"Turn out the lights, take a deep breath, and prepare yourself. Explore the depths of the immersive, atmospheric world of Kraven Manor. Uncover its secrets, solve its mystical puzzles, and face its growing threat. Face your fears and see if you have what it takes...the doors of Kraven Manor await you."
— Steam description
Kraven Manor is a first-person Survival Horror game, developed by Demon Wagon Studios and released on PC in 2013. The central concept of the game lies in a scale model of the titular manor. As the player explores, new parts are located and can be added, causing rooms to appear in the ‘real’ manor.
This horror gaming experience invites players to turn out the lights and enter an immersive, atmospheric world. Kraven Manor challenges the player to explore an expansive manor where the player has the power to dynamically alter the game’s layout by interacting with a miniature scale model of the manor. The player explores the manor to find miniature models of rooms and carry them back to an increasingly elaborate puzzle. Wherever the player adds a model onto the scale model, the associated room moves and appears in real space. With each new room comes a new revelation of the troubling past of William Kraven and the growing threat of an evil presence that relentlessly follows you to the end of your journey.
During its six month development, Kraven Manor was originally designed with more focus on randomized, dynamic gameplay. The team’s greatest struggle and success came when redesigning the game’s focus after a weak Vertical Slice milestone, making the game more linear and developing the mantra, “Keep it Scary.” When the redesigned Kraven Manor was publicly beta tested online, the game received a response from the indie gaming community that exceeded the team’s wildest expectations.
The game is free to play on Steam
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Tropes featured:
- Action Survivor: The main character is evidently out of his element, unable to fight back and though admittedly quite brave, is still naturally terrified of the horrors in Kraven Manor.
- Ambiguous Time Period: Though the events that led to the horrors in Kraven Manor started in the 1800s as evidenced by some of the notes in the manor, it's unclear when the actual game takes place - clearly in more modern times, based on the fact that the main character has a flashlight.
- Ambition Is Evil: William Kraven's inhumane experiments were just a stepping stone in his quest for power.
- Ax-Crazy: William Kraven thinks he's doing everyone he's turned into horrific monsters a favor by granting them immortality, even though they clearly did not desire it, especially the ones he kidnapped. It doesn't help that one of his victims was his own father, George Kraven, as seen in photographs of a crime scene, but given his delight over the death of his parents, that crime scene could imply that William either murdered his father or used his corpse for his experiment.
- Bad Boss: William Kraven, whose actions created the monsters that plague his manor, the monsters that were once his servants (a total of 54 according to a newspaper in the Steam release trailer) and possibly friends. A newspaper clipping in the library also implies either Lord Kraven by himself or through one of his servants kidnapped a teenager named Marjorie Hedgepeth.
- Downer Ending: In the bad ending, you manage to defeat William Kraven by destroying the orbs binding his soul and the souls of his victims to the statues and seemingly condemn Kraven to hell, but just before you can flee the burning manor you're struck by a piece of debris and knocked out. When you awaken, you find yourself in Kraven's secret lab and discover that you yourself have become a statue, and when you look back up you see Kraven and two of his statue minions staring at you. Cue cut to black as your character screams in pure terror.
- Battle Amongst the Flames: The moment the final boss destroys one of the orbs, the house is set on fire.
- Bedsheet Ghost: At one point, you encounter one of the statues hiding under a white sheet, and the moment you walk past him without looking, you hear a screech, turn around, and it's gone.
- Big Bad: William Kraven, the cause of all the horrors in the manor and who likely acts as the last statue and Final Boss.
- Big Blackout: The lights in the manor occasionally go out, either because of the thunderstorm outside or caused by the statues.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Good Ending is this. You managed to escape the manor, but William Kraven's completed his ritual - and of course, all the people he's turned into statues are stuck as they are.
- Body Horror: The statues at first aren't too horrific... until you learn that their segments are real human body parts dipped in bronze and forcefully connected to look like actual statues.
- Can't Move While Being Watched: The entire mechanic with the statues, except for the last one.
- Climactic Music: Once the manor catches on fire.
- Cobweb Jungle: Some of the areas are this, especially the attic and the wine cellar.
- Darkness Equals Death: Since darkness makes it impossible for you to see anything and the statues only move when you look at them, any time the lights go out it's very likely you're going to get attacked.
- Dragged Offto Hell: Only in the Bad End, and if not Hell, at least a portal leading to a hellish dimension... though not for long.
- Drop-In Nemesis: It happens a few times when you complete a task, suddenly you'll find a statue blocking (if not straight up erasing) your path and trying to kill you.
- Dysfunctional Family: William Kraven's, with him in the middle of an abusive father and a lying mother.
- Featureless Protagonist: We only get a glimpse of the main character's personality through his journal, but other than that and the fact that he entered the manor for shelter, we don't know his name, his appearance, who he is, etc.
