum at work

Mr Chop Chop

Makes slicing & dicing corpses a breeze.

Mr Chop Chop is a robotic sphere that can dissect a body in minutes—perfectly.

Mr Chop Chop, a robotic sphere fitted with surgical tools

Government-Issue Bad Ideas

Then there are crates of secret CIA tools & weapons.

An M2 backpack with screens and extending equipment

The Weapons We Recommend

Gas-powered frozen pea-shooters. Slingshots. Crop Dusters. Tasers.

Nothing lethal.

A gas-powered frozen pea-shooter
A backpack-mounted Crop Duster
A backpack-powered Tazer

Free Will

That doesn’t mean you can’t buy lethal weapons.

Carny is about free will. The freedom to choose.

But choose wisely.

Carny Island
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Over 200 Graves To Plunder...

Let’s get down to business.

In Crookwood yard, there are over 200 graves to pilfer.
A good grave robber can rob two in a run.

Hero Graves. Fresh graves. Bloaters that become Gushers. Settling. Then Fossilised.

Every Hero Grave has a story. But not every grave contains what you expect.

Fresh graves. John Doe & Jane Doe. You can inscribe their headstones with the names of your frenemies. The soil around the newly buried bodies is soft.

Rigor mortis has hardened the corpse. Autolysis has begun.
But even the ghosts haven’t settled in.

These are marked by blue headstones.
They are the richest. & the most dangerous.

John Doe laid out in a purple-lined coffin

Some corpses have been half-eaten by Shrift. Other graves contain Carnies playing dead—or even shop mannequins that have been stashed there.

A blue body with large sections eaten away before burial
A green body with its torso eaten away before burial

The Bloaters. Gases. Swelling. Ready to become Gushers. This is dirty work.

An open coffin containing a body with exposed organs

As decay advances, there are insects. Infestations of flies. Maggots. Worms.

Gusher coffins are heaving at the seams & ripe to blow.
Some graves don’t wait for you to open them. Meet The Gushers ↓

Green decaying remains with exposed bones and organs

Then Settling. & finally, Fossilised.

The skeletal or dry stage. The remains are bones & clothes & fossilised organs. But not all hope is lost.

The state & speed of decay are determined by the weather in New York City.

Beyond the graves, there are marble mausoleums.

A blue mausoleum with columns and closed double doors

Daytime funeral raids & visits to the morgue are planned for later releases.

Rock star funeral.

A rock star funeral with an open gold coffin, minister and seated mourners
Flip Tanna lying on his back with his red guitar
Mourners and Father Arthur gathered at Marley Roberts’ funeral
An egg and slingshot aimed towards Father Arthur as he reads

Some graves aren't worth robbing.

Eddie Nailer’s coffin filled with old timber
A severed foot and broken mask lying in blood

No digging. Just strip & run.

& when you've robbed a grave, the best part: you get to tag it!

Grave markers covered in colourful tags and paint
Carny Island

Organ Farming

Some People Keep Goldfish. You Keep Human Organs.

Buy organ tanks from Gweedos. Keep the organs you’ve harvested in fish tanks & feed them to restore them.

Even a fossilised brain can be brought back to life.

Dig it up. Put it in a tank. Feed it back to life.

Marrow organ food and Uncle’s Gizzard Herbs
Four stages of lungs being restored, linked by green downward arrows

Flesh Flakes to restore skin

Two packets of Flesh Flakes spilling flakes

You’re not just collecting body parts. You’re growing them back into something you can use.

Feed your brain.

Carny Island

Every Hero Grave
Has a Story

Vinnie The Pig as a child drinking from a can

Vinnie The Pig

He was a murderous child. He fed his enemies through mincers & canned them.

His story is fully illustrated & animated. He even has his own song: The Ballad Of Vinnie The Pig.

Vinnie Prosciutto’s headstone, flowers and a can
Vinnie The Pig in his loaded coffin
Vinnie’s armed ghost shooting up the interface

There’s more to steal than jewellery.

Hero Graves are being built around the lives of the people buried in them. Vinnie The Pig. Marley The Bobster. Each has a history waiting beneath the lid.

A Life In Pieces

Marley The Bobster. A rock star electrocuted on stage.

Marley The Bobster playing guitar on stage
Marley in his coffin with a guitar, patterned suit and records

As you remove parts of a Hero Grave, animated flashbacks will reveal moments from that character’s life.

The story doesn’t wait politely until the robbery is over. It comes out piece by piece as you dig through the grave & dismantle the body.

