eerongal 2022-10-03 16:58
Well, this is an ambitious game for a ludum dare project. The graphics and sound are all on point.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → The Night Owl Murder
By iluvatar, kobylarz and A_Ideas_Design
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 47 | 4.19 | 28 | |
| Fun | 219 | 3.80 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 525 | 3.38 | 28 | |
| Theme | 980 | 3.17 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 27 | 4.59 | 29 | |
| Audio | 16 | 4.48 | 28 | |
| Humor | 455 | 3.06 | 24 | |
| Mood | 10 | 4.59 | 29 |
Well, this is an ambitious game for a ludum dare project. The graphics and sound are all on point.
@eerongal Woaj that was fast, thanks!
@iluvatar dont hate me, but i read and clicked through rather than waiting for the voice acting :)
That said, i actually ran out of time, so i was probably clicking around and going to a few things too much
@eerongal Haha, no hate, it's up to you how you want to play the game! :)
I love the atmosphere. The graphics, sounds (great voice acting!) and music are spot on. It reminded me of Max Payne of all things.
Though I hate to admit it, I couldn't finish it. **Possible spoilers ahead**: I get stuck after talking to both the neighbors. I have the smartwatch and the TV magazine in hand, but I have no clue what to do with them. I can't talk to the mutant nor the other detective anymore, and the only thing I can talk to the woman about, is that they will have a party tonight. What am I missing? :slight_smile:
@mvasko2 You Need to "Right Click" inventory items to read them. Reading TV magazine is crucial for the progress. :)
AND THANKS for your great review!
@iluvatar Ah, I kept trying to left click. The item stuck to my cursor which made it look like I can use it by combining it with something - I didn't know right click does something else. That is a bit confusing, I think the left-click behavior should be removed; or does it serve any purpose?
Anyway, I now finished the game. Great game, I enjoyed the story :slight_smile:
@mvasko2 I'm gonna be completely honest with you. I tried to remove it, but for some reason, I wasn't able to, and it was a last minute thing, so we had to keep it. I added a note in "How to play" section :) Thanks a lot for your feedback. Much appreciated.
Wow, great work! I loved the art, the worldbuilding and the dialogue. And even the voice acting was impressive for a game jam! But I think the use of the theme is actually counterproductive, as it forces you to avoid as much dialogue as possible, which is a shame in a game like this.
Wow! What a standout game - beautiful moody art, quality voice acting and a fleshed out story. I really enjoyed this!!
Amazing looking game with great voice acting! Love to see these narrative driven games come out of a game jam - super impressive! My only critique was that the theme made me feel rushed when I want to engage more and dig deeper. Excellent work!
Wow, this is a really solid piece of work, I love the atmosphere, the art style and the sound design! The voice acting is also surprisingly good for a game jam game! And it uses the theme very well! I just wish it was longer, I would love to know more about this world and the characters! Overall this is a really impressive game!
Re-typing my comment as I posted it on the wrong game, woops! Bravo, what an excellent game you've built. I managed to solve the murder with just 10 seconds to go lol, I was scared I was gonna screw it up :) The dialogue is great and really well voice acted. Thanks and I'd love to look out for more from you!
Awesome game, classical néo-noir ambience. Especially loved the art, but the voice acting is praiseworthy too!
Wow what an atmosphere you created here. the game is very polished for a game made in 3 days. loved the voice acting and the mystery was really cool to solve.
Yo this is pretty good! I like the atmosphere of the place and having everything be mostly black and white made a good fit considering the fact that this is a crime investigation kind of game. Only thing I found a bit odd is how there is only 5 minutes remaining for the chip to die and everyone seems to be talking very calmly, besides that I think it was fun overall. Nice job!
fantastic game, amazing you made this in such a short time. really nice! I was able to solve the case on my first try. Definitely left me wanting a longer case to solve!
Great game, awesome voice acting, well written story and amazing pixel art graphics, but I felt a bit rushed at the end. Would be better if the protagonist accused the killer instead of they confessed it. Other than that, good work guys
This is incredible! So much polish in such little time, the graphics and music are great, the voice acting is great, the writing is interesting. This is definitely one of the most impressive LD submissions I've seen.
Good job!
Great! I enjoyed it very much. The noir climate is spot-on in graphics, audio and the writing. Nice writing, by the way - you did subtle world building better than many recent Hollywood movies :smile_cat: You did a great job on the game, it's a fun experience, feels polished and complete.
I wonder about one thing only - is it even possible to fail/run out of time? I asked everyone about every single thing and looked at everything I could find - and I finished with something like 50 seconds to spare.
Really good game that made me fall into the noir world! Liked atmosphere, sound, narrative and art design!! Thank you so much for such good entry)
This game has the noir atmosphere down, from the visual to the music an dialog. The voice acting was a nice addition. Did you do all of the voices yourself? I liked that I didn't have to go through all dialog options to get to the end; I was able to choose how I would have questioned and worked from there. The going back and forth between the neighbors felt like it would for a detective cutting through the bs.
Nice job.
@sirdorius Thank you so much! Well, this kind of theme is a hell if you are trying to make a story driven game, not gonna lie. This was the most optimal solution we came up with. Could have been better, but that's Jamming I guess, haha.
