Demo introduces Spooky Crew: Mask of the Mysterium

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Pilot installment of planned short story series from the creator of Mars Underground coming early 2024

Scooby-Doo and the teenaged Mystery Machine gang may be the most famous group of oddball crime fighters, but they may soon get some competition from the Spooky Crew, the starring foursome of the upcoming Mask of the Mysterium.

The Spooky Crew consists of the "thoughtful and considered" Alyssa; the green-skinned, highly analytical humanoid robot Ethyl; the reckless, video-game loving Hector; and of course a partly anthropormorphic kangaroo named Bert, who speaks in a chittery language only Hector can understand. One night Hector and Bert accidentally stumble upon a strange figure in the forest, who leaves behind an ancient Egyptian ceremonial mask the group traces back to the local Mysterium Museum. Upon investigating the museum's collection of artifacts, the crew uncovers a much bigger mystery than a simple missing mask, and it'll take the combined talents and efforts of all four of them to solve it.

Mask of the Mysterium is a much different game than indie developer Matt Sanderson's previous adventure, the 2019 time-looping apocalyptic thriller Mars Underground. Rather than mimic its predecessor's top-down, retro-RPG-style presentation, this game is a traditional point-and-click adventure in full 3D, the camera panning to follow your movements. You can switch between the four playable characters at any time, utilizing the particular strengths (and avoiding the weaknesses) of each in order to succeed. Adding a degree of nonlinearity that encourages experimentation, there will be many humorous optional interactions and dialogue topics to explore, as well as multiple ways to solve puzzles, and your actions and choices along the way will lead to a number of different possible endings.

Spooky Crew: Mask of the Mysterium is on pace to launch on Windows PC in the first quarter of 2024, but a playable demo is already available to download on Steam. There should be plenty more where this comes from too, as the debut installment is intended to be just "the pilot episode of a planned ongoing series of shorter games."