Regeria Hope [Lawyer, Mystery] KICKSTARTER LIVE NOW!

[octacon100]

Updates:

The HD version is out NOW! Download here!







For more information: http://goldengamebarn.com/regeria-hope/

This is called Regeria Hope, and it's a homage to the Phoenix Wright games. I liked the series so much I wanted to write my own stories using the same style. The first episode is now available for free just in time for Christmas, and if enough people like it, I'll make more episodes next year. I'm aiming to have decisions made during the cases affect later cases, and I want to bring in a jury system and have evidence shown affect the story as well. The sprite artwork was done by an amazing artist called Maesketch, and you can check her out at http://maesketch.deviantart.com/ or http://hazakurain.tumblr.com/art )

Sprite Art: Maesketch
Background Art: Sendo

Now there is new background art, I'll include it here too!





If you do try the first episode, please let me know answers to the following questions, so I can improve the game and later episodes:

1. First impressions? Were you you able to figure out the murderer early? How about why they did it? Any surprises along the way?

2. Is the game easy enough to understand how to play? Were there parts of the GUI you tripped up on?

3. Did you like being able to skip the tutorial sections by saying you didn't need help?

4. Were the testimony rebuttal sections too hard? Too easy? Just right?

[mjshi]

Looks amazing~

love the little touch you did there with the names... Brock.... xD I remember an AA game where the first one to discover the body's name was Frank Sawhit lol

1. Impression after 10 seconds: THE NARRATOR DID IT
Impression after 1 minute: Brock looks like a surfer dude...
Impression after 1.5 minutes: OBJECTION- er, I mean, HAVE AT YOU (?)! xD
.... Justine, you're so meannn D:
... WHT, this is timed??
.. why is Regina spontaneously losing confidence xD
. Au contraire...?

In short, you really captured the spirit of the Phoenix Wright games well :)

2. I think it's pretty easy to understand so far.

3. Of course xD I'm pretty sure seasoned AA fans would grumble over sitting through another tutorial haha~

4. Rebuttal sections are pretty easy so far, but I like easy xD
EDIT: That last witness, though... Mr. Changer... I have no idea how to win against him ;_; Judge, give me more time...
EDIT2: Ahhh I didn't notice the interruption button when Artemis objected xD

Love the music and humor so far, great quality for a first release ^_^

[Ferdokki]

This looks exciting! =D
I'm a huge Phoenix Wright fan, and this game also reminds me of a cool interrogation game I played some years ago. It was browser-based, and you played as a cop who had to interrogate a suspect using the right phrases to extract evidence and pin him to whatever his crime was. It was super fun, and this game looks like it'll be great too. =D

[Jessicutie]

I just finished playing through it once!

1. My first impression was that the art is really lovely and the introduction to the case seemed pretty interesting.
The first case intro already hinted at who the murderer was, so no surprises there. This is fine though, since it's similar to the first case of PW.
As for the motive, I guess I was a little disappointed that it was so simple?

I had predicted that the poisoned wine glass was actually meant for Brock.

2. The game was easy to understand and play.

3. I am so glad I was able to skip tutorials.

4. The testimony rebuttal sections were easy.

Except for when I had to stall for time, there was a contradiction when Hemming Changer claimed that his 'twin sister' changed her surname to 'Deed' after the divorce, but Victoria's will (which I assume was created before the divorce) suggests that her surname hadn't been changed.

Since this is the first episode, I think the difficulty level is just right.

There are a few things I would've liked to see more of, though this is just my personal preference.

I would've liked to know more about Jordan and Victoria's past relationship. I know that is it suggested that Jordan was abusive in the relationship and perhaps possessive (enough to murder so that the person won't belong to anyone else). I kinda wished there was some kind of little twist hinted at, such as Victoria may have still loved Jordan and had never gotten over her, which was why she never changed the will and she still wore the heart necklace even on her wedding day.
As for the relationship between Artemis and Regeria (and what is up with Justine?), I'm assuming more will be revealed in future episodes.

Overall I found this game enjoyable. Great job!

[octacon100]

Thanks very much for the feedback mjshi, Ferdokki and Jessicutie, I'm really glad you liked the game and wanted to post!

Jessicutie, I've answered some questions below:

With the wine, Brock is honestly pretty lucky he didn't drink out of his glass, the cops were pretty lapse in their investigation, so no one knows if the other glass was poisoned or not as well.

With the will, it was finished before the name change had happened. Victoria just wasn't very good at keeping her documents up to date.

