Really, no cannibalism?

Yes, there is technically cannibalism in every other game we've made. But you can't eat people in this one.

We knew it would disappoint some of you, but we didn't expect the outpouring of anguish at not being able to have a friendly nibble on the other characters in Mandrake. However, we are resolute that our time in the cannibalism lands is limited to Fallen London, and that there are other, new, equally distressing things for you to fall for in Mandrake.

Now we've cleared that up, perhaps the rest of the FAQ will seem a little mundane! But I hope interesting, as it does include more detail about the game than we were able to show in our brief PC Gaming Show trailer.

These questions are taken from the Failbetter discord. If you'd like to take part in future Q&As or get more moment to moment information about the game, that's the best place to be.

(This has been edited to combine responses from multiple people and to simplify the questions. If you’d like to read the complete thing, which contains more silliness, there’s an archive in the #answers channel on said discord.)

Will there be a crowdfunding campaign for this game, or Early Access?

We don't expect to crowdfund Mandrake. It's already an ambitious game and we think this would push us towards expanding the scope with things like stretch goals.

We do plan to release in Early Access, though – and actually, we'd like to run some Steam playtests and put up a demo even before then. It has a lot of non-narrative gameplay, and some of the expected systems are trying stuff that's a bit unusual for the genre. To make the best version of the game we can, we'll be looking to watch people play and gather feedback. Also, it will help us figure out which things we optionally could do beyond what we have firmly planned.

How long has Mandrake been in development, and how much work is still to be done?

We've been thinking about Mandrake since around 2020, and began developing it in earnest last year. We don't want to say anything just yet about when we'll be ready to run playtests or enter Early Access – essentially, it will be when the game is ready for them.

Was this ever going to be in the Fallen London universe? What made you decide to try out a new setting?

It was always going to be a new setting. In this case, because it was justified by the game concept – a dedicated setting could serve the game better. But also, we were keen to be able to write about and draw things like weather and trees.

Will it be Steam Deck compatible?

Yes, Steam Deck is definitely one of our supported platforms. In fact, it's one of the platforms that we'll be building to during development, because it's a nice way for us to test controller support, cross-platform builds, and so on. No promises about when we'll get the compatibility green tick on Steam, but internally we'll be playing builds on it as soon as we can.

Will we be able to remap controls (including the scroll wheel)?

Yep!

Are there plans for consoles and other stores beyond Steam?

We hope to bring Mandrake to multiple consoles once we leave Early Access. We've been developing it with this in mind, and already have it running (with many caveats) on the Switch, which would be the absolute hardest to support due