I really like this concept, it's kind of like a detective game of your own life, really interesting! I think I may have had some bugs, moving between levels before collecting all of the clues and then having to loop back around, I couldn't really tell whether this was intentional? I also wish the flavour text wasn't timed, and instead that I could click once to inspect an object, and then a second time to dismiss the text? But in any case reaching the fun little end screen was very satisfying. Nice work!
nyhtian
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Yeah so basically holy shit. I love the dithered graphics mixed with the manga printing techniques, just sick. Seems like a visual style you've developed for yourself which I really gotta respect. What really got me was the writing though, oh my god, somehow genuinely triggering me for a situation I've never been in! Really sparked a primal terror in me, congratulations, haha. A true 10/10.
Detective Graves: Murder at Camp Morrigan jam comments · Posted in Detective Graves: Murder at Camp Morrigan jam comments
Wowowow, loved this a lot! The art style was really fresh and well done, and the story was definitely really intriguing, a super fun fake-out in the middle.
I have a few nitpicks for you, though these are so minor, they haven't had any bearing on my rating (if you know what i'm 5aying).
I'm not sure of the capabilities of your engine, but I really really recommend changing the font -- your beautiful visuals deserve more than Verdana!! Nothing too kitsch, just something that understatedly matches the vibe of the game, (a brief look on Google Fonts, maybe something like 'Quicksand'?). It will really take your game from looking like somebody's pet project, into a bona fide, professional and artistic visual novel. Furthermore, using different fonts (if possible) for just the different character names can instantly help the reader more clearly and instinctually understand who is talking, esp for people with CVD or reading processing impairments.
Secondly, your writing is definitely solid, the characters are fun, but I'd love to see them pushed beyond just being 'the peppy one', or 'the moody one', or 'the arcane one'. Your visual character design is just so unique and original, but personality-wise, I feel like I've seen already these characters before, y'know? So just pushing, developing the characters further, making them kinda weirder, really, and trying to pull away from the cliches of character writing. Kind of hand-wavy feedback, but just a direction for to consider working on.
Anyway, fussing about aside, I super loved this, you did absolutely fantastic.
Thanks so much for playing!
Yes, super valid critique. There's a delicate balance between punishing the player for being careless with where they finish their path and making the next targets be in impossibly difficult spots to get to. My plan was to make bonking into the carcasses nudge them slightly, and then if you rammed them 2/3 times, you could destroy them too. This way, a skillful player can try to play carefully, setting themself up nicely, weaving around the carcasses, and using as minimal dashes as possible, while if a novice player gets stuck, they always have an 'out' by kind of brute-forcing it. (Not how I would personally like the player to play the game, but if I can make the carcass destruction satisfying in its own right, then this could be fun in its own way.) But I just kind of ran out of time for that stuff, and focused on finishing the narrative component 😅
Maybe I'll polish stuff up and release it more properly at some point. This was my first time entering a game jam, and my first released game in 5 years, so thank you for the encouragement!
I absolutely adore the styling of the game, super cool, you have a great eye. As another comment says, I had issues with the gun tracking my mouse correctly, I basically couldn't aim at all. Also, even once you die, you're still able to shoot, haha. All the same, I managed to destroy the copter thing, which was cool. I got a message in response, although it kind of seemed like it got cut off? Not sure.
Anyway, really cool vibe, great work.
I really quite like the concept of the game, the switching between the two characters is a really interesting mechanic, but I think I failed to follow along exactly how the two different levels interacted with one another, and I might have accidentally cheesed a section? I got to a point where Seal was in a room with four runes and a blocked door, and Mouse was at a point where he had to seemingly impossible jump. I tried different things but ultimately was stuck and unfortunately wasn't able to finish the game.
But I really think there's something interesting here! You've gone in a super unique direction from the theme for sure. The game is undeniably teeming with personality.
Very novel concept, and great job with the incremental progression of mechanics, felt very well-paced
For my notes: I wish the drinking animation didn't take so long, or maybe only played the first time? I also felt like there was a little too much slow back-and-forth. From a UX perspective, you should definietely be able to push bodies too, and it should be a little faster. I also got a little stuck on level 3 since there was a bit of a lack of direction, or maybe I'm just a little slow, haha.
