Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex

The information in this article is from a fan game or fan fiction and is therefore not canon.

Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex is a new murder mystery game that was a fan project in development by Ninezyme Entertainment. First announced on October 2019, Ninezyme had hopes for the game to be the third installment in Roberta Williams' Laura Bow series, although the intellectual property rights (commercial or fan license?) had not been resolved with Activision. The game has been put on hold indefinitely. More recently (2024) they claim to be in talks with Microsoft and hope that they will allow them to proceed as an official game.

Background

LAURA IS BACK!

IN AN ALL NEW ADVENTURE.

After a mysterious package arrives at the offices of The New York Daily News Tribune, an unlikely chain of events sends Laura Bow off on the biggest story that the little newspaper has ever seen. A long journey, an elaborate event, a life changing invention, and many dangerous motives for murder...

Potential Rebranding

While Nynezyme marketing has enthusiastically tried to promote the game as the next Laura Bow game, oozing confidence that the Microsoft will grant them a commercial license. This may not be the final outcome:

…they are concerned that releasing the newsletter update will actually hurt the negotiations “because it quickly got taken out of context by the community.”

AGH: Last we heard was that production of The Mechanical Codex is on hold. Is that still the case?

NineZyme: Laura Bow is still mostly on hold, for the time being, until something more concrete is decided on the licensing. At the moment, we are focused on a different game, Tile Tales: Pirates. The reason for the pause is, we have our hopes set on making an official Laura Bow game, and we want to try everything that we can before abandoning that idea.

AGH: If NineZyme cannot secure the IP, will we see the game under a different name?

NineZyne: If it really doesn't work out, then we plan to rebrand the game and release it as something else. The more we build now, the more we have to redo-rework-rebrand; hence the pause. Also, we could use some additional funding for the project, and we're thinking that Tile Tales could assist with that.

AGH: So what is the official statement in the first week of August, 2024?

NineZyme: All we can really say is... we are talking with Microsoft about the possibilities, and so far it's going well. We're hopeful!

More recent marketing newsletters still continue ie to hype up the game as “pending Laura Bow sequel”:

The success of this game does have an effect on our projects... including our pending Laura Bow sequel.

Behind the scenes

This is currently a fan game, being developed by a company that has not yet negotiated legal license from Activision. For a period between 2021 and 2022 they had removed all references to Laura Bow from their website. By 2023 their website restored the title and references to Laura Bow, but had properly identified the game as a “fan game”.

"Today, there’s an unofficial new game in the works—Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex, a fan-made project by Estonian developer NineZyme Entertainment. Mandel is all for the idea of fan-made tributes, with a few caveats. "I don’t think fan games should rewrite canon," he says. He also expresses concern for Activison’s legal wrath. But for Sierra’s smaller, less famous games, it’s fans who are keeping them alive in the 21st century, with the same passion for history that made Laura Bow so inspired."

External Links

• Ninezyme Entertainment
• nNwsletter, NineZyme Entertainment
• Facebook, Ninezyme Entertainment
• Adventure Gamers, Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex