EEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Sorry. Just need a moment to come down from having written that title. Whew.

Geek/nerd icon and legendary writer Neil Gaiman has officially announced that he has joined up with game studio The Odd Gentlemen and producer Moonshark to write his first video game, called Wayward Manor. Inspired by films from his childhood like “Arsenic And Old Lace”, “Blithe Spirit”, and “The Man Who Came To Dinner”, Gaiman has apparently been sitting on this story for a while, trying to find the right medium in which to tell it.

The story takes place in an old house in New England during the Roaring 20’s, where the player character has been killed and is haunting his former abode. Unfortunately, people keep moving in to Wayward Manor and disrupting our hero’s peaceful afterlife. It’s the player’s job to scare everybody out of the house, and unravel the mystery of his death and the afterlife in the process.

Given the studio’s past work (see The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and Slap Happy Sam’s Stageshow), and the tone of Gaiman’s work (see The Sandman or Neverwhere), this is a bit of a match made in heaven. The images shown in the announcement video (See Below) reveal an appropriately unique aesthetic, and the premise offers a great deal of promise for incredibly fun and innovative mechanics.

The game will be released in an undisclosed number of episodes, the first of which will be released this fall.

Preorders are open at http://whohauntsneil.com/welcome/, using a Kickstarter style funding program with different incentives ranging from a $10 copy of the game, to a $10,000 dollar invitation to dinner with Gaiman himself, which Gaiman claims will be the “spookiest ever in L.A.”.

The ability of the studio to continue to produce more episodes will be dependent on sales of the first episode, so get over to the site now and place your preorder.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see if my bank will loan me $10,000.