But beside those nit-picks, you have a really cool concept on your hands, I think it could turn into something super great! Excellent work!
Edit: I reread this and I feel I came across as far more harsh and demoralising then I meant to be. If I can stress: I think the game is super cool, a great concept and clever take of the theme. You did really well. I was clearly just freshly frustrated by the bugs I encountered at the time of writing, haha.
Original comment:
I really like the concept and style of your game, but I had some issues that stopped me from really having a good time with it. I'm sure there were well-crafted interesting intended solutions for all of the puzzles, but the controls were a bit wonky and inconsitent, and the dead-body mechanic too chaotic and unpredictable that it was kind of just a case of mindlessly messing around until I made it past an area. It was also frustrating to make a difficult jump, only to realise you had to die to continue, without a checkpoint post-jump -- it felt like your achievement was for nothing, and made sections really laborious. Most critically, I had a bad bug with the checkpoints where they wouldn't properly update, and I kept getting sent to the one before the crusher wave section. I pressed on, and made it to the end of the platform ride, activated the checkpoint up the top, died, and then was sent all the way back down, so it was a little rough. Obviously it was a bug, not your intention, not your fault, but all the same I wish I could have beaten your game! I'm sure there was a lot of cool stuff I missed.
With all that being said, I adore the style and aesthetic of the game, the intro was super funny and it's conceptually/thematically really strong. Fantastic work, great job.
Super cute game! Love the idea, and the choice of taking the defeated foe as your own or strengthening your own guy.
I think I had an issue of losing the first battle and then immediately becoming softlocked? But I reset a couple times and managed to beat the game. I do think the battle system could use some work -- RPS is cool, but unless I'm missing anything, it's just kind of random chance which one to use? I thought that maybe certain enemies could only use certain types and you might have to judge what you think they can do, but it seems like all of them could do anything, so you might as well just keep clicking your monster's strongest stat and pray from the best, haha. At one point also, I had a monster I liked, and then I tried reviving a carcass, and then it gave me a monster I didn't want, but it seemed like I was stuck with it now, which was a little annoying.
Anyway! Critique aside, I love the concept, the art was super fun, and I think you could totally turn this into something super cool. Fantastic job!
Nice atmosphere and vibe, very creepy. The graphics also looks quite nicely polished.
My main feedback is that there's a bit of a lack of novelty, the game is a little generic. The overly branchy paths of the map aren't too interesting and really only lead to confusion about where to go. Maybe the monster stalking you was meant to be that interesting feature, but once you realise you can outrun it, it's totally trivialised. I also feel like the approach to the theme 'death is an opportunity' is somewhat superficial. I managed to beat the game before losing all my lives, but what would happen if I did? I could just start a new game, no? I feel you could have integrated the idea more -- maybe with each death, your connection to the monster heightens, you run faster and get minor wallhacks, but the monster's ability to detect you increases too? There's a rising tension, each run becomes faster-paced as the stakes increase. Something like that.
In any case, you clearly have quite a knack for crafting a cohesive vibe, and the level is impressively extensive and varied for a game jam, so I really commend you on that! Great job and would be excited to see where you might take this concept!
Great concept, definitely could turn into something super cool! You did well you give the overworld/afterlife very distinct vibes. Excellent use of limited lighting both as a mechanic and as an aesthetic choice, gives a great vibe to the game.
Obviously would be great if the level was longer and had some more difficult puzzles, but you've made an excellent, unique and vibey 'vertical slice' of the game here! Great job!
I'd really love to actually try play the game if you could upload the whole Unity folder as a zip? Just make a new project upload and I'll check it out. In any case:
You say you messed up because the game is "based off dialogue and graphics when I know nothing of the sorts" -- you seem to be falsely assuming that you can't start a thing until you're good at it. A very backwards idea. How else are you supposed to get good at doing writing and art for games if you don't do writing and art for games?
