120,000€ for Resort and new game — Announcing Pen & Paper Stories: Morriton Manor
We’re very happy to announce that we will receive funding for RESORT and that we are working on a new title in collaboration with Hauke Gerdes and Rocket Beans TV: Pen & Paper Stories Morriton Manor. The Film- & Medienstiftung NRW is funding the production of RESORT and the conception of our new title Morriton Manor with 120,000€ altogether. Two games are in the making!
Pen & Paper Stories: Morriton Manor
This is exciting news! We are happy to announce that we are working on a brand-new title. Together with Hauke Gerdes and Rocket Beans TV, we’re working on Pen & Paper Stories: Morriton Manor — a narrative genre-mashup comedy adventure game with point & click and RPG elements.
The game is set in the “Morriton Manor” franchise, known from German internet TV channel Rocket Beans TV’s popular format “Pen & Paper”. Morriton Manor is a mystery set in the Victorian era — four famous noblemen detectives investigate supernatural phenomena in Victorian England.
The player gets into the role of private investigator Harriett Juana Brook. The four noblemen detectives disappeared during their last mission on Delagney Island. Having some experience with the unnatural, Harriett Brook is sent to the mysterious island to find them.
The four counts have come to the island to uncover some strange ongoings on the island, but in the end, vanished without a trace. On the island, Brook is not only confronted with the mysteries of the missing counts, but also a strangely bewildered countess, a suspicious groundsman, a horrifying creature in the woods, and a surreal time paradox that somehow seems to have imbalanced everything.
We are more than happy to return to Matt’s unique hand-drawn 2D comic style known from our previous game Unforeseen Incidents for Morriton Manor. Get ready for a beautiful adventure game with challenging puzzles, an intriguing story, quirky characters and a world full of secrets, mysteries, and witty jokes.
The game is now in the phase of conception. Hauke, Morriton Manor creator and game master of the Rocket Beans TV show, and Marcus are co-writing the game. The Film- & Medienstiftung NRW is funding the conception of the game with 20,000€.
100,000€ funding for Resort
The good news doesn’t end here. It gets even better. The Film- & Medienstiftung NRW decided to continue funding our new project RESORT with 100,000€ production funding. We already received 60,000€ prototype funding and will now be able to finish the production of the game.
RESORT is an interactive mystery short story about emotions, introspection, and coping. Famous writer Laura Tanner embarks on a surreal journey and faces an odd intersection of dreams and reality. A comet threatens to hit the woods around the small town of Laburnum Creek. Some of its inhabitants refuse to leave. Laura Tanner visits the former health resort to interview them and stumbles upon even more mysterious ongoings.
Prepare yourselves for a strange and somewhat weird, Twin Peaks-like experience. RESORT is a modern, explorative, and narrative game that focuses on the story. It features a beautifully hand-crafted 3D low poly environment. We’re looking forward to bringing it to events, festivals, and trade fairs SOON, so stay tuned!
Two games in the making
So this is crazy. We founded Backwoods 3½ years ago and released Unforeseen Incidents in May 2018. With the help of publisher Application Systems Heidelberg, Unforeseen Incidents is coming to Nintendwo Switch this summer. Just recently, Unforeseen Incidents won the German Video Game Awards in the category “Best Youth Game 2019”. The prize money of 75,000€ helps both the creation of RESORT and Morriton Manor.
With Unforeseen Incidents, we learned how to make and release a game. Now we’re going to learn how to make two games. We’re very, very happy and grateful for this situation and will definitely keep you updated about everything and share our experiences of developing not only one game, but two games in the future. It sounds crazy, and we hope it will feel that way too.
