tudydev 2022-04-06 05:02
I really liked the beginning of the game, sadly camera was stuck looking down, I think it's because of the game being in browser.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → Shades of Deception
By amastryukov, zuhairghias, axlplosion, elq, 4ahizon, Mahad420, gnahzanit, Deathhound, Ceyhun Yanikdag, Longsilvr and Makhan
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 60 | 4.15 | 75 | |
| Fun | 333 | 3.70 | 75 | |
| Innovation | 460 | 3.53 | 75 | |
| Theme | 1104 | 3.24 | 76 | |
| Graphics | 111 | 4.43 | 76 | |
| Audio | 49 | 4.23 | 76 | |
| Humor | 324 | 3.63 | 73 | |
| Mood | 37 | 4.37 | 75 |
I really liked the beginning of the game, sadly camera was stuck looking down, I think it's because of the game being in browser.
I really like your game. Beautiful style! I got stuck at the interrogation scene. I couldn't click anything. In the first scene the camera was drifting to the left side all the time. I would like to play it more, hoefully you can help me out.
@miime Thankyou! To interrogate a suspect press [E] on the chair in the interrogation room and open the "Evidence" tab in your notebook [TAB]
@deathhound Ah, I see. My brain didn't connect that part.
Voice acting is amazing! Loved the choice of detective at the start of the game, and the punny names.
I almost got stuck after having found all the evidence. I couldn't find any way to dismiss my notepad. I figured it out after switching back to the game page and re-reading the controls. It would have been nice to have all the controls shown on screen in game.
Afterwards, I made it through the rest of the story. Impressive number of sets for 72 hours. Loved the ending twist.
One question remains. Is there more than one ending? Could I have survived longer?
Nice story. Quite a bit of content: models, voice acting, story. I noticed 2 easter eggs: LD50 and car warranty.
Did not get how it connected to the jam theme except of the ending tho. Also controllers a bit confusing, it took a while to figure out how to start interrogation.
that painting did not need to be as creepy as it was -still traumatized individual
Nice and clean story progress. Props and notebooks worked great. Some really good speakers. Well done.
Looks great, plays great. The audio volume balance was off, at least on my speakers- I found the dialogue a little too quiet and the sound effects way too loud. Impressive game for a 72 hour jam!
Very cool. Impressed with amount of assets you were able to create in the time you hade. Cool entry!
Very impressive game, love that you guys added voice acting, it brings a lot to the game. The menu with all the evidence was a great touch. I enjoyed that the project had a cohesive visual style, It was quite a lot of assets to pump out in such a short window. Great Work.
5/5, no more words needed.
Noir rules em all.
Incredible that this was made during a jam. Hats off to you and your team. Tonally, narratively, and visually the game is stunning. I would easily purchase an extended experience if your team continued to work on it!
@john-livingston thank you! It was a hectic experience and only possible because everyone on our team worked incredibly hard to make it happen. This was the first time we had a team of this size, and it taught us a lot about the pipelines and strategies to optimize our workflows. We will explore the potential to expand the experience into a fully-fledged title in the future.
I liked the game overall espacially the voice over XD. That's a lot of content and hardwork in such a smoll timespan.. GREAT JOB!!
This game was amazing for being done in three days! There was a lot of content packed, and was a lot of fun! I really loved the voiceovers too and the names!
Really impressive game, the storyline hooked me from start to finish and the atmosphere was very well put together, especially thanks to the voice acting.
Things that are rare in weekend-long jams: storylines & voice acting. Plus, the art style is very cool, and matches the noire atmosphere really well. I also really enjoyed the references, like "Ludum Ave" and especially, wake up and smell the aaa-shes.
impressed that you were able to put something this deep together so fast... including full voice acting!
Insanely polished! Good job yall!
The names were funny, and the art was amazing!
Wow, amazing how you have done all of this in such a small time span. The game looks great and is very captivating. Super cool!
I loved all the name puns, you might say it was a "Fanny Game."
Seriously though, probably the best narrative I've played in an LD game ever. I loved how the mystery developed and the (spoiler!!!) twist at the end.
The audio mixing could use some work though, in almost every dialogue scene one person was too loud and the other was too quiet.
It's a huge work for ludem limit time. Greate work. Pretty visual style. It's reminded me closed "blues and bullets". Thx for this feeling.
@notexplosive you're right on the audio mixing, it still needs some work. I did some of the sound mixing post jam because the volumes were off but there are still adjustments to make due to the fact that the player character and phone voicelines happen in 2D space centered on the player and the external voicelines for suspects occur in 3D space and are centered on them.