I suspect that you were very happy with your concept of a game, that you had a grand, perfect vision for what it was going to be. Your disappointment, then, comes from the disparity between what you thought you were going to make, and what you actually were able to make. Maybe you feel foolish, and it seems natural to beat yourself up, but be careful: don't beat yourself up for your lack of ability (it is okay to still be learning), what you need to challenge is the expectations/standards you hold for yourself. So long as you hold youself to such an impossibly high standard, you're doomed to let every genuinely helpful learner project be a gut-punch to your esteem. It's like cursing yourself out for successfully playing piano scales because you're not playing solfeggio in C minor.
Basically, if I'm not able to play your game for more specific helpful feedback, a word of advice: make simple, tiny games, and work to polish them a bunch. Even allow them to be bad, and know that it says nothing about you.
If you perceive this stepping-stone as a pothole, as you seem to be doing, that is actually what will be 'messing up'.
Hahahah, super charming and funny, loved it!
Only super minor feedback: some of the jokes in the vocal performance were spoiled by the whole line's text being visible, maybe if the text scrolled visible, some the bits would have landed even harder? At the same time there's a lot of back-tracking and replaying so you do want to minimise the amount of clicking the player had to do, so meh. Also, it would have been handy to see which runes we had collected, just to help keep track, but that's such a tiny nit-pick, I was more or less able to keep track anyhow.
Amazing job, got many genuine chuckles out of me!
Super spooky, got my heart pumping. Great atmosphere for sure!
Okay, time to get critical:
I understand that the crux of the game is to understand the enemy behavior more and more on each run, but I feel like the player isn't really able to intuit the lessons of the game by themself, and they have to kind of be spoon-fed on the death screen? Perhaps finding the tips themselves could be a game mechanic, like, depending on how we died last, our 'last run' character could left different tips for us to find on the map. Just so that it feels like we're not just sucking and the game has to hold our hand, and rather that we're actually engaging with the game as intended. Essentially, heightening the idea that death is actually good and counts as progress rather than a screw-up. That being said, their is something charming about the arcade-like simplicity of the death loop and the desire it instills to be like 'ah, one more try! let's do one more try i was so close!', so there's definitely something here.
Small UX thing: I found it a little confusing that the hide tiles and the door tiles had a similar colour. I understand that it's because you can rotate on both, but I found myself trying to hide on the normal ones. I also really wanted to be able to rotate while fixing the fans to check if the face was close. I understand that this is a deliberate choice to raise stakes, so here's what I would do: make all non-rotatable-on tiles be literally narrower, and have all the intersections be the full tile. Then, you could make only the hide tile have a different texture. That way, it's more naturally intuitive what you can and can't do, and the hide tiles stand out more.
All that being said, great job, very cool scary game! Hope my feedback wasn't too harsh, and thanks for the big dollar! :)
Super spooky, got my heart pumping. Great atmosphere for sure!
Okay, time to get critical:
I understand that the crux of the game is to understand the enemy behavior more and more on each run, but I feel like the player isn't really able to intuit the lessons of the game by themself, and they have to kind of be spoon-fed on the death screen? Perhaps finding the tips themselves could be a game mechanic, like, depending on how we died last, our 'last run' character could left different tips for us to find on the map. Just so that it feels like we're not just sucking and the game has to hold our hand, and rather that we're actually engaging with the game as intended. Essentially, heightening the idea that death is actually good and counts as progress rather than a screw-up. That being said, their is something charming about the arcade-like simplicity of the death loop and the desire it instills to be like 'ah, one more try! let's do one more try i was so close!', so there's definitely something here.
Small UX thing: I found it a little confusing that the hide tiles and the door tiles had a similar colour. I understand that it's because you can rotate on both, but I found myself trying to hide on the normal ones. I also really wanted to be able to rotate while fixing the fans to check if the face was close. I understand that this is a deliberate choice to raise stakes, so here's what I would do: make all non-rotatable-on tiles be literally narrower, and have all the intersections be the full tile. Then, you could make only the hide tile have a different texture. That way, it's more naturally intuitive what you can and can't do, and the hide tiles stand out more.
All that being said, great job, very cool scary game! Hope my feedback wasn't too harsh, and thanks for the big dollar! :)