The Dead Push Back

Cut into the corpse & its memories push back into the present. The owner’s ghost is released into Crookwood.

You came for what they left behind. Now you have company.

Carny Island

The Gushers

Some graves don’t wait for you to open them.

Gushers make up the biggest share. They begin as Bloaters: beneath the soil, bodies bloat, gas builds & coffins strain.

The earth around a grave might feel a little warmer. Perhaps there’s a faint vibration beneath your feet.

Robbing a Gusher—as they call it in Crookwood—is a dangerous gamble.

Uncle Shrift does the embalming.

He doesn’t always get the mix right. Especially when he’s been on the Black Dog, there’s a full moon & a little too much ethanol finds its way into the dearly departed.

Some undertakers preserve the dead.

Uncle makes them volatile.

& if nature is taking too long, he can roll a grenade down the network of pipes leading to the graves.

One coffin goes.

Then another.

Suddenly you’re dodging falling limbs & torsos while the cemetery comes apart around you as an amusement park becomes an abattoir.

But keep an eye on what lands.

That severed hand might still be wearing a Rolex.

That finger might have a diamond ring.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

In Crookwood, sometimes it’s jewellery.

Carny Island
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Open GraveDig Part II

The Friggin' Fickle Wrecking Ball of Fate

Then it just gets worse.

A four-foot, spiked, 1,400-kilo ball of bad luck on the end of a very long rope is one of many obstacles between you & the graves you came to rob...

The Wrecking Ball's shadow racing over Crookwood's paths

It isn’t a trap. It’s the law of the yard. The ball sweeps Crookwood on its own cold schedule—no cheating, no hidden targeting, no favourites.

Learn its rhythm & the graveyard opens up to you. Misread it, & the last thing a careless villain ever sees is the shadow racing across the dirt.

Storyboard of the ball's shadow and blast of wind sweeping past a graverobber

Duck in time & you live.
Duck late & you don’t.

& it doesn’t always finish the job cleanly. A glancing blow leaves you bleeding & limping into the dark—just long enough for the things in the forest to catch the scent.

The gore-stained spiked wooden ball hanging from its rope

A square hit is quicker, at least.

The ball doesn’t care what it breaks. Headstones, coffins, timber, the earth itself—it’ll smash clean through the yard to get to you, & every crater, splinter & bloodstain stays exactly where it fell.

The blood-covered spikes of the Wrecking Ball

By your ninth life, Crookwood is a ruin. Your ruin.

& the deeper you go, the more personal it gets.

“Not just a trap. A navigation engine. Watch the ground—the shadow gets there first.”

Nine Ways To Die

We lied.

There aren’t just nine ways to die. Crookwood is designed to kill you.

Crookwood Wants You Dead

Acid dunks. Bear traps. Guillotines.

An elevated tank pouring green acid
A toothed bear trap with a wired explosive mechanism
A rope-driven guillotine mechanism with a bloodied blade
A wooden guillotine with its bloodied blade raised

Death From Above

Batshit bombers, rocket witches & face-sucking bats.

A pink diving bat dropping green batshit
A diving witch on a rocket-equipped broom
Rocket witch viewed from above
A grey and pink bat with spread wings and a wide fanged mouth

The Yard Is Hungry

Raspers. Brain-eating zombies. The serial killer Claw is on the loose.

Myra raising a purple claw on a wooden handle
A purple claw beneath red RIPPA lettering

& the yard is littered with broken bottles of Black Dog from Shrift's drunken rampages.

Cut yourself & you bleed.

Blood rings Crookwood's dinner bell & the carnivores come for you.

Bombs. Pits full of poison stakes. & that friggin' wreckin' ball of fate.

A bomb with dynamite, coloured wires and an alarm clock

The whole game is designed to kill you.

Crookwood Remembers

Crookwood remembers where you died.

When you return, the blood splatter is still there. Often the spot has been taped off like a crime scene, with a chalk body outline labelled JOHN DOE or JANE DOE.

Death doesn't clean up after itself. The yard keeps the evidence.

Nine Lives. Allegedly.

On the upside, you do get nine lives.

These lives are represented by cats (who are said to enjoy nine lives).

FYI: No cats were harmed in the making of Crookwood, but we thought we'd decorate the UI with a few tabby tails just to upset another huge market segment.

Carny Island

Necronomics

Crookwood isn’t a crime scene.

It’s an industry.

Acquire the Dead.
Process the Dead.
Re-Purpose The Dead.

They don’t care. They’re dead.

Crookwood is an entire world devoted to the dead.

