Indie Retro Homebrew Showcase Interview: Cronela's Mansion
We are back again for our interview spotlight with our friends from the Indie Retro Homebrew Showcase at Super MAGFest 2025, and now, we’re shining the light on the winner of Best in Sound, the action-adventure game Cronela’s Mansion by STRAYNUS. This spine-chilling, pixel-perfect adventure enchanted audiences with its hauntingly atmospheric soundtrack, perfectly balancing eerie ambiance and retro charm. Let’s look at the game that claimed this title and how its development went.
Tell us about how your game was born.
Straynus: "As a big fan of Maniac Mansion, I always wanted to create a point and click video game inspired by it, and this was easy if the idea was to create it for modern consoles and PC.
Then I realized that many people wanted a point and click game inspired by Maniac Mansion but compatible with retro consoles! like the original, and there was none, how difficult was it to create a similar game?... Well yes, it was very difficult, but not impossible.
After creating the NES version, nothing could stop us! I wondered if it would also be possible to create it for Game Boy Advance, and then Super Nintendo and Game Boy.
All versions are created from scratch due to the limitations of each system. Each version has its own music and graphics, as well as the puzzles, which makes each version unique."
What was the development like?
"I wouldn't know where to start hehe, it has been more than 4 years of development, where we have had to create our own engine with 6502 assembler. We have fought with each line of code to make it work, and there are thousands and thousands of lines! Creating the cursor, inventory, objects, collisions, characters, scene animation, texts, music and much more.
We have suffered a lot to make everything work, but we have also had continuous joy, days of celebration when we finally achieved something important, and after all the effort the moment of truth arrived, recording it on cartridges and testing it on the native consoles, when I saw the game working on my original console and my CRT TV, it was a great night, I had achieved something that I set out to do so many years ago, and I had a strange feeling...
In the 90s I played games created by other people, these games excited me, made me happy and I learned a lot from them, I will always remember them with affection and nostalgia, and now that I have created a game I wonder if anyone will feel these same things with something I have created, will they fondly remember my video game as time goes by? I hope."
What's your favorite memory as a gamer?
"I am 8 years old, it is 7 in the morning, it is summer, I wake up and go down to the first floor of the house, where my maternal grandparents live. My grandmother prepares me a glass of milk with some biscuits while I turn on my Nintendo NES on her television and get ready to play Maniac Mansion, Marios Bross, Turtles... My grandfather tells me to play quickly, we will leave in two hours to the field to pick watermelons and melons and today he will let me drive the tractor!
For years everything was the same, then I changed the NES for the Super Nintendo, but my grandparents never changed, their energy and vitality was magical, it seemed that those days would last forever. Today, my grandmother and I miss those days, we miss him so much. When I play with my retro consoles, I feel like he is here with me, waiting for me to go to the field to farm."
What games influenced Cronela's Mansion the most?
"All LucasArts and Sierra games, but without a doubt, Cronela's Mansion is totally inspired by Maniac Mansion, both the artistic style and the dark and strange story with a touch of humor (Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick are geniuses). I've added my own ideas and some different mechanics, and I think they fit the game very well!"
Any fun stories or wild moments during development?
"Many funny or memorable things have happened to us during development. But I will tell you one of them, I will put you in situation.
One room, the bathroom of the mansion, in the middle of the room there is a huge bathtub, so far so good, the character can go behind the bathtub, but he must also be able to go in front of it, which means that the bathtub has to know when the character is in front or behind, this is difficult.
If the character passed in front, his head would be cut off, and if we passed behind him, his legs would be seen under the bathtub. We had this error for days! In one of the tests it finally worked! I jumped for joy, I called my partner! we laugh, we celebrate! we had it working! What a good night!... then... I realized that I had left the pizza in the oven for more than half an hour, and it was the only one I had left.
That night, I didn't have dinner, but nothing took away the joy of being able to pass in front of and behind an object."
Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?
"Totally, before I thought that old game mechanics were only liked by people who grew up playing these video games, people who are already over 30 years old, but I see more and more young people who love these types of retro games and their mechanics and they do not have our nostalgia, which means that retro games were very good in their time but they continue to be so in new times."
What makes this game unique?
"Cronela's Mansion is the first point and click adventure of the century, compatible with NES and SNES, and the first in history compatible with Game Boy and Game Boy Advance.
But what makes this game unique is that it is created for those people who wanted a Maniac Mansion 2, or a Monkey Island on Nintendo consoles and that never came.
With this game you will feel the same sensations, and it will take you back to those wonderful years.
Cronela's Mansion has been created with care, polishing every detail, with the intention of being remembered over the years."
Anything else you'd like to add? Promote?
"If you like the project and want to see it come true on a physical cartridge, you can help me on Kickstarter.
See you at the Mansion more manic than ever!"
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Cronela's Mansion™ is a point-and-click adventure game compatible with classic consoles, PC, and modern consoles. Inspired by Maniac Mansion but with its own unique identity.
Compatible with:
* Nintendo NES
* Super Nintendo
* Game Boy / Color
* Game Boy Advance
* PC and Nintendo Switch
Follow Straynus on X! The game has been fully funded on Kickstarter, but you can still back the game here!
Watch Cronela's Mansion trailer here:
