- Gamescom Demo: Full Playthrough - 15 September 2026
Join Hannah for a playthrough of the showfloor demo of Mandrake, as it existed at Gamescom 2026! We're unlikely to show the game exactly like this again, so we wanted to capture it for everyone who didn't make it to our live events this year. Hope you enjoy!
- Choices Matter in Mandrake - 12 August 2026
Mandrake is in Telltale's Choices Matter Festival this week, so we're taking the opportunity to talk about some of the foundational choices for your character in Mandrake. Unusually for our games, in Mandrake a number of things are already determined about your character. You're always a Mandrake, the last descendant of the aristocratic family that once ruled the region. You're always a gardener-sorcerer, resuming arts long-forgotten and long-forbidden. And you're always a newcomer to Penhallion and the village of Chandley, having been born and raised in a far-off land.But that still leaves plenty of room to decide things about your character: name, appearance, history. We don't want character creation in Mandrake to be complex or time-consuming – after all, you'll have plenty of opportunities to define your character with your choices throughout the game. But we do want to give you the…
- Mandrake in the Choices Matter Festival - 4 August 2026
We're in Telltale's Choices Matter festival! We're going to be showing 25 minutes of Mandrake gameplay, focusing on meeting some characters in Chandley and a first look at character creation. This is the most of Mandrake we've shown online anywhere, so it should be full of lots of new juice!Edit to update: Watch the stream today, the 10th of August, at 22:30 BST! Just go to the festival page and take a look at the broadcast tab.Don't worry if you miss the first broadcast; you won't miss out. It'll go up on our YouTube later in the week. :)
- Mandrake at Gamescom - 14 July 2026
An exciting day for us! We're coming to Gamescom for the first time. Thanks to the backing of IndieArenaBooth, you'll be able to take a look at Mandrake at Gamescom, and meet the team at the IndieArenaBooth stand. It's likely that there will be stickers.We haven't shown at Gamescom with any of our games before, so we'd like to thank IAB for this fantastic opportunity!Here are a few of the other titles which we're excited to see:Bad Magpie is very compelling, as a kind of cross between Untitled Goose Game and Thank Goodness You're Here. Cause mayhem as a one-winged magpie with a fixation on a fallen star!The Midnight Barber is an unusual rhythm game where you're cutting your somewhat supernatural clientele's hair to the beat of a moody soundtrack. Love a rhythm game!Rinthine will be going into Early Access when it first releases, just as we're planning to do with Mandrake, and they seem…
- Folklore in Mandrake - 1 June 2026
After nearly sixteen years working in the Victorian milieu for Fallen London (and Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies), Mandrake is giving us an opportunity to draw on a whole new swathe of historical and folkloric sources, and we've been making the most of it. Mandrake is set in a village called Chandley, whose people have to get along with all sorts of neighbours, some of which are far from human. There are regal woods-gods; dangerous, rootless spirits roving the wilds; and gentler, more domestic sprites that nevertheless abide by their own, sometimes obtuse, rules. Here we present a selection of the folklore that has inspired us while inventing the world of Mandrake, in case any of them catch your interest as they did ours. Sunken LandsAtlantis might be the most famous sunken land, but it's far from the only one. For Mandrake, we've taken inspiration from folkloric examples closer to home: los…
- Curses and Consequences - 13 April 2026
You are the last of the Mandrakes, a sorcerous line of gardeners. At long last, you’ve returned to your family's abandoned home. Chandley is a small village, carefully kept, where plenty of the residents remember lean times and don't want to see them come to pass again. Everyone is subject to the Covenant of Weeds, meaning they can't grow things for themselves. It doesn't stop some foolhardy or arrogant people trying. Consequences have varied in the 100 years of the covenant, but there is always a price for trifling with it. Except for you, Morgan Mandrake. Your abilities as a sorcerer-gardener exempt you from the covenant. Do you still pose a danger? Will you lord it over people, or muck in next to them? We hope you enjoy this peep at Mandrake. We'll be at London Games Festival in a few days, exhibiting it live for the first time. Let us know if you're coming by and we'll give you a st…
- Play Mandrake at the London Games Festival - 27 February 2026
We're stretching our legs after a long winter mostly indoors, and taking Mandrake for its first public outing! Mandrake is among the Official Selection of the London Games Festival, which means we get an opportunity to show it to the public during the New Game Plus show at Exhibition White City in London, on the 16th and 17th of April. If you can make it, you'll be able to meet the team, have a play, and - if you're quick - take away some goodies.This is just our first time out with Mandrake in person. We expect to do more physical and digital events, and playtesting via Steam, so please don't feel you're missing out too much if you can't make it. Hope to see you there!
- Rich Stories - 9 February 2026
Here's Hannah (that's me) giving a demo of conversation in Mandrake!In Mandrake, your choices (at character creation and in gameplay) will change the tenor of conversations with your neighbours. Will you be a haughty Doubter, or a good Neighbour? We'll never lock you out of stories this way, but hopefully offer you a depth and breadth of choices that's unusual in a rural life sim. If you've watched the video, what do you think of this kind of responsive story?
- The Living and the Dead - 19 December 2025
After so many years with Fallen London, one of the pleasures of working on Mandrake is getting to explore things that are barred by the lore of that setting. The first thing that comes to mind there is weather – Mandrake can have real rain, and snow that is not (usually) supernaturally menacing.But at this darkest time of year, it's another example I'd like to talk about – specifically death, and undeath. Although the boundary between life and death is more porous and negotiable in Fallen London than reality, its lore compels us: there can be no true ghosts or hauntings.Killing the DeadIn video games, the unquiet dead tend to be numerous, anonymous, unrelentingly violent. And in turn, violence is the answer. If it doesn't work, probably your weapon just isn't magical enough.This is, of course, because video game mechanics are commonly focused on violence, and they require a large (and o…
- Light and Shadow - 12 December 2025
Watch on YouTubeHere's Mandrake's art director Toby Cook with a behind the scenes view of Chandley, showing how we've converted it from pure 2D to true 3D! This allows us to do so much with light and shadow to make the environment seem more grounded and believable; an important part of giving the place character that can develop across seasons and over time.
- Meet the Yolf - 9 December 2025
We're in the Wholesome Snack, alongside some other choice delicious morsels. If you found us there, welcome! Our little exclusive in the showcase was a proper introduction to your neighbour, the Yolf. Sometimes it visits the tree outside your lodge. It has business with you, after all.What is the Yolf? Some things must be taken as they are. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there a Yolf rather than no Yolf? Every world has its mysteries; be glad for them.Here's the full live stream, which was just broadcast at time of writing. In the tradition of our monthly newsletter, we thought it would be fun to share our recommendations from the stream!I played and really enjoyed Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley. Moomin stories are not only iconic but timely, with their themes of living alongside nature and trying to maintain community even with neighbours who might be more irascibl…
- Preposterously Luscious - 2 December 2025
Chris Gardiner - Failbetter's Narrative Director and lead writer on Mandrake - and senior artist Erion Makuo talk about their character design process. Chris: Erion Makuo, we meet again.Erion: Chris Gardiner, my friend in arms!Chris: Last time we talked, we discussed your work on the interiors of our characters’ homes. This time I want to talk about your preposterously luscious character designs, and I should warn you I’m going to be embarrassingly gushy about them.Erion: Oh no.Chris: They’re just so thick with detail and personality. See, dear reader: Chris: For goodness’ sake. Look at it. For context: these are the illustrations that appear next to the dialogue window when you're talking to an NPC. Ok, let’s talk about your process first, then dig into some examples. I suppose we start with a written character profile, written by either myself or George Lockett, our other Mandrake wri…
- The Chaos of Nature - 24 September 2025
Until now, we’ve mostly been working in Fallen London, a setting that substantively takes place in a cave, with little in the way of sunlight, seasons, or real weather. In Mandrake, we’re making a new visual world from scratch, which as you might expect begins with asking questions: what are our visual touchpoints? What are we trying to say about the world? A Grounded WorldMandrake has a fantasy setting, but we want it to feel like a believable, natural space. We started with British landscapes. It’s very helpful of them to be as varied as they are, whether it's the Yorkshire Dales, Scottish Highlands or the east coast of Scotland (the entire art team lives in or around Edinburgh, so we've got loads of natural beauty on the doorstep). Dollar Glen and Belhaven Bay, ScotlandIn Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies the camera was so far away, much was left to interpretation in the environment (and…
- A Mandrake by Any Other Name - 5 September 2025
The mandrake root has been a staple of folklore and magic for well over a thousand years. Often eerily human in shape, with little arm- and leg-roots sprouting from its 'torso', it was assumed – due to the magical principle of sympathy, whereby a thing is believed to hold power over that which it resembles – to have various magical properties. The smell of it could drive away demons. It was a popular component of fertility spells. Witches used it in the unguents which gave them the power of flight. It was perilous, too. Not only was it deeply poisonous, but legends said that when a mandrake was pulled from the ground it would scream, and that anyone who heard it would die. Ambitious practitioners suggested a heartless workaround for magicians hoping to get their hands on fresh mandrake: get a dog. Tie the dog to the root. Go a long way away. Call the dog.As perhaps the most famous of ma…
- Home and Hearth - 22 July 2025
We're so happy to report that Mandrake has sailed past 50,000 wishlists, and counting. It's wonderful to share our game with you and see your enthusiasm in return! Today, we present a conversation between Erion Makuo, Senior Artist, and Chris Gardiner, Narrative Director, about her work using characters' homes as a vehicle for story and mood.CHRIS: Erion! Tell us who you are and what you do! ERION: Hey! I’m a fantasy illustrator and make art for books, Dungeons & Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering. For Mandrake, I paint the character illustrations and some of the environments. It’s my first time working on a video game.CHRIS: I find that last bit very difficult to believe, for reasons that will no doubt become clear in this conversation. I wanted to talk to you about your work on characters’ homes in Mandrake – particularly the interiors, because they’ve turned out to be such rich, playf…
- Really, no cannibalism? - 17 June 2025
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 response…
- Welcome to Chandley - 11 June 2025
Hello everyone, and thank you for the warm reception you've given to Mandrake so far! We're doing a Q&A on Discord this Thursday if you have any questions for us. Until then, here's Chris Gardiner, lead writer on Mandrake. -- HannahWhen you arrive in the village of Chandley at the start of the game, Rosen – the village leader – greets you. "Welcome to Chandley! It's small, it's complicated, and everyone's got an opinion." Chandley is one of the most important places in Mandrake. It has the densest concentration of characters, and because it's where many useful services are available, you'll spend a lot of time there. It acts as a window onto the wider world – this is a whole new setting, with its own mysteries and secrets to uncover. And it gives context to your arrival and actions as its residents react to them.After all, the Mandrakes were once the overlords of Chandley, and everyone…
