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A couple of days ago, I had the chance to do a Q and A interview with Attic Door Productions Ryan HoltKamp (his the project leader of “The 13th Doll”), regarding their upcoming adventure/horror puzzle game “The 13th Doll” (which got 100% funded on Kickstarter just recently!). And this is what HoltKamp had to say:

Robin TGG
Would you be so kind and tell us a bit about how the 13^th Doll project came to life? It would also be really awesome if you could share the background story of Attic Door Productions as well? And have you guys/girls been fans of The 7th Guest for a long time?

The 13th Doll interview, The 13th Doll, Attic Door Productions, The 7th Guest, Kickstarter

Attic Door Productions
I’ve been a fan of the 7^th Guest since it came out! I played it as a kid, and had never seen anything quite like it – seeing full motion, live actors in a video game was revolutionary. It really captured my imagination, and I’ve wanted to make a similar game ever since.

When I graduated college, I started working on The 13^th Doll, a murder mystery, mild horror puzzle game – totally unrelated to The 7^th Guest. Around that time, it was announced that the first attempt at an official 7^th Guest 3 had been cancelled. Instead of making a game similar to The 7^th Guest, I decided to make The 13^th Doll a fan game of The 7^th Guest.

From there, I messaged Paul Van Der Meer, who ran the biggest 7^th Guest fansite online. We were a perfect match – I was a programmer, he was a 3d modeler. Though it took some convincing, he eventually joined me and we got to work.

We posted on forums and message boards, and more developers joined the team. We made great progress, and things were going well.

Of course, being a fan game, we didn’t own the rights to the game, and we lived in fear of being shut down at any moment. Fortunately, Trilobyte, the makers of the original game, liked what we were doing, and they drew up an agreement that granted us the rights to create the game, with some stipulations.

For legal reasons with that agreement, we needed to create a company, and Attic Door Productions was born.

Around 2008, we sort of ran out of steam. We were proud of the work we had done, but had been very overambitious, and development on the game slowed to a halt. The developers mostly went different ways and worked on other games.

I realized I missed working on the game, and this spring we picked it up The game again. By this time, everything we’d worked on in prior years had become outdated, so we essentially started from scratch, but in a few months we made great progress, finishing several rooms and puzzles.

I posted a screenshot of our progress to our Facebook group, and the response was overwhelming! People really liked what they saw, including Trilobyte, who contacted us with a deal to license the rights to make The 13^th Doll a retail game.

That´s literally a real bloodbath.

Robin TGG
Exactly how big will the 13^th Doll game be? (both in terms of gameplay hours and size of the world which the players explore).

Attic Door Productions
We currently have 26 puzzles planned. We have two unique, playable characters with individual stories to play through, as well as 5 unique endings to the game. The entire Stauf mansion is in the game, as well as Stauf’s abandoned Wonderworld Toy Store, and a mental asylum. I’m expecting the game to take eight to twelve hours to play through.

“The 13th Doll” is very true to the “7th Guest” universe.

Robin TGG
How true to the “7^th guest” universe will the 13^th doll be? As the 13^th doll is said to be a spiritual successor of sorts. If I´m not totally wrong that is.

Attic Door Productions
Our game is set directly in The 7^th Guest universe! That said, it’s not an official sequel, and thus the story isn’t necessarily canon. The game picks up right where The 7^th Guest left off, with Tad defeating Stauf in the mansion’s attic.

Robin TGG
Does the development team aim to make the 13th Doll scarier than the 7th Guest? Or will the game be equally scary? And what ESRB rating will the 13th Doll have?

Attic Door Productions
We’d like to think that the game is just as scary as The 7^th Guest. We get messages from fans of the series, who tell us about playing the games with their families back in the day. I’d love to hear similar stories about The 13^th Doll, so it’s important to me to stay on that level. Our game isn’t too violent, gory, or slasher style horror, but it will scare you. It’s appropriate for teens and up.

Robin TGG
It´s quite obvious that the 13th doll is heavily inspired by the 7th guest, but when I read about the game’s plot, setting and such. I started to think about an old adventure game called “Sanitarium”, since the game takes place in a mental institution (for starter). As for the part about the dolls, that reminded me about the “Child’s Play” series. So is there any “Sanitarium” and “Child’s Play” fans in the development team by any chance?

I really love the creepy feeling that I get from “The 13th Doll”.

Attic Door Productions
Nope, afraid not!

Robin TGG
I know that there are a lot of differences between the 13th Doll and the 7th guest in terms of better graphics and such, but I really like the fact that you (the player) will be able to play as two completely different main characters in the game. Which In this case would be Tad and Dr. Richmond. So could you tell us a bit about them and their connection to Henry Stauf (he was the evil toy maker in the 7th Guest) and his mansion?

Attic Door Productions
The game begins as Tad has just defeated Henry Stauf in The 7^th Guest – he runs from the mansion, abandoning the souls of Stauf’s victims as he escapes. The experience traumatizes him, and he’s so haunted by ghosts and demons from The Stauf Mansion, that he is committed to a mental institution. Trapped in a padded cell, he plots a return to the mansion to free those he left behind and defeat Stauf once and for all.

Dr. Richmond is a recent college graduate who comes to the asylum without any prior knowledge of Henry Stauf or his legacy. He’s taken back by the story of Henry Stauf, and is in complete disbelief that the asylum patients are so distraught over something so irrational and illogical. He meets Tad, and decides the best way to help him may be a cathartic trip to the Stauf Mansion.

The two characters are separated on their journey to the mansion, where they soon realize that their fates may be beyond their control.

The characters parallel our audience, with fans of The 7^th Guest returning to the mansion with Tad, and players new to the franchise aligning more toward Dr. Richmond’s path.

Robin TGG
I heard that there´s plans for a full Oculus Rift support in the 13^th Doll. Could you tell us what you got in store for us? And how scary will the Oculus Rift version of your game be on a scale 1 to 10?

Attic Door Productions
Yes! We plan to have a rift version! It’s actually a stretch goal on our Kickstarter right now. We’ve done some early tests with it, and it’s a pretty amazing experience. You won’t be disappointed!

Attic Door Productions aims to make the puzzles in “The 13th Doll” really challenging for everyone.

Robin TGG
The 7^th Guest offered a lot of puzzles and logical puzzle solving. Will the players find a lot of that in the 13^th Doll as well? And how hard (easy) will most of the puzzles be?

Attic Door Productions
Definitely – we’ve got a great variety of puzzles in the game. Some of them have nice references back to The 7^th Guest, and others are completely new designs the team has come up with. We definitely want the game to be a challenge, and we’re trying to hit that sweet spot between difficult and not too frustrating. We do have a couple puzzles that are played versus Stauf that are going to be tough to beat, but pretty fun. I think players will definitely be pleased.

Robin TGG
Is it true that the 13^th Doll will offer 5 different endings in total? If so, how many endings will each character (Tad and Dr. Richmond’s) have in the game? Or will there be 5 different endings for each character?

Attic Door Productions
Each character has two unique endings. Additionally, the 5^th ending is the “correct” ending, though it’s viewable from both character’s perspectives.

How far will the 13th doll be able to go?

Robin TGG
At this very moment there is about 16 days left on the 13^th Doll´s Kickstarter campaign, and right now there´s less than $6,000 missing. So what do you think about your chances of reaching your Kickstarter goal on time?

And if you do, what´s the plans for the future?

Attic Door Productions
We’ve just met our goal, and we’re really excited! Our plans are to make the game the best it can possibly be. It’s still a game that’s made by fans, and for fans. We want our core audience to appreciate it, and also to bring in a whole new generation of 7^th Guest fans.