Kickstarter

Haunts: The Manse Macabre is a turn-based horror game that allows you to play either side of the haunting - the dangerous denizens or the intrepid intruders. We’ve spent $42,500 on development so far and just need another $20,000 to see us through to completion. Mob Rules Games believes transparent business practices are vital to earning your trust, and will make our budget, expenses, sales, and schedule publicly available. Every $5 pledged earns you additional copies of the game, which you can give away or sell as you please. We plan to release Haunts: The Manse Macabre in time for Halloween this year.

 FUNDED! Now We Stretch!

Thanks to the 1000 or so generous donors, we have done it. Now, we can try for even more. We had a survey of supporters a few weeks ago, asking which monsters we should add to the game. You all picked some great winners, but there were plenty of popular runners up. We thought we'd see if you wanted to put them in the game too.

For Every $1000 we raise over the $25,000 original ask, we'll add in another of these Denizens. Since we're already over $26k, the obvious first Bonus Denizen is the exactly tied Ancient Ones. The rest will come online in the following order:

$27,000 Unlocks The Runner-Up Evil Genius

$28,000 Unlocks the Runner-Up Vampire

$29,000 Unlocks the Runner-Up Psychopath

$30,000 Unlocks the Alternate Creepy Child

$31,000 We'll look at other Abominations and see what people like.

The Game

Haunts: The Manse Macabre is a turn-based game for PC/Mac/Linux that allows players to take control of either the haunting denizens that have earned this infamous home its dire reputation or as the intrepid intruders determined to pry loose the Tyree Manse’s dread secrets. It can be played versus another player or versus the AI, online or all alone. A lengthy single-player campaign tells the house’s horrifying history and unlocks new denizens and intruders to use in the game. Scores of maps combined with variable goals, customizable rosters, and a variety of opponents offer endlessly unique and re-playable games. 

Each side begins the game by choosing their forces in secret, so that their opponent has no idea what kind of units and abilities they’ll face. The Intruders recruit a squad of three people, each of which can have different equipment and special abilities. There are weapons, psychic or magic powers, special scientific gear, ancient relics, and so on. They also secretly pick what kind of goal they’re trying to achieve by searching the Tyree Manse. The Intruders could be trying to recover an artifact or dark tome, cleanse the house of its evil spirits, or solve one of the house’s many mysteries. 

The Denizens will have to defend against any of the goals the Intruders might be after, but the haunters have plenty of surprises of their own. They get to choose the nature of the haunting. Phantasms, Cultists, Abominations, Undying, Psychopaths: each comes with its own set of leaders, servitors, and minions. Creatures range from powerful monsters that can tear a foolhardy explorer to pieces, to small orbs that can spy on the intruders. Each leader has unique powers used to plague the Intruders, which range from temporary pools of darkness, to poltergeist attacks that damage and disorient, to reality warping changes to the house itself. 

Players have no idea what their opponent is doing, until they discover it for themselves during the game. Light and darkness have crucial roles in determining how the game plays out, since it’s always in your best interest to hide your movements from your foe even as you try to suss out what they’re up to. With its mercurial maps, hidden agendas, and stealthy maneuvers punctuated by macabre attacks, Haunts: The Manse Macabre builds tension like a great ghost story should. Whether or not it has a happy ending depends, of course, on your point of view. 

Every $5 Buys You Another Copy of the Game

For every $5 you give to support Haunts: The Manse Macabre, you will receive a code good for downloading one copy of the game. You can (and are encouraged to) give away the extra codes to friends, to sell them to strangers, or print them out and frame them as a testament to your generosity and fine taste. 

So, for example, if you donate $25, you’ll not only get a copy of the game for yourself, but four other copies. That’s one for your best friend as a Halloween present, one for that special someone you’re trying to woo with promises of digital horror, and two that you can sell to other gamers who’re just looking for a good time.

We consider each $5 a pre-sale of the game. We might well ending up actually selling it for a few bucks more than that, but we’re happy as hell to book the sales now. What happens to those copies of the game afterwards is up to you - they’re yours.

Why We Need the Money

Haunts: The Manse Macabre has been under development since December, 2011, when we let everyone who registered on our site vote to decide which game we would make. Haunts was the winner, and we’ve been working hard on it ever since. The Lewis Charitable Foundation invested in the initial development. Spread out over three milestones - all of which we have met - the investment totalled $42,500. We’re still using that money to pay salaries for two of our three developers, along with other basic business costs like licensing software and promotion. We need another $20,000 to finish the game and make sure it’s as good we can make it. We're asking for $5000 more than what we need in order to cover the cut Amazon and Kickstarter take as well as promotional costs.

Mob Rules Games believes that radical transparency is the best way for us to do business - that if we are as open and straightforward as possible with our customers and the world, we’ll both earn their trust and be able to operate in an open and honest manner. We post our budget, schedule, progress, investors, and corporate policies on our web site. We will tell you exactly how much money we’ve spent and how we use every dollar that comes in through this Kickstarter. Once the game is released, we will tell you exactly how many we’ve sold, how much money we’ve made, and so on. 

And you don’t just have to take our word for it. Thus far all of our operating capital has come from investments by the Lewis Charitable Foundation, a non-profit with the goal of promoting radical transparency in business. We’re already accountable to them, but we want to be accountable to you as well. For those who want to know more about our open business model, check out mobrulesgames.com. There we have details about the budget and schedule, an explanation of our rather unusual, project-based investment model, and a description of our worker-controlled corporate structure.

Why We Need Your Voice

Mob Rules Games is just three full time developers plus a few talented part-time contractors. We have a vision and a plan and we’re working hard, but we want input from our customers and players too. Our first vote chose our game, and we think that worked out really well. With limited time and resources, there are other decisions to make as well. Which denizens should we include? Which intruders? What other features does the game need? Is it any fun? We want to put these questions to you, the supporters. So before or after you’ve pledged support, we hope you’ll come over to mobrulesgames.com, register with us, and make your voice heard.