I like the idea of more backstory for Victoria and Jordan, it would be good to go into more detail on that. I was/am a little worried that people might think that the game is trying to paint a lesbian relationship as a bad thing, which the story doesn't, it's just a thing that happened and they had a relationship, so what. It's just this particular person is a very vindictive and angry person, willing to go to extreme ends to right perceived wrongs. It would be hard to do from the POV of Regeria, but maybe it's something I can do in a HD remake or soemthing.

In other news, the Android version of the game will be live very soon. I'll put up a link as soon as I can!

One last thing, has anyone seen the bad ending yet? I'd be interested in people's thoughts on that. I'm planning on making both endings canon for the next episode. So that means, whichever ending you get, the next episode will treat that as the right ending.

[octacon100]

Here's the download link!

If you liked Regeria Hope, but were annoyed your cat or dog couldn't play, now they can! Just clip their nails and now they can paw their way through the story too. It's exactly the same as the computer version, but portable.

If you have time, please rate the game, and leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

[mjshi]

@octacon100: I've witnessed the bad ending plenty of times, mostly due to me not noticing the interrupt button xD

I'm assuming you're looking for player reactions?
Well--

- Gahh Judge why are you so concerned with your sandwich
- Artemis, you're so mean ;_;
- Hang on, I KNOW that guy changed his gender somehow, people! I just don't know how to prove it D:
- That interrupt button kinda faded into the background with all of Artemis's shouting...

Thoughts? Well...
The ending felt kind of like a rehearsed play ("Cut, cut! Let's restart this scene. That isn't supposed to happen" etc, etc) and someone messed up a line or something...
Extremely sudden, I kind of expected, I don't know, some kind of dialogue with the defendant about how I failed him or something xD
Wasn't expecting a clapperboard saying "TAKE TWO!"

[Hachiko]

Just wondering, since you said "Free First Episode", does this mean the others will be implied as commercial? Because the dialogue box and some of the designs looks too similar to Phoenix Wright.

If not, then sorry for misunderstanding!

[octacon100]

Hi Hachiko,

I'm a huge fan of Phoenix Wright, so I've always wanted to make a Pheonix Wright game, so this first episode was a homage to Phoenix Wright, and I'd like to hear what fans of PW have to say about it.

The kickstarter will include a demo with the new gameplay, which I am currently tweaking right now. I'm planning to make the rebuttals much more dynamic, and include a jury which you must appeal to and make them believe in your client.

I'll have a blog post about the new gameplay soon. In terms of the gui and buttons, I thought that everything was pretty different? The textbox itself looked pretty different to me? It's all red, it's not black on the back, there's a menu in the bottom right corner? With the buttons, it would be great to hear which ones you think are similar, so I can change them. I was hoping I was different enough to not make people angry. That's the last thing I want to do. My xmas present to myself this year is the hd version of pw, and I'm looking forward to playing through the series for what must be the 4th time.

Hopefully that answers your question, please let me know if you have any other questions.

[Hachiko]

http://www.edge-online.com/features/som ... ix-wright/

Even though the color itself is different, it looks really similar. Except in yours, the characters name is inside the dialogue box and the "slash" is reversed. And the background of the 3rd and 5th's screenshot looks like the ones in PW when they're giving a rebuttal (although one can argue those "lines" are typical in mangas/animes!)

I'm just worried if this game is gonna be commercial it might face copyright problems, but if you only plan on making a homage to PW only on the first episode, that's cool! I'm a huge fan of the series myself so I'll definitely give this a try.

[PyTom]

Remember, copyright only covers look, and not game mechanics. I think a genderswapped Phoenix Wright is easily far enough out that it shouldn't be a major problem.

I did play through the game on my Android tablet, and while I enjoyed it, there did seem to be one issue that nearly caused me to lose the game:

The final bit of evidence also applies one sentence later - I was presenting it one sentence late, and it kept getting rejected.

I'm looking forward to more of it.

[Hachiko]

I'm not gonna repeat what I said about the dialogue box.

Anyways, my comments on the game:
+
-I love how Hope and Artemis have a contrast like Phoenix and Miles (like Miles is the 'hotter' one just like Narcissus LOL, though except for the bribery part)
-Love the puns in the names.