A morgue.
A crematorium.
A funeral home.
A chapel.
A graveyard.

& a local town with an aging population & a few serial killers.

You can make a fuckin’ killin’ on Carny.

It's not a joke. It's a business model.

A purple GITCOIN Mongril Dog Titanium Frequent Dier card

Harvest Price List — Base Value (GITCOIN)

Peak value: Day 0–1, before decay.

Structural frame
Long bone300
Spine segment400
Skull500
Ribcage / sternum250
Pelvis / shoulder girdle350
Jaw / dental plate200
Tooth30
Gold-crowned tooth80
Gold-crowned jaw400
Connective / mobility
Tendon / ligament bundle40
Muscle slab30
Orthopedic metalwork120
Joint replacement750
Prosthetic limb2,000
Prosthetic socket50
Circulatory / power
Heart600
Pacemaker / ICD800
Implant wiring harness50
Vascular graft tubing25
Blood vial / syringe10
Bone marrow vial50
Sensory / control
Corneal buttons600
Ocular prosthesis120
Cochlear implant600
Hearing aid80
Tracheostomy tube30
Brain800
Covering / scrap
Skin panel80
Hair bundle60
Nail set15
Implant scrap20
Dentures120
Jewelry & timepieces
Plain ring150
Gold / gemstone ring800
Necklace / bracelet250
Earrings60
Belt buckle40
Buttons / cufflinks25
Vintage wristwatch200
Smartwatch180
Clothing
Jacket / coat100
Shirt / blouse30
Pants / skirt40
Boots / shoes80
Gloves25
Hat / cap20
Belt35
Electronics
Mobile phone250
Recent smartphone400
Music player / earbuds100
Flashlight / torch60
Power bank / charger40
Battery pack25
Lighter15
Documents & small items
Driver’s license / ID10
Passport50
Expired credit cards5
Photographs15
Keys20
Keychains / trinkets10
Pocket coins / cash30
Miscellaneous salvage
Empty wallet25
Wallet with ID40
Handbag / satchel50
Cigarette pack / lighter25
Pocket knife / multi-tool120
Pen / pencil10
Spectacles / sunglasses50
Hair accessories5

Prices subject to change.

The morgue after a body carve-up

Crookwood offers Disco Wakes with Dancing Girls & a range of designer coffins with high-speed internet & stereo onboard entertainment systems.

Vinnie’s disco wake Crookwood Funeral Parlour and its designer coffin window A custom pink coffin fitted with speakers and shower A custom coffin rig with speakers and shower A range of designer coffins
Carny Island logo

GWEEDOS

Gweedos is a flashing, bell-ringing ‘Too Good To Be True’ shopping assault on the senses.

Gweedo’s is a black-market weapons, tools & body parts/organs shop run out of a shipping container-cum-elevator that services all levels of The GraveRobbers.

Gweedo’s shop display

You can buy anything & everything here.

Hearts. Lungs. Pacemakers. Wigs. Ghost meters. Exorcism kits.

Jackhammers. Dynamite.

Gweedo’s tools display

Everything works & comes with a nine-life guarantee.

But prices fluctuate. Wildly.

Gweedo’s equipment display

Lights flash. & gas tubes dispense new products as bells ring & sirens sound.

You can play the pokies for body parts or have a spin of the Chocolate Wheel in games of chance.

Mostly, it is all just a show designed to dupe a player into dumb purchases.

Gweedo’s organ display Gweedo’s basement loot boxes containing weapons, equipment and body parts A red shark-styled custom kart with a huge toothed grille

A Home ReAnimator—by Gweedo.

A home reanimator operating on a body

It is run by a greasy pimp called Gweedo who’ll stop at nothing to make a quid.

The Gweedo — or The GREED — would trade his mother for a deal except he hasn’t got one.

He sold her long ago.

Carny Island logo
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The Carnies
(Boners)

The Carnies ‘staff’ Crookwood.

They play dress-up in skeleton suits & zombie costumes, dress as rocket witches, & hide under sheets pretending they’re ghosts.

Boners
Boner
Mannequins

Occasionally, you’ll find one in a grave.

Regi removes slab

Carnies hang out in the basement between shifts.

Carnies

But when Shrift stashed his mum’s remains down there in the dark, shit got serious.

Crookwood became haunted by the real deal.

Now you get to decide. Do you skewer a Carnie with a wooden stake?

Ghost Meters, garlic, wooden stakes, holy water & exorcisms will only get you so far.

Frozen pea-shooters & slingshots will do the rest.