Really nice work on the graphics, story and audio. The amount of voice acting, story and content was impressive for a jam.
I think the issues I had with the mouse bugging out was either my mouse settings or browser (Vivaldi).
This is nice! And a team even bigger than ours. I imagine keeping it all organized was difficult.
- Cell shaded like graphics very appealing. Characters were very cool to look at, though some more animation would have been nice. - The whole audio direction was great. Really added to the atmosphere. Also all that voice acting was nice and really did add to the mood. - Love the names just all around. - And that ending! We don't often find a full story around here.
My only complaints are mostly things related to it being a jam game. Regardless here they are:
- Gameplay wise, it needed a bit more. I liked we could rotate the items, that was immersive, but I don't think there was a point to it, which was disappointing. - Looking around for evidence was pretty simple, and if that's the main game then that needs to be more difficult; maybe have stuff better hidden with perhaps a puzzle aspect to finding things. - I felt a bit sluggish as well, and would have liked a bit more speed.
Overall this game kept me playing from start to finish, and the polish level is SO high. I don't if you intend to pursue it more, but the style and atmosphere really feels like it needs to be explored more, and I'd be super curious how you'd extend the gameplay.
Wow! What an awesome game! Graphics are outstanding. Music and sounds are on point. Navigation is flawless and intuitive. Very enjoyable game. Would love to have been able to play another level. I would easily spend hours playing this. Well done and congratulations on a super game. 5 stars given all round.
Edit: I thought the gameplay ended after all the evidence was collected. Did not realize you could actually go interrogate the suspect. Would be nice to get a reminder about which controls to use to so that could continue to the interrogation.
went back and managed to play the whole game. Enjoyed it and yes, the end was a wonderful twist!
Really great entry! I really like the graphical style and writing—the names are hilarious. Spirited voice acting and comically moody stylized visuals elevate this game to a place of regard.
I went through the apartment door and fell out of the map at one point, but it is a testament to this game that I sped through the game again so I could finish it. Nice work all!
I'll be surprised if this doesnt end up in the top 10s. Everything from the Sound design, the graphics, the witty names that made me laugh without fail, the voice acting (specially the italian mafia dude). This game was a real treat, great work!
very good looking game! i'd love to keep playing but got stuck in the beginning, not sure why, but one thing i saw was that i got the "E" prompt for interacting wih the car but it didn't work (the other objects worked fine)
It has a great mood and a cool use of lighting and oversaturated colors to mark important spots. The atmosphere reminds me of The Wolf Among Us, great work!
The game is really good!
The art and audio are really good.
The only whing was that I couldn´t finish it. I was not able to find the 9th object :(
Congratulations for the entry!
Oh my so many people work on it and looks great, Good job guys!:)
Wow! A neo-crime thriller in a 72-hour game jam? Almost unexpected :D
The graphics, audio work, and story are all incredibly impressive for the short timeframe. My single issue would be with the lackluster connection to the theme. I can't figure out what it is I was delaying. Other than that though, awesome game. Good job!
Great looking game with a really nice atmosphere, and lots of content! Love the main idea though I agree with cyzaine that the main gameplay could be a little more challenging as it's very easy to both find the items and to guess which ones are the ones to present to the suspect, and the objects are a bit on the nose sometimes as well, as they obviously aren't items that would be left at a crime scene so carelessly. Perhaps lean into that humor more if you think this kind of item placement is fun and an important element of your game, so it acts as an element of humour.
Perhaps having to select options to state as your reason to present a certain object could make it more interesting.
Great experience though, great work!
Wow, simply amazing. You did a great job there. My favorite entry so far. Graphics are amazing, gameplay is simple, yet effective. Mood is insane. Congratulations!
This is just something else. Games this complete are not a common sight, let alone in 3D. Everyone did a great job but voice acting is the best part. My only complaint is that there could have been more gameplay to it, e.g. during interrogations. [Stream](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1449310095?t=2h7m14s)
Fantastic atmosphere and setting! The 3D models were charming and cohesive with that great blotchy texture style.
Super impressive work (particularly the puns). I think the cursor doesn't always lock in properly after you exit the journal leading to the camera being fixed in a particular version in the web version. The writing, audio, mood and graphics are all amazing. Since the game is good enough to warrant a more critical eye I would say that it never felt obvious which items in the interrogation were relevant and questioning a person about the wrong items several times in a row broke my immersion a little. Not being able to make mistakes also removes any tension the game had, but the atmosphere built was more than enough to keep me interested. Really good job
Wow, that was very, very impressive. I really enjoyed playing your entry. The mood, the level, the music and dialogs where all very nice (I especially liked the puns). I only have two complains (they're nitpicks really): - I got myself stuck looking for the exit in the interrogation room for quite a while, because I couldn't find the door which was hidden in the shade. - Sometime the audio level goes from quiet to very loud Nonetheless, this is by far the best submission I've played so far.