@alex-de-la-cour Thank you Alex, really appreciate your kind words. I liked your game as well :)
@human-writes-code Thank you my friend! Believe me, we really wanted to the player to enjoy the dialogues as much as possible, however we also had to use the theme somehow. We tried to make it in a way so the dialogues are not THAT much affected by the time restriction.
@zakroutil Thank you very much! It was a fun working on such game. We are all fans of atmospheric story games, so working on a noir detective story was a blast.
@dnich013 Thank you! Yes, I have noticed that your comment was a bit... off, but I assumed I was just too stupid to understand your review, haha! Thank you for taking the time to play and review our game. Actually, if you like this game, you may like our other "full time" projects. We are studio called Digital Mosaic Games, we have released mysterious thrilled adventure Metaphobia as currently working on gothic story Castle Dornstein :)
@cdmaniac Thank you! It was really fun to work on this. @kobylaz is a music magician and a talented voice actor!
@bredera Thank you! Really appreciate your review and thanks for playing our game!
@megafuze Thank you, and I'm glad you liked our game! Atmosphere was #1 priority, so I'm happy it worked! And yeah, honestly we didn't really enjoy the time related theme, and this was one of the lesser evils we had to go with to stick to the theme.
@walaber Thanks! Believe me, sometimes I would love to write an intire book when working on these little jams haha. I'm glad it captivated you like this :)
@gousen-pride Thank you, and I'm really happy you liked the game. It can always be better, but in 3 days you just gotta go with what "feels" good at the moment of writing a quick script, haha. Initially we wanted to go a bit deeper, with more characters, and even multiple endings, but you know how it is... Also, I kinda liked our character Claire, to be a bit proud of what she has done, so her confessing was more like bragging and making herself look important and bossy.
@ale Omg, thank you! It's really nice of you saying that. We were quite happy with the results, but it can always be better though :)
@fabula-rasa Thanks, what an honor! I wouldn't compare this to Hollywood movies, but thanks haha. We were definitely inspired by the old classic. Regarding the time mechanic. Well... technically speking, yes, you can run out of time. However, we tried to make it more relaxing for the player and make them want to focus more on dialogues, instead of rush-clicking through everything asap. So, long story short, yes, you can run out of time, but you should be able to finish the game without any real problems.
@hori Thank you for playing our game! I'm really happy you liked it. I'm glad the noir atmosphere had a positive effect on you. That was the plan!
@aristurtle Thank you! Yes, it was voiced by @kobylarz, his wife and me. We really had fun doing that. It can really change the experience. Thanks, I'm glad you liked the dialogue mechanics. We tried to do something that is both short, but complex enough for the player to enjoy the story. So I hope it worked :)
Really moody. Unfortunately I didn't hear any music, only SFX. The limited time mechanic was pretty fun, it made me think twice about every action
Great storytelling and convincing voice acting. I like the noir pixel art. it reminds me the old adventure games somehow.
@sipfindel Hello, I am so sorry, we didn't experience any bugs like that. I would assume that maybe all sounds were missing, but only music, that's really strange. Anyway, thanks for playing our game and I'm glad you appreciated that time mechanic. That was exactly the point: "think about your decisions". Sometimes people just click through dialogues as fast as possible.
@kostas-nik Thank you! Yes, old adventure games is actually what we do, haha. I'm glad you liked the aesthetics :)
That's a very good stuff. So surprising to find a fully voiced game made in game-jam. And voiced good! I especially liked Rogers's acting.
My only gripe is that art just a bit too much pixelated, but otherwise it's 5 stars. Mood, theme, good writing. Ghost character is nice, the setting is intriguing.
You nailed it.
That is art. The story and voice acting were brillant, and I loved the deeply contrasted pixel art - legible and gripping. One of the most impressive entries in terms of moodiness.
Beautiful! A lot of my feedback has been covered by other people already, so the one new comment I have is that it would have been nice to have explicitly marked "leave" buttons on the screen, both to make them easier to find early on and also to assure players that they're not missing anything. I spent a bit of time in the hallway trying to figure out if there was another direction to face or something like that to talk to more people. You absolutely nailed the mood here, super cool.
Cool game! I solved the murder :)
The mood was great, that voice acting and that noir music worked in perfect harmony! I liked the story unraveling when questioning suspects one after another. Black&white&red graphics had a nice sin city feeling to them and the art fit the cyberpunk noir theme nicely.
How to leave the scene was not very obvious and I first didn't manage to read the magazine because I tried first picking it up and then right clicking, but that's probably just my bad. The left click mechanics on items could probably have been left out altogether if you couldn't use items on anything. (or maybe I just missed some easter egg)
Anyways, complete and polished game. Great job!
The pixel art and voice acting are super good. The atmosphere is awesome. Good job!
I won :D Amazing game, 5/5! I loved the mood, the worldbuilding and the gameplay -it was pretty refreshing to see a take on theme that wasn't happening real-time, really creative. The voice acting was also a nice addition, as well as the moody music. One of my fave entires so far!
What a pity there is no web version :( From the screenshots looks just great!
Great Art
O.K. Gameplay
Good story
Longer playtime
:dvd: :dvd: :dvd: :dvd: :dvd: