Hello to all our longtime supporters and friends of our studio, "Back"! Our second fan-creation project, "Mourningwood Lodge2:Hidden voice" is now officially released.
Before you purchase and play, I’d like to clarify a few things."Mourningwood Lodge2:Hidden voice" was developed based on pre-existing video footage, so if you’re looking for multiple branching storylines, this might not be the game for you. Additionally, the deductive reasoning process in this game bears some resemblance to another mystery game released last week—purely coincidental. After reviewing feedback from players, I’ve further simplified the puzzles. However, the game still contains some jump scares (at the very least, our QA testers were startled multiple times, though fear is subjective, of course). For any shortcomings, I appreciate your understanding.
To be honest, creating FMV (full-motion video) games comes with a lot of pressure. Much of this pressure stems from other studios operating with huge budgets and significant losses, while our ultra-low-budget projects fall short in both scale and quality. Since our first FMV game, if there’s one thing we’ve consistently done well, it’s being objective about our work and communicating openly with everyone. With just three people on the team, there’s no reason to hold back.
This leads to many questions. Last month, a high-budget FMV game was priced at just 9 yuan? I genuinely don’t understand how they plan to recoup costs without a hit—are they running a charity? It’s unclear. If we were to price our series based on that game’s scale, ours would be worth no more than 1 yuan. At that rate, small teams simply couldn’t survive. From our first project to now, I’ve kept the price consistent—a level that, with average sales, would allow us to break even and fund the next project. So, when it comes to pricing, I honestly can’t follow the lead of other studios.
The same logic applies to quality and gameplay. Coming from a background in traditional game development, I know that projects with budgets in the millions can’t be compared to those made on a shoestring. Even compared to traditional indie games—where a single developer might spend years crafting something exceptional—FMV games simply can’t take that path.
Honestly, I’m a bit lost myself. I’m not sure when we’ll have enough funding to create something truly high-quality. But then again, even if a horror FMV game were made with a million-yuan budget and achieved a certain standard, would it even break even? I really don’t know. For now, we’ll work with what we have. Whether our games are well-received or not, I’ll stick to my commitments and keep pushing to produce more content. Some may be rushed projects made just to get by, while others may be carefully crafted low-budget originals. We’ll take it one step at a time. Once again, thank you all for your long-standing understanding and support.