I was wondering if there was a second ending ? I played the game twice trying to collect all the evidences again in the last room, but got the same ending again. Anyway, good job for your entry.
@cyzaine Thank you for the comprehensive feedback! We have slowly grown out team over time, but at our previous peak we had 6 members. It was definitely a challenge to manage, and we've conducted postmortems to improve our workflow for next time around.
We might consider pursuing it as a full title (with the obvious narrative change to avoid it being predictable and stale) at some point in the future.
@cyzaine @okamit I agree that in terms of gameplay it was a bit simplistic. I would have loved to add connections to evidence, additional types of evidence (fingerprints, digital) but alas, the limitations of our workflow kept us from achieving such great mechanics. We have made plans to address our shortcomings in this regard, and hopefully our future entries will be more comprehensive. For this time, we chose to approach the game as a narrative-based experience instead of giving players an actual challenge (which would be difficult to balance).
@picapica @the-fazzo first level has a notorious piece of evidence that about ~40% of players miss, and ~60% of players find immediately, and that is the glasses beside the body. In total, there are 9 pieces of evidence in the first level: two right at the start, two beside the trash can in front to the left, one in the corner behind the two dumpsters, one in the small alleyway, and three beside the body. The car is interactable, but it is not a piece of evidence, as you must first collect all small items first before the car becomes available. I suggest you give it another try, as you are missing about 70% of the game!
@the-enigma Thank you for playing! There are some issues with WebGL builds that occur on some browsers and setups that don't occur on others. It sucks big time but I'm not sure what can be done on our end to resolve them. In terms of which evidence is relevant during interrogations, the Suspects tab in your Notebook (TAB) can provide some details to help you navigate (e.g. Luca Verdere has a "sweet tooth", and you find a box of half-eaten donuts at the garage, etc)
@eptwalabha Unfortunately, there is no second ending. The last room does not require you to collect any evidence, just the one piece of evidence that Benny tells you about (looking behind the painting).
Really good game. 9.75/10
Really impressed this was made in just a few days! No doubt you have prior experience developing these kind of mechanics. Good job!
Really cool game. The graphics are great (I especially liked the scene where you look behind the painting). Having full voice-acting and this much content is really impressive.
One nitpick: Rotating evidence doesn't feel right, I think the rotation axes should be parallel to the screen instead. Also, the connection to the theme feels a bit tenuous. But that didn't really detract from the game. Great job!
Very cool game. The atmosphere was very dark. I liked the voice lines.
Really impressive as a jam game--I really wasn't surprised to find out the size of the team once I had finished playing...! You all did a great job! :smile:
Great art direction--nice and simple, but gritty and brooding at the same time, which fit in great really well with the music and sound design. There was a definite Wolf Among Us vibe going on in there!
I found myself looking forward to new characters being introduced just because of the names, if nothing else! Great voice acting and well-written dialogue that definitely came across as natural when spoken.
The slow and thoughtful gameplay was a good fit for the mood as well--I think it would scale up nicely if you guys ever decided to make something longer in the same vein, it'd just need to be a little more complex, but it was great as it was for a short experience.
Nice work! :grin:
Gripping story, amazing art and sound. I love the detective genre and this game absolutely nails it. The cel shading made the scenes really stand out. Very smart reuse of scenes and props. Awesome game!
This is a huge game for a game jam! Congratulations on such a polished game!!! Great mood created by graphics, music and story!
Nice work! Really enjoyed the noire styling and had an absurd amount of content for a jam game. Voice acting was excellent and really added a lot of production value to the whole thing and the simple art style made the game feel super cohesive.
Wow, that was a HUGE game and LOTS of content for one game jam, marvellous work. Voice actting - as many people already noticed - is amazing, big fan of whoever was voicing the detective. It was also really moody and entertaining, keep up the good work!
very beautiful work. loved it enjoyed it. good writing and very polished game. loved it all only thing would be you can push the sounds (especially the dialogues) a bit louder.. the voices felt like people were further away than they actually were in gamespace.
What a brilliant experience. The mechanics, plot, visuals and sound design are all comparable to proper commercial indie releases with similarly sized teams, and the fact that this was organized, designed, programmed, and delivered in such a cohesive and elegant package, in 72 hours, is quite astonishing. Seriously, hats off to the team's organizer(s), and everyone else for that matter.