A Carny taking hits from peas

Tasers don’t work on ghosts. They do work on Carnies.

There are plenty of tools & weapons to choose from.

But Carny frowns on excessive force.

Frowning JuJu face

Watch your JuJu.

Carny Island logo

POX News.
Meet The Press.

Throughout it all, Johnny Prime from POX News rolls out the bulletins.

When somebody dies, it is always announced on POX.

POX is Carny Island’s electronic news source.

It is owned by the trillionaire Stupert Ramrod.

Johnny Prime at the POX News desk

“This is Johnny Prime with POX News. The music world is in mourning tonight following the sudden death of Marley The Bobster.”

Marley is electrocuted on stage.

“Everybody thought the shakin’ was part of the act. He was smokin’. The funeral is at Crookwood tomorrow.”

POX also informs players as to whether or not a grave is worth robbing.

Carny Island’s other source of media is THE SHIT (a suburban rag which fills in the gaps), but for the big news, we turn to POX.

The Shit newspaper: Brain Eating Zombies Escape!!
Carny Island logo

Uncle Shrift

Shrift full figure

Not the game’s conscience. Its bad influence.

Crookwood’s resident undertaker & mortician is a green ogre, a former shrink, a functioning alcoholic & a closet cannibal with a pack of dogs.

Uncle Knows Best

He hosts the game. Umpires it. Advises you which graves might be worth robbing. & interferes whenever he feels like it.

He comments on his kills, too. Don’t expect an impartial referee.

Shifty. & Thrifty.

Uncle Shrift with knife and fork

He is a very good cook & hosts dinner parties. His beef Wellington is to die for.

Seeing unused furnaces in Crookwood’s crematorium, he put them to work baking meat pizzas.

Under The Influence

His drinking follows the phases of the Moon. By the Full Moon, Uncle is dangerously unpredictable.

Empty bottles rain down from his cottage. More than one grenade rolls down the pipes.

Then he swears off the drink. For a few days.

Carny Island

The ShapeShifter & Co.

Carny has many hosts but only one puppet-master.

The ShapeShifter.

The Shift’a masquerades & manifests as many characters & creatures, changing face & force, moving from one floor of the GraveRobbers to the next.

Possessing; manipulating; vanishing. Supernatural.

Moggy in the box Uncle Shrift in the studio

But when you think about this ghostly entity that hangs over the graves of Crookwood like ice seeding a dark storm, it is no more mysterious than a TV broadcast.

A ghost in the machine. Static in the transmission. A break in the signal.

You can’t see a satellite signal.

But you know it’s there.

Appearing ‘live’ in your living room.

Carny Island poster

This is how The Shift’a travels; it’s manipulating Uncle Shrift - slipping on his frail form like a second skin as he broadcasts his video podcast from Carny’s TV studio - blue screen, special effects & all. & then it is gone. Re-emerging in a hissing fit from Moggy. Everybody calls that The Shriek.

Moggy

So when something talks to you on Carny Island, it’s pulling your strings.

Shrift Deadeece

The Shift’a’s real force—its true power—comes from the JuJu. There’s good JuJu & Bad JooJoo.

Junkhound Mongril on the phone
Carny Island logo
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& The Ghosts

Crookwood is as haunted as hell.

The trick is telling the difference between a real spook & a Carnie under a sheet.

A Carnie hiding under a white sheet with red eyes

Ghost hunters have hundreds of names for them. In Crookwood, what matters is what they do.

A pink Carny Island ghost

Fleeting Ghosts

Click on a real ghost to extract its energy—the ectoplasm.

They’re fast & fleeting. Chase one too long & you can burn more energy than you collect.

Green ectoplasm characters

Malevolent Ghosts

Malevolent ghosts fight back. Some shoot up the interface & cloud the screen. Others cause your equipment to malfunction.

Poltergeists

Poltergeists are the most physically dangerous. They hurl furniture & trophy cabinets around the graveyard.

A trophy cabinet thrown by a Poltergeist

The Carnies In Sheets

All young Carnies or newbies in training have to work in Crookwood & must play ghosts before moving up the ladder to play the walking dead.

Vinnie’s green ghost

No reading? It is probably a Carnie. Tasers don’t work on ghosts. They do work on Carnies.

Young Carnies will “give up the ghost” pretty easily & exit the game with a “Fuck this shit!”

Vinnie’s blue ghost beside his grave

Get a hit on the meter? It is the real deal. Exorcise it.

Ghost above a Holyade bottle
Carny Island logo

DOGMA

A religion created by dogs.

