Novel Engine

The Novel Engine is a game engine developed by NINE100 Studios optimized for use in Tommy Gun Studios' graphic adventure video games. As other proprietary and in-house engines were found wholly unsuitable for the studio's projects, the studio opted to create a unique engine suitable for the games they were intending to create.

Development History
The first stages of engine development began during the pre-production phase of After Death: Season One. Although the engine is largely unique compared to NCS' other custom engines, it is based mostly on the same framework, and thus the first version of the engine was developed fairly quickly. This allowed work on the first episode of After Death: Season One near immediately after the opening of the studio, with the proceeding four episodes being released monthly with any delays. Novel v1 was also subsequently used in Serial, the final game to be built on the first version of the engine.

During and following Serial's development, an improved version of the engine was worked on, with enhanced performance, better optimized effects and improved ease of use. Due to the two team nature of the studio, this was able to be created without hindering Serial's development, and the first game to be built on Novel v2 was After Death: Season Two. The team behind Serial then released the In Decay spin-off Diaries of Decay: Collapse.