The loose connection to the theme did make me wonder if the game's concept had been thought up before the jam, but looking at the diversity of the team's previous entries, I don't think the theme was simply shoehorned onto a fully thought-out idea.
Out of all the jam games I've said have potential to become a full, commercial release, this one is definitely the furthest along that path. The gameplay loop works, the polish is there, the art style has been nailed, and all it needs is some more gameplay and complexity. And maybe an action sequence...
I'll definitely be following this team in future jams, and would love to see some behind the scenes or making of's.
Very polished game! So much work been done in 72 hours. The mood is super good as well!
Very very nicely done! This was a super ambitious idea to try to complete in a weekend, but it's clear that your team is more than talented enough for the job! I loved all of the Ace Attorney-esque name puns, and despite their silliness, you still managed to keep me invested in the more dramatic elements of the story as well.
I do think that some of the audio mixing could have used a little more polish, specifically the voices for the characters I was interrogating, but thankfully the subtitles only made this a minor issue in my eyes.
Super duper good job on this one, y'all!
A great story with an interesting plot!) The game is super!
Finally managed to get back to this and I'm glad I did, this is amazing!! I LOVE detective games!!
Wow, a really splendid job you guys did there, I actually had a lot of fun playing this :)
I'm amazed you have voice acting, which is sooo important for this kind of game genre, where characters matter so much! Are those voices you guys? :) It's really cool you can choose two player characters too!
I loved the cartooney texturing look, gave it a cell shading style, this looked like a Telltale game on a tight time budget ;D Like what would happen if they participated in a gamejam :D
The graphics looked nice and together with the music and especially voice acting added much to the mood. Portraying the characters like that was a very clever idea of saving time on rigging and animating which takes forever and still having characters and really fit well with the cartooney/drawn overall look, I also loved the contrast in the colours with the subjects, kind of added a Sin City feel, idk.
Some bugs/stuff I stumbled over but given what you've accomplished no biggie, still letting you know: (maybe you wanna do a postjam version :))
1. the camera on the second crime scene sometimes was a little weird and you could only go left, which I fixed by running in a circle
2. sometimes during investigation the tabs weren't selectable anymore (that's actually where I'm stuck rn, at the crime boss interorgation)
3. do some evidences just pop up after a certain time, or am I just unbelievably blind? ^^ Because the first crime scene took me so long haha, and I was stuck on the car for so long trying to get it, so maybe a little hint to first secure the crime scene would have been nice :) (But for a gamejam, completely fine like that)
I liked that you can look at your notes during investigation and actually would like more games to have this!
All in all a great job and impressive amount of content you guys we're able to squeeze into your entry in only 3 day's time! Good job!
@angiemon Thank you for your extremely detailed feedback! I can answer some of the questions and maybe provide some context to the issues you've encountered.
The voice work was done by 3 people - the male main character was voiced by @makhan, my female was voiced by my wife, and I voiced the rest of the characters.
Our artists really did a fantastic job creating and perfecting the atmosphere and our team is very proud to have them make something so good in such a short time span (not to mention the amount of assets that they managed to create under pressure).
In terms of bugs:
1. This might have something to do with it being a WebGL build that hijacks the cursor, or it could be a browser issue. If you ever pressed Escape to exit fullscreen, or if you were using a browser such as Vivaldi, Opera or other niche browsers, that might also cause this issue.
2. The tabs being not selectable anymore is something I've never encountered either. It could be caused by exiting and entering full screen or the browser issue as mentioned above, but I am not certain about this. If you mean that you are stuck at Benny's interrogation in the alleyway, have you tried clicking E on him before you select the evidence? That might be the issue.
3. Evidence does not appear at any point, what's there is there from the start. I am willing to bet that you missed the glasses the first time around. I'd say you fall into the 60% of players who missed them (the other 40% find them immediately). I think this was an oversight on my end when placing evidence in the scene as they are similar in color to the shadows and the shadow resolution on WebGL builds is poor which makes them blend in with the rest of the objects. The car is also an oversight as it's technically an "interactable" object but is just disabled until all of the evidence is found. There is a goal at the top left corner displaying what needs to be done next but it isn't exactly noticeable and the game just kind of drops you into the crime scene without too much explanation.
Brilliant game. Looks like a normal production rather than a game jam job. Gameplay is simple but enough and fits the game, graphics are very good, and overall game mood and story are great. I only don't get how exactly it's fit the theme. Great work. Cheers!
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