Iowa City programmer leading effort to create follow-up to 1990s computer game The 7th Guest

Fan fiction rarely makes a commercial splash, but an Iowa City video game developer is hoping to change that.

Programmer Ryan HoltKamp is working on The 13th Doll, a game based on The 7th Guest, which was released in 1992. He reached out to other fans of the game on the Internet and found a 3-D modeler and a music designer.

'We wanted to build a studio that produced other games and we knew that The 7th Guest had a big fan base and it was dormant,” he said. 'We wanted to gain a following and get a reputation for building a quality game by building a fan-based game.”

HoltKamp, who received a computer science degree from the University of Iowa in 2004, said his team had no funding, so they stopped working on the project in 2008 before restarting efforts last spring.

That's when HoltKamp and his team at Iowa City based-Attic Door Productions received a license from Trilobyte to sell The 13th Doll commercially. Trilobyte owns the rights to The 7th Guest franchise.

HoltKamp said the 10-member team has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funding for the project, so they can work full time on development of The 13th Doll. Aside from the United States, the developers come from Germany and the United Kingdom.

As of mid-August, the team had surpassed its goal of $40,000 by more than $3,000.

Funding will be used to enhance production quality and build a better game, HoltKamp said.

'The funding is going to allow us to get a better set, better camera, better quality actors,” HoltKamp said.

HoltKamp's goal is to continue to build Attic Door Productions and make more games locally in Iowa City.

'There are a lot of game developers in Iowa and there's a community, but it's not as well networked and connected,” he said. 'Every game development community has a leader, and we hope to be that and bring people together.”