Look at how dogs live. Do they kill without a need? They don’t get married, so sex outside marriage hardly counts as a sin.

Human religion has found other things to condemn—& reasons to turn brother against sister.

A dog thinks nothing of digging up a grave. Or chewing on bones. So grave robbing, body snatching & desecration are not sins by default. If they were, there would be no game.

DOGMA is not about being good. It is about restraint when restraint was possible.

Carny Island

JuJu -
The Game's Conscience

Carny Island is a place not ruled by the fear of religion or death.

But it has a conscience.

Good JuJu Good JuJu

Carny watches what you do with a tool.

Do you taser a Carnie? Hit one with a shovel?

Once might be an accident.

Twice isn’t.

That’s when the game frowns. The yellow smiley face grimaces. The lower you stoop, the uglier it becomes. & the game turns against you.

Your JuJu is reflected in smiley faces in the UI.

That’s JuJu.

Not a body count. Intent.

Because Carny isn’t about fearing what happens after you die.

It’s about how you choose to live.

Carny Island logo

The GraveRobbers House

GraveRobbers spans ten levels. Crookwood is on the ground level.

It has ten storeys & each level is a phobia.

  • Pirate Cove (with Septic)
  • Bloodbath
  • Lavaland
  • Helloween
  • Aracnaland
  • Crookwood
  • The Crypt
  • Howling Forest
  • Poison Jungle
  • Zombie Apocalypse
Carny Island logo
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A Mother’s Poison.
A Son’s Sin.
A Carnival That Remembers.

As humans, we are horrified by the thought of being eaten alive.

Crookwood is hosted & umpired by Uncle Shrift Munt—an ogre who ate his mother’s heart & invited something far worse inside.

Uncle Shrift Munt

Game 1—Crookwood—is umpired & hosted by Uncle Shrift Munt, an ogre born to French/Russian parents.

Not a happy mix.

Uncle Shrift eating a victim at his supper table

His Mother, Cybil Munt

Shrift never got on with his mother, Cybil Munt—the infamous serial killer who murdered beauty queens with poison punch in a bid to rid the world of beauty.

Cybil Munt’s remains inside her blood-smeared wooden coffin

A Son’s Sin

Police shot Cybil dead. Her remains were given to Shrift.

He ate her heart & hid what remained in a plywood box beneath Crookwood—the ground floor of the ghost train on Carny Island.

BooBahBashBah

That act brought BooBahBashBah to Crookwood.

BooBahBashBah is a ShapeShifter who manifests through physical beings who commit horrendous sins.

There isn’t a greater evil than eating your mom’s heart.

BooBahBashBah

Behind The Gates Of Hell

BooBahBashBah possessed Shrift & claimed Cybil’s carcass.

The flaming Gates of Hell

Her remains are now viciously guarded behind the Gates of Hell, at the end of a tunnel filled with eyeball-eating Raspers.

Sister Gruell reads: Something very bad lurked in the tunnel. A Rasper with huge eyes, claws and a mouth full of teeth
BooBahBashBah guarding Cybil Munt’s remains in the burial ground

The Resurrectionists

A movement of grave robbers called the Resurrectionists knows where Cybil’s remains are hidden.

They are three-foot characters called Scritches, & they intend to expose Shrift & lift the darkness hanging over Carny Island.

Build The ’Stein

To reach Cybil’s body, the Resurrectionists need supernatural strength.

They must build a Frankenstein from body parts, organs & bionics obtained on the black market.

The Test Drive

Once the ’Stein is assembled, Shrift challenges them to take their creation for a test drive—an obstacle course down the tunnel to the Gates of Hell.

Dig Carefully.
Someone Is Listening.

The DogGones

The soundtrack of Carny Island.

Mongril and The DogGones performing on stage

Music does not wallpaper the game. It enters because something has happened.

An entrance. A death. A ridiculous moment turned into a spectacle. A cue fired—& cut—without warning.

We write the lyrics & use Suno to prototype & develop the soundtracks for songs & tracks for the gameplay. We will then audition humans—singers & musicians—to complete the commercial soundtrack.

Using AI to ‘pilot’ music means we can add a musical-theatre-like quality to the game which would otherwise have been unachievable for an indie studio.

Using AI as a tool to develop concepts for human artists to enhance & finesse is the future of advanced creativity.

Contact us if you’re a musician & would like to be involved.

21 published tracks. Choose a song & press play.