- Final Boss: Presumably William Kraven himself.
- Foreshadowing: Early on in the game, you can find a note where William Kraven expresses his hatred for his parents, claiming that his father was physically abusive and his mother did nothing but lie. You later run into a puzzle consisting of a series of portraits of his mother. Only one tells the truth - the rest are lying, just like the woman they depict.
- Ghostly Goals: Type A, they're not aggressive towards the main character and aid him in his quest to end the horrors in the manor, guiding him through the place.
- Guide Dang It!: You can accidentally lock yourself out of getting the Good Ending by if you don't get the gear in the attic before you create the path leading to the White Room.
- Harder Than Hard: Nightmare Mode, a more challenging game mode with a mechanically power flashlight and deadlier enemies.
- Hates Their Parent: William Kraven hated both his father and mother, the former for beating him and the latter for constantly lying to him. He was delighted when they both died, finding their deaths unforgettably beautiful.
- Haunted House: Technically a manor, but haunted nonetheless.
- Hell Is That Noise: The various inhuman screeches the statues make.
- Hub Level: The manor's entrance, the only placed where you're safe. Up until the very end, anyway.
- Immortality Seeker: William Kraven tried to find a way to preserve his own life by attaching his soul to an object. He found out that a glass orb can hold a soul for a couple minutes, a bronze statue for several years and hypothesized that the manor itself could last you for an eternity.
- Invincible Boogeymen: The statues. They can hurt themselves as evidenced by bronze chunks left on the floor but the main character will never try to fight them, only managing to kill one thanks to a trap in the manor.
- Jitter Cam: Understandable during the finale, when reality is being warped all over the manor, although it can get a bit annoying.
- Jump Scare: If you're not careful, you might find yourself walking into a statue when you turn a corner. Occasionally they also horribly screech in your face or whenever they catch you.
- Living Statue: Technically not statues, but superficially it's what the main enemies are.
- Multiple Endings: Two, one good and one bad.
- New Rules as the Plot Demands: The statues can only move whenever you're not looking, and are limited to walking. The final boss, however, can move as he pleases and even fly.
- No Name Given: The main character remains nameless throughout the game.
- Offscreen Reality Warp: Done every time you change the model of the manor, but especially once the manor catches on fire, every area is not only set aflame but walls and ceilings are turned upside down, furniture is floating, etc.
- Offscreen Teleportation: The bronze men move about whenever you're not looking at them, and will try to strangle you if they get close enough. The final one foregos any and all subtlety, and demonstrates the ability to move whether you look at him or not.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Floating, smokey, bright white orbs with telekinetic abilities.
- Reality-Changing Miniature: The main mechanic. A model of the manor sits on a table in the entryway, and more models of rooms are uncovered as you explore. Putting down the rooms with the entryway model unlocks the room at that location, leading to some odd arrangements as a second-floor doorway leading downstairs into an underground cellar.
- Ritual Magic: What William Kraven was working on aside from his horrible experiments.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Invoked to get the Good Ending.
- Serial Killer: William Kraven, who kidnapped homeless people and even used his own servants for his experiments.
- Shout-Out: The hidden door beneath the stairs which can only be accessed with the Kraven Manor token is possibly a reference to a similar puzzle in the Spencer Mansion of Resident Evil. Some have also cited similarities to Thir13en Ghosts with the final area of the game.
- Silent Protagonist: We can hear him making a bit of noise, but it's only through his journal that we know what the main playable character is thinking.
- Skippable Boss: By collecting components (a Key, a Gear, and a Lever) scattered all over the manor throughout the game and putting them on the panel near a dumbwaiter, you can call an elevator and enter a escape route, ignoring the Final Boss entirely and getting the Good Ending.
- Soul Power: William Kraven gained this power.
- Soul-Powered Engine: The orbs and the statues are animated by human souls. The statue with the glowing eyes that serves as the Final Boss is implied to be Kraven himself.
- The Ageless: As the statues are no longer human, they don't age, though they can be destroyed.
- The Man Behind the Man: Or more accurately, the statue behind the statue, in this case William Kraven as the likely last statue who is a much bigger threat than the others and had been in charge of the other statues at least at one point.
- The Place: Kraven Manor, the game's title and setting.
- Tragic Monster: The statues were once innocent servants of Lord Kraven and easily-missed people who Lord Kraven had abducted. Some of them don't even have any killing intent. It gets a little sadder when you see a few of them watch as you escape the manor, something they cannot do.
- Useless Bystander Parent: William Kraven's mother never intervened when her husband beat their child, and according to Kraven himself, did nothing but lie.
- Was Once a Man: The statues. All of Kraven's victims including himself, actually.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: William Kraven's offer of immortality to his servants and other people... at the expense of their humanity and their original bodies.
