Andonuts Mansion - EarthBound + Maniac Mansion (Fangame)

[Polinym]

Oh hi, I'm Polinym McClure! You might remember me from such Fire Emblem projects as "Fire Emblem: Blade Shadows and the Dragon of Light", "Time For Tom: Thomas and Jake's Excellent Adventure", and "Basilisk the FE1 Editor".

Back in July something, the kindly folks over at the EarthBound forum Starman dot net opened a contest with an audio visual section, and for that section, I spent a month and a half working on a MOTHER 2 themed fangame titled "Andonuts Mansion"!

I'm a lazy guy, so I'm just gonna copypaste the game descriptions I've already written:

It’s a LucasArts-style adventure game set in the world of EarthBound!

Jeff’s having his 14th birthday party at his family’s mansion, and he invites all his friends, including Ness and Paula! But, when he goes to open his birthday presents, he finds that they’re all empty! Before Jeff can even think, the lights go out, and everyone is scattered throughout the mansion. When the lights are back on, Jeff’s gone. Ness and Paula are left alone in the empty ballroom. Who could be behind these dastardly deeds?

This is a silly, wholesome, family-friendly adventure game in which you have to solve puzzles using verbs! If you’re a fan of EarthBound, Maniac Mansion, Luigi’s Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, or Arc Rise Fantasia, then you’ll hopefully enjoy this game!

Unlike typical LucasArts adventure games, you control this game with your keyboard instead of a mouse. Instead of a cursor, your character IS the cursor! Walk up to objects, and pick a verb to use to interact with them.

You can control up to three different characters in this game, and will most often offer unique lines of dialogue for every part of the game based on who you’re playing as. Some interactions are even unique to specific characters, giving you some variety when you play again! The game is also designed to prevent you from ever reaching a dead end – there will always be a way for you to progress! To prevent you from getting stuck, the game is littered with tons of hints! Players of all skill levels should be able to beat this game, no sweat! 😄

Just in case something goes wrong, I’ve uploaded a playthrough of the game featuring most of the main cutscenes in the game and showing every step necessary to beat the game – major spoilers! I highly reccomend playing the game first before watching: the cutscenes and solutions will sometimes be missing the context you would have gained from the hints I skipped.

Play the game yourself here: https://polinym.itch.io/andonuts-mansion

Credits:
– Original adventure game engine built from scratch by me, as well as all code.
– Art used from existing games, very often animated and modified by me, and some original art by me.
– The soundtrack is taken from existing game music, including Maniac Mansion, EarthBound Zero, and more. Music mixed by me.
– Sound effects taken from EarthBound and other games.
– My associate Mareeta contributed some puzzle ideas and one piece of artwork.

Notes:
– Each new feature has been rigorously tested over and over, but I ran out of time to do multiple whole-game playthroughs or get lots of feedback. There’s a good chance you can find a way to break the game.
– If you find your character stuck and unable to move, use New Kid to change characters, then change back. The game should respawn the stuck character.
– Launching the game, as well as interacting with one specific object in the game, may result in Norton throwing a pop-up message. This is a false positive, and can be safely ignored. It’s a problem that is common to all GameMaker games.

Controls:
– Arrow keys : Move character / menu cursor
– Spacebar : Interact / use verb
– Shift : Back
– Z key : Open the save game / load game screen
– X key (experimental) : Skips certain cutscenes. Not fully tested, use with caution!

Now I'd better find the energy to get back to that FE1 manga translation! 😛

Edited September 10 by Polinym

[Saint Rubenio]

We often talk about how balance in FE games tends to be less than ideal, but how about Maniac Mansion? Forced protag boy is completely useless, Syd and Razor are clones, Jeff's a surfer whose only talent is repairing telephones for some undiscernible reason and he's outclassed at that by Bernard, who is more broken than Seth. He's so broken he got his own game after!

Anyway, that's a unique combination. Interesting concept for sure. Might check it out at some point.