+/-
-Timer isn't annoying enough that it's too fast, though you can just load the game again if you feel like you're reading too slow, making this mechanic a bit redundant. So... it makes it more of a "visual annoyance" more than anything else.
-Animation seems a bit clunky at times (ie the judge hammering).
-The "crayon-y" background sort of clashes with the characters' art style.
-Music that plays when both of them are on a 'face off' ends kinda abruptly then there's this small weird silence before the witness/detective say something.
-The title screen, especially Arty's body seemingly 'cut off' looks weird (I legit thought she was the protagonist when I saw her). Placement of the judge and Hope's portraits looks out of place (I would have expected Pharell in it at least rather than the judge.) ... and the background seemed too "spacious"/empty
-It was nice that you are offered choices to accept the bribery, but it needs to be done in a way that doesn't clash with Hope's personality (or at least let the story progress in a way that would let her to change that way). Like in PW there was a scene where you're offered 2 choices, and even if you chose the bad one, Phoenix later wouldn't go along with it anyways because that's not how he is.

-
-Grammar mistakes/typos in crucial moments that ruins the mood (like "a interruption" instead of "an")
-The name Pharell (LOL sorry can't help it xD)

That's pretty much it. Really enjoyed the nostalgic ride. Are you planning to make this game commercial?

[octacon100]

Thanks for trying out the game PyTom! I'm so happy you like it! Thanks for making the game engine, and helping with that bug I had too!

Yeah, the way I've set the game up now only has one statement per evidence piece and vice versa. I should probably change that last statement so that the name doesn't matter in it. Will probably be able to have two pieces of evidence working for one line soon too.

I'm working on a new way for the testimony scenes to play out. When I get a proper version of it set up, I'll probably upload a video of it in the work in progress thread soon. Hopefully this week. Would people perfer to be able to go back and forward in a testimony, or would it be better to see the testimony play out like a movie you can interrupt? It's hard to figure out with out a video, so I'll put one up soon.

[AntiquedFae]

Just finished playing it. I think for a first game with such complex mechanics it was very good! I'm amazed you managed to code a complicated play style so well. I cannot code much at all, so I very much admire this!
Just some things I noticed to keep in mind for future installments (which I am looking forward to, by the way), in point-ish form:

I think the writing and story were passable, but a bit basic and could be elaborated on and had more added to them, to make it more complex and engrossing. This is hard to specify, but things like characterization could have had more, especially for Brock. All of the characters in general though, I feel like could have had more time spent with them. Again, we had the basics of their personalities, but it would have added a lot more intrigue and realism if we saw more of what they were like and had more conversations with them. I understand this is harder to do in a more action-based game, but I think with questioning this would have been a great opportunity to add more characterization. The same thing goes for break times. Going along with this, I figured out the twist way in advance, which made me a little frustrated since I wanted to get right to the point and couldn't yet.

I, like many of the other commenters, also missed the "Interrupt" button at the end. It blended into the background a wee bit too well. Of course, that may be what Artemis was intending.

Unfortunately there was also quite a few typos and misspellings that I couldn't help but be distracted by. I'm not sure if the testing was more focused on the gameplay (that seems to be the main focus of this game) but I think some more time dedicated to proofreading specifically would have helped a lot! The small things can make a big difference in how professional a game looks.

On that note, the main menu image could have definitely used a little more polish, but as I only saw that a few times for a few seconds, so that didn't bother me so much personally. It is what the first impression of your game is when players open it though, so it is something to keep in mind. A custom GUI would have been nice, but I understand the choice to not put one in because of complications.

I'm looking forward to future episodes. I hope you keep on getting better and better, as there is a lot to love about this game!

[octacon100]

Hachinko and AntiquedFae, thanks for the very valuable feedback.

I'm hoping to increase the presentation of the game in future versions of it, with a bit more money behind it, and more art skills on my side, I'm hoping to make the backgrounds and menu pages look better. A lot of it is cost vs quality. I'm also hoping to make it more of it's own entity. To be honest I wasn't even sure if this would be that popular, so I wanted to get an episode out there before committing another year to it.

I can see how the choice to throw the case could kind of come of nowhere, might be better to have some thought bubbles or snarky choices that players could make before throwing the case to make the "thrown case" switch seem believable.

In terms of the story, yeah there could be a fair bit added, along with spelling mistakes fixed,

and this episode won't be the last you see of Brock, as long as you keep him alive.

Might be playing around with a fastest way to finish the case path, along with a getting the whole truth path, and a throwing the case path, in order to get around the whole "I know who did the murder" issue, which happens fairly often in murder mysteries. It's hard to juggle "make sure the player gets it" with "don't bash them over the head with the answer".

Thanks very much for your notes, I'm hoping to use them to make the next episode, or even this episode, better.