Update [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.