Hi!
My name is Rick Dakan, and I’m one-third of the indie video game studio Mob Rules Games. We’re working on a new, turn-based haunted house game called Haunts: The Manse Macabre, scheduled for release this Halloween on multiple platforms, including (we are very proud to say) Linux!
At Mob Rules we believe in radical transparency and openness, and make all of our budget, schedule, sales, and corporate structure public. All of our software will be written in the Go programming language and licensed under its modified version of the BSD license: http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/LICENSE. We plan to release the source code for the games after their release.All of our content will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial, Share Alike license, as part of our commitment to being as open and community friendly as possible. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ . We think this forthright stance will help us earn the trust of our customers, and really we just think it’s a better way to do business.
Video, screenshots and more info are all on our site at http://www.mobrulesgames.com/.
We believe Haunts will be a hit with horror fans of all kinds. The single player campaign tells the legend of Tyree Manse, which spans a century of bloody terror and draws inspiration from famous horror movies that run the gamut from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu to Paranormal Activity and Pulse. The game’s distinctive art style takes cues from illustrious illustrators of the uncanny, Edward Gorey and Harry Clarke.
We’re already well into development, and this week we launched a Kickstarter to raise the final $25,000 we need to finish the game. So far, things are rocking along, with just under $1500 pledged in the first 24 hours. We’re confident that if we continue to get the word out about Haunts, we’ll not only meet but exceed our goal in the next 60 days.
Unusually for a Kickstarter, we’re considering every $5 pledged to be a pre-sale of the game, thus every $5 given earns the backer gets a code to download Haunts: The Manse Macabre. These codes are 100% transferable and it’s even fine if you re-sell them. We’re happy as hell just to get paid once for each copy of our game. Our game will have no DRM and the copies will be easily copied and transfered.
Haunts: The Manse Macabre is the first project from Mob Rules Games. Last fall we held a vote where fans chose between three different proposed games for our first project. Haunts was the winner, and we’ve been working on it ever since, funded by an outside investor.
Previous to helping launch Mob Rules, I was the original lead designer at Cryptic Studios on City of Heroes, before moving on to writing novels (the Geek Mafia trilogy and Cthulhu Cult: A Novel of Obession). I also did some story and setting work on the flash-based free to play MMO, Dungeonblitz. Our programmer, Jonathan Wills, worked at Cryptic and then at Google. Artist Austin McKinley has worked on numerous comic and video projects as well as the Facebook came Cold War Clambake.
Thanks for your time, and please email me if you have any questions!
sincerely,
Rick Dakan
rick@mobrulesgames.com