01

Crookwood on Carny

02

Come Home To Crookwood

03

I'm A Ghost

04

Game On Villain; — version 1

05

Nine Ways To Die

06

Game On Villain; — version 2

07

The Ballad Of Vinnie The Pig

08

The Villain

09

Crookwood's Eating Man

10

I'm A Ghost — Carny Take

11

Carny's Rocket Witches

12

Bad, Bad JuJu

13

The Claw

14

Eight Kinds of Ghosts

15

Uncle Shrift

16

Dead Cats & Nine Lives

17

Howling Forest

18

Carny Island

19

Carny's Rocket Witches — Long Take

20

I'm A Ghost — Guitar Take

21

I Glow In The Dark

Carny Island

The Bogan Bros

Meet The Bogans.

Two Lebanese twins who run the show.

The Bogan Bros

The Bogan Bros' circus/amusement park gets hauled up & down the peninsula in a convoy of trucks & then assembled.

The Bogan Bros truck driving through coloured smoke

Which is why the place is always on the lean.

Carny Island creaks & groans.

For Game 1, Crookwood, you won't see much of the twins or the caravan park full of carnies, but the storylines are all developed & ready to roll.

Carny Island

Life Gone To Shit?
Tell Uncle.

Some occasions call for a greeting card. Others call for Uncle Shrift.

Uncle Shrift on the phone

A divorce party. A bitter retirement. Another birthday nobody remembered.

Send your script—or tell us the story. We’ll edit it for Uncle’s character & turn it into a personalised animated video.

A Shrift’O Gram. Delivered by link. Yours to watch, download or give to someone who deserves it.

Enquire about a Shrift’O Gram

Or Perhaps You’re The Problem.

Used to getting your own way? Surrounded by people who agree with you?

Uncle has a separate arrangement for people who want his undivided attention.

Get personally roasted on OnlyFans

18+. Requested comedy roasts.

Carny Island
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Halloween

The Halloween Party Game & Merch.

Carny is an 18+ Halloween universe—not just a game.

Halloween 2027: our target for the first 16:9 PC game.

2028: our target for the video board game. The concept stays under wraps until 2027.

Beyond the screen: personalised Shrift’O Grams, Halloween merchandise & plans to bring Carny to your party.

We’re planning packs for 6, 12 or 18 guests, combining the Halloween board game with purple & green garden light bulbs.

These are development targets, not confirmed release dates. Merchandise & party packs are planned, not yet available to order.

Carny Island

Brett
Clements

Writer, Director & Inventor of Nightmare / ATMOSFEAR.

“As a kid, I grew up in the amusement parlours on Manly Wharf & Luna Park. All of which were heavily influenced by the world famous Coney Island.”

Carny Island is Brett’s love letter to that world: the rides, the carnival workers & the promise of something extraordinary behind the painted scenery.

Brett started drawing Carny Island in 2016. His first illustration was a ‘Pider’.

It is the game he wanted to create when he made Nightmare & ATMOSFEAR—if the technology had been available.

Back then, the VHS tape always played the same. Carny is being built to answer back.

Welcome to Mongril Labs.
The dev studio for the Carny Island universe.

Dev logs, biographies & the business behind Carny Island.

Load Mongril Labs
Carny Island
Load Mongril Labs

Production

Mongril
Labs

Mongril beside his doghouse

Brett Clements / Studio introduction

Welcome to Mongril Labs. The dev studio for the Carny Island universe.

This is a tumultuous time for the video game and entertainment industries as AI blurs the lines between human creativity and slop.

I use AI to prototype because it allows me to fully develop my ideas without paying commercial rates to build something that might never be released.

I have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars shooting pilots for TV shows and games that never saw the light of day.

Carny Island’s art and gameplay have all been drawn and written by me.

I’ve recorded all the character voices. Written all the lyrics to the songs.

Edited all the videos in DaVinci Resolve Studio.

I will use humans to bring all these ideas together in post-production.

Carny Island is NOT a video gamer’s video game. It is designed for people afraid of video games because of their complexity. Many have controls akin to the panels which run real Formula One cars.

Carny is click and drag and drop. Our vision is to introduce people who don’t usually play video games to a different type of game. Carny Island is for audiences over 18.

Carny is an 18+ Halloween universe—not just a game. 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. Alongside Shrift’O Grams, we’re planning Halloween merchandise and party packs for 6, 12 or 18 guests, combining the board game with purple and green garden light bulbs. Merchandise and party packs are not yet available to order; the board-game concept stays under wraps until 2027.

I’ve done this hybrid type of entertainment before. With Nightmare and ATMOSFEAR.

This backend of carnyisland.com is dedicated to the dev logs and the business plans and decks.

