Cronela's Mansion
Image: Straynus

Update #2 [Wed 5th Feb, 2025 11:00 GMT]: The Kickstarter campaign for the Maniac Mansion-esque Cronela's Mansion is now live.

The creator Straynus is currently raising funds for the development of various versions of the point-and-click adventure game over on the crowdfunding website. This includes versions for the NES, Nintendo Famicom, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

In return for the support from backers, they are offering a range of different digital and physical rewards, with tiers including everything from a €12 Game Boy/Game Boy Color digital bundle to a €1,430 complete collection that includes all the versions of the game and a special gift that the developer is keeping secret for now.

The project has currently raised €46,329 of its €165,000 goal, with additional stretch goals also listed for the game's sequel and further ports for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, MS-DOS, and Commodore 64.

Looking at the campaign, we can't help but think that its creator has perhaps bitten off a little more than they can chew, with the developer adding a new platform pretty much every time we look away. In our opinion, we would have personally preferred to see these releases staggered over a couple of years, just to build up some confidence in the developer first and see whether they can actually pull this off.

Nevertheless, we'll be watching this project closely in the future, to see what happens, and we'll try to keep you updated on the game's progress.

Update #1 [Wed 22nd Jan, 2025 15:00 GMT]: Earlier this week, Straynus released the first set of demos for the Maniac Mansion-inspired point-and-click adventure Cronela's Mansion, for the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo Entertainment System versions of the game.

The demos are currently available to download from itch.io and cover the opening of the game, with the protagonist Tommy rushing to the mansion after getting a strange call from their brother Norbert. Players will be able to explore some of the areas outside the mansion, speaking to NPCs and collecting potential puzzle items, with the idea being to uncover more about the disappearances in the area.

Demos for SNES and PC are also expected to be released in the coming days, with Straynus reportedly planning to launch the game's Kickstarter campaign two weeks from now.

Here's the link to the itch.io page. You can sign up here to be alerted when the Kickstarter goes live.

Original Article [Thu 9th May, 2024 13:30 BST]: We're huge fans of point-and-click adventure games here at Time Extension, with Lucasfilm Games' Maniac Mansion ranking high on the list of our favourite games in the genre. So when we learned about Cronela's Mansion — an upcoming adventure game inspired by the classic 1987 graphic adventure — we couldn't help but take notice.

The game is the work of Straynus, a homebrew developer based in Spain, and is being built for a range of retro and modern machines including NES, SNES, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy/Game Boy Color, PC/MS-DOS, and Nintendo Switch. It was originally revealed back in February of this year and will be funded on Kickstarter sometime this Summer.

We first came across the project thanks to Straynus's constant development updates on Twitter and Facebook, where they have been sharing images and footage of the different versions of the game, including comparisons between the Game Boy Advance, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and NES versions, which you can see below.

From the looks of things, Straynus hasn't revealed too much about the story of the game publicly, only really announcing the names of the characters who are depicted on the key art (Anibal, Cronela, Tommy, Hedda, and Pavel). So we reached out to the developer to see whether we could find out anything else.

In response, they sent us the following:

"Players will only control Tommy. R.. The other characters are the family that lives in the mansion (enemies or allies?). Cronela is the mother of Anibal and Hedda, and the zombie (Pavel) is Cronela's brother (and Anibal and Hedda's uncle). The reason why Tommy has to go to the mansion is still a secret. The game will be open world, so we will not only be in the mansion."

As mentioned, the Kickstarter for the project isn't live yet, but you can sign up now to be notified when it launches later this year. We'll also be keeping an eye out for any news and updates as they become available, so stay tuned.

[source twitter.com]