Some Background on Boo

Writing a developer log for Boo's Clues? Sure! Why not!

Hey friends, it's Dace here, the creator of Boo's Clues. I wanted to pad out this project by providing a little background on how and why this game was made. I've also yet to create a developer log for any of my projects, so here we are!

I got the idea for Boo's Clues back in 2022 while visiting my partner, who was working at the Palace Theater located in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Oh boy, what a place Manchester is, let me tell ya.

Besides its lovely and supposedly haunted playhouse, which was featured on an episode of Ghost Hunters, the town has a statue of Ralph Baer, who invented the first video game console. It was also a known stomping ground for the serial killer behind the infamous Bear Brook murders.

I mean, if this place doesn't have character, then I don't know what does!

Honestly, I'm barely scratching the surface of weird ol' Manchester, but I don't want to diverge from my point here: how could a place like this NOT have you thinking up games on murder and ghosts?

Well, on this particular visit to Manchester, I brought my dog with me, Buckeye, a loyal, handsome Beagle who, at the time, would've been just over a year old.

We found ourselves in the Palace Theater's cast house, where actors and other theater employees stay during a show's run, which happened to be a former convent, still connected to a long-since-abandoned church.

From what I was told, the cast house, or  "The Nunnery" as the actors called it, was also haunted, reportedly by the ghost of a former nun who greatly despised the current use of her former convent as a home for sinful, smelly artists. The horror, right?

My partner and the other actors were performing a Sunday matinee, and Buckeye and I needed a place to stay during the show, so my partner snuck Buck and me inside The Nunnery to keep warm while waiting for the show to finish.

I planned to use the time to write on my computer with Buck in his usual spot, curled up at my feet.

However, Buck had different plans.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, we certainly experienced some interesting phenomena during our two-and-a-half-hour stay, including disembodied footsteps from a room above us and odd creaking sounds from the wood on a set of stairs outside our room. And Buckeye, being the hound he is, was enthralled by some particular scent he had picked up, which led him to the base of the aforementioned stairs, where he proceeded to sit and stare for the remainder of our time.

Yes, it was an interesting couple of hours, as if I didn't need more inspiration from the already wild town I found myself in.

I began to think up a game/story in which a man and his dog head to a nearly abandoned town searching for the man's missing girlfriend. However, upon his arrival, he finds that the only people to interact with there are homeless opioid addicts and salt-of-the-earth residents who want nothing to do with outsiders. That is until he discovers that his dog has a knack for sniffing out the spirits of the dead, who are willing to aid the man in his search if he first helps them to conclude their own unfinished business.

The story is long and winding, and it is undoubtedly for another day. Still, the finished product was an idea for a 32-bit video game called "Dog & Dude," which focused on telling the story above while utilizing an interesting survival-horror mechanic.

Visiting a series of locations such as an abandoned convent, an old textile mill, and an overgrown power plant, the player would control both Dog and Dude, though never at the same time. Dog would be able to sniff out the location of dangerous ghosts along with necessary clues. In contrast, Dude would be able to interact with the environment, collecting said clues while trying to avoid the dangers of the unseen ghosts. However, the more Dog is used for sniffing, the more curious it becomes, giving the player less control over Dog's physical movement. This then threatens Dude, who, without Dog's aid, knows less about the clues and ghosts' locations.

If you've played Boo's Clues already, this is probably starting to sound familiar.

Anyway, besides having a fully fleshed-out idea for this video game, I could do nothing else to move Dog & Dude along, as I haven't the slightest idea on how to make a video game.

It wasn't until this past September, during a particularly mundane period of life, that I sat down at my kitchen table with my usual suspects—a notebook and a pair of six-sided dice—and forced myself to make art.

For some reason or another, the result was a version of Dog & Dude but in the format of a board game. As it was not the original idea I'd had two years prior, I decided to rename it "Boo's Clues," hearkening back to my golden days of childhood spent glued to the television watching Steve and his dog Blue solving mysteries around their house. 

I was also heavily inspired by the relationship between Scooby and Shaggy, another dynamic duo formative to my younger self. This reference is very apparent in Boo's Clues use of doors, calling back to the classic Scooby-Doo chase sequences with the group outrunning monsters through a series of doors in a hallway.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little tidbit of backstory behind Boo's Clues. Creating it was a labor of love, as all things worthy of making are.
I can only hope that when you play it, you enjoy yourself. Otherwise, I thank you for supporting me and my work. It's hard to describe the joy it brings me when I learn that even a single person out there in the world noticed something I created. 

Boo and I thank you. Good luck solving the mystery, and here's to many more!