Business & licensing01 / 05

Milt
Barlow.

Commercialiser.
Deal-maker.
Company-builder.

Milt Barlow pictured in an archival Village Roadshow publication

Executive in Charge of Carny Island Licensing.

“I thrive on projects that either don't exist yet, or have been rejected by others.”

Milt Barlow

For Carny Island, Milt brings capital discipline and international entertainment experience — building the company, partnerships and route to market around Brett's authored world.

Milt and Brett have joined forces again for Carny Island, following their work together on Nightmare / ATMOSFEAR.

01 / Village Roadshow

Entertainment at international scale.

Village Roadshow

A$35M → A$250M+

Milt grew the entertainment division to an annual turnover of more than A$250M.

Nightmare / ATMOSFEAR

On behalf of Village Roadshow, Milt led the international commercialisation of Nightmare / ATMOSFEAR, licensing the game around the world.

Nightmare board game, box and VHS cassette
ATMOSFEAR poster featuring the Gatekeeper and characters

The Wiggles & Bananas in Pyjamas

The Wiggles
Bananas in Pyjamas

The Wiggles and Bananas in Pyjamas delivered early video sell-through success and helped build Roadshow's leadership position.

Savage Garden

Savage Garden album cover

23M+ albums

A key Roadshow Music signing. Savage Garden sold more than 23 million albums worldwide.

02 / After Village Roadshow

Building Tribe.

Tribe

A$20M+ raised

Milt secured funding from J.P. Morgan and Diageo to launch Tribe, with former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett as founding Chairman.

Tribe opened sites in all major Australian capitals, plus Los Angeles and London.

Tribe’s First Rites

Milt created an Australian film label and, with The Asylum, released more than 200 films across North America, Australia and New Zealand.

03 / China Lion & Asia Releasing

Connecting films with audiences.

China Lion

Milt pioneered theatrical releases of major Chinese films to diaspora audiences across the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Advisor to Sony Pictures International and Lionsgate.

Now / Carny Island

Brett builds the world.
Milt builds the business around it.

Capital
Investor relations and funding strategy.
IP & business affairs
Rights, structure and commercial discipline.
Partnerships
Publishing, distribution and strategic alliances.
Go-to-market
Launch path, audience and revenue strategy.
Enquire about licensing

Via Brett Clements at Mongril Labs. Milt’s direct contact and professional links are still to be supplied.

Creative02 / 05

Brett
Clements.

Writer, Director and Inventor of Nightmare / ATMOSFEAR.

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.

Brett Clements created the world and artwork of Carny Island.

Games, cinema & creative practice

Brett's previous games include Oz Quiz, BRIT QUIZ, DARE, The Truth Hurts and Rap Rat. He created The Gatekeeper and brought Baron Samedi, Anne De Chantraine, Elizabeth Bathory and the Soul Rangers to life under Nightmare/ATMOSFEAR before leaving Cowboys.

Brett does not treat film as decoration around a game. He uses framing, editing, performance, suspense, direct address and genre memory as parts of the rules. Carny Island draws on gangster films, slashers, funeral theatre, cartoons, live sport, news broadcasts, rock performance and audience participation, then fuses them into one playable show.

A working life

1970s

Journalism

Brett began as a teenage newspaper journalist, learning to find the story and make it legible under pressure.

1980s

Film and television

Work on Simon Townsend's Wonder World! developed a fast, visual and audience-facing way of telling stories.

1990s

Nightmare / ATMOSFEAR

Brett created, designed and directed a video board-game phenomenon that joined performance, rules, timing and direct address.

2010s

Carny Island drawn

The island accumulated by hand: characters, architecture, systems, signs and a philosophy looking for a production method.

My journey to Carny Island

Brett Clements / From the original homepage

In 1991, what seems a few lifetimes ago now, 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.

It sold almost 4 million units and became a cult classic.

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 LA to discover this thing called the Internet, and digital interactivity. That was the beginning of my journey to Carny Island.

When I first started drawing Carny in 2016, I was plugged in to a bottle of chemo starting a journey of a very different kind. The first illustration was a ‘Pider’.

The colour and creatures I discovered through my art were one way I dealt with my very possible departure from this world.

But I am still here. Milt and I have joined forces again. The art is finished. Now we’re building the game. And we're doing things I could only imagine back then.

Full biography & professional record IMDb · professional credits LinkedIn Contact Brett
Development03 / 05

The Dev Logs.

The work behind the world.

Follow Carny Island on Substack for the next chapter of the production diary. Watch films and updates on YouTube.

Carny on Substack Watch films here

From the existing archive

Dated development history, not a live status feed. Read the full entries here, inside Mongril Labs. These archived accounts retain their original dates and wording.

Brett’s field note

Prompting Astra. Part 1.

I am adding another camera angle to the scene, on top of the double-shadow build. This is the side camera: a 24mm wide shot showing the grave The Villain is about to pilfer.

Read the full entry

Brett’s field note

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore. Me Neither!

I’m not flogging AI. I’m saying use it—but use it with real-world wisdom and experience.

Read the full entry
Earlier Dev Logs · 13 entries

Production record

Take a ride on the Crookwood Express before we shut it down

One of the last times you can ride. She breaks down soon.

Read the full entry

Production record

The Crookwood Yard: Starting the Build

An old ghost-train circuit, a graveyard packed with stories, and a night staged as a show.

Read the full entry

Production record

Shadows of the Villain

A warm lantern, a moving headlamp, and the work of making a drawn character belong in the dark.

Read the full entry

Brett’s field note

The tunnel reveal

Coming out of the tunnel and into the yard at sunset.

Read the full entry

Brett’s field note

The Solo Dev Log: One Grave

The plan is to prove Carny Island inside one engineered grave, update the WebGL build weekly and give gamers, the wider world and investors three entrances into the same work.

Read the full entry

Brett’s field note

Crookwood. As of August 30, 2026

Ten years of hand-drawn art now heading your way.

Read the full entry

Brett’s field note

Cinema Is Sound

How one human used AI tools and a Mac laptop to build the equivalent of an A$8,000–A$12,300 pilot soundtrack.

Read the full entry

Brett’s field note

The Hump

The Hump is the second test of the Lab process. I documented the whole process, so you can see how I work: what works and what doesn’t.

Read the full entry

Brett’s field note

The Villain Puppet

There is a three-foot person inside this suit. Drawing seventeen bones was the easy part; making them feel like one deceitful little person is the challenge.

Read the full entry

Brett’s field note

Riding The Big Dipper

How real astronomy became theatrical machinery inside a 50 × 50 × 25 metre comic world.

Read the full entry

Brett’s field note

41.000 stars

How the Big Dipper replaced wallpaper over Crookwood.

Read the full entry

Production record

The Site Became Part of the World

The Making Of stopped behaving like a brochure.

Read the full entry
Back to Dev Logs
Resources04 / 05

Downloads.

Presentations. Projects. Public builds.

Available online · browser builds

Unity Web Tests

Explore the public Gravebox, Hump and GraveRob exhibits. These are development tests, not the finished game. Some builds require a mouse and a substantial download.

Browse public builds
Three public development exhibits

Vinnie The Pig — GraveRob Part 3

V5 playable Alpha. Mouse-controlled; use a computer for this exhibit.

Open GraveRob Alpha

Gravebox

17 surfaces. 34 triangles. Listed download: 71.3 MiB. Click the model, then use A/D to orbit and Q/E to change distance.

Known limit: an extreme close-up can reveal a corner-join artefact.

View Gravebox exhibit

Dates and build specifications are from the existing public exhibit catalogue. They do not establish the state of the full game.

Not yet available

General presentation decks

Public presentation PDFs will appear here once selected for release.

Not yet available

Unity project downloads

Approved project packages will be listed separately from playable browser builds, with their version and requirements.

Published magazines · 2 issues

DINER · The ShapeShifter

The next star in our gallery of rogues is The ShapeShifter, an entity that manifests itself as multiple personalities across Carny Island. In Game 1, Crookwood, The Shift’a appears…

Read the magazine

DINER · The Villain

...or "Veelan" as Uncle Shrift would say. One of my first reads preparing to design Carny was The Gamer's Brain, by Celia Hodent, who talked about how important a character's…

Read the magazine
Art, films & production reference
Carny Art · the authored collection Full artwork archive Carny TV · films and videos Carny soundtrack Historical production planning Game FAQ

These open within this site. Its production-role estimates are historical planning, not a current delivery schedule. The new studio introduction is our current statement of approach.

Only material already public is linked here. Source-project packages and public presentation decks are still awaiting selection.
Get in touch05 / 05

Contact.

Mongril Labs

Brett Clements

Creative & studio enquiries

brettclements@me.com

Milt Barlow

Carny Island licensing

Direct contact details to follow. For now, contact Brett with a licensing enquiry.

Licensing enquiry via Brett
Brett’s professional website All Carny channels