The Case of the missing Bracelet redone!

[Marcelo_Orlando]

::Falls in the doorway:: ack! Ok it's done, the game is finally finished and ready to play.
the main character is Ichigo Naro, upon arriving at school one morning Nanako (a friend) comes to him with a problem, she has lost her favorite bracelet and she believes it was stolen. Now it is up to him to find out who stole it if infact it was stolen at all. The story is pretty simple and the puzzle or mystery may be easy or difficult depending on your deductive ability.

P.S. Ignore that first thread, I was at another computer and having trouble interacting with the net.

So enjoy and let me know if you have any problems and such. good luck!

Game play is about 20-30 mins

http://www.renpy.org/w/images/0/07/The_ ... acelet.zip
Win

http://www.renpy.org/w/images/6/63/The_ ... celet2.zip
Lin

http://www.renpy.org/w/images/0/0a/The_ ... celet3.zip
Mac

[TMBpower]

Downloading now, I'll let you know my thoughts when I'm done!

[Marcelo_Orlando]

Ok, hope I didn't make it to easy.

[TMBpower]

Finished!

It was nice that you had a long list of characters; however, since they had such short introductions, I got confused who was who, and who to be suspicious of the crime. With the amount of characters Ichigo meets, it might be a good idea to maybe have his investigation endured over the span of a couple days instead of just one. After a while, I was rushing through the story toward the end. And when I got there, it took me forever to find the good ending. I was worried for a while that there was no way to get it...the endings were well thought out, though! As for your character art, I think it was a little stiff and could use a little bit more work, more expressions, ect. The music choice was good, and the beginning was quite funny, hahahaha~

I think you have a good game on your hands, congratulations!:)

[Marcelo_Orlando]

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it. Yea the characters all for the most part had short intros, that was because I was more concerned with the plot than the characters. It was very important that the case wasn't to easy or to hard. Now that I have a better idea of what and how I can do things, if I make another mystery game, the story will progress over a week if not longer giving you more time to investigate and gather clues. The character art, yea I'll be sure to make the expressions and standing positions more diverse for my next game, the back grounds as well. Thanks again for your input.

[PyTom]

BTW, any chance you could attach your game files to a forum post, rather than uploading them to renpy.org? The filetypes are all wrong, and this makes it hard to figure out what's what.

[Marcelo_Orlando]

ick! Sorry bout that, I'll get right on it!

[vnr4]

The Case of the Missing Bracelet reviewed at VNR4.

[Marcelo_Orlando]

Thanks for the review, I didn't think anyone was downloading it lol

[DaFool]

Marcelo, can you edit your first post to change the download links to files uploaded as attachments to this forum?

Using the Ren'Py wiki to (albeit, cleverly ) host your files is a bit...

Anyway, just so that this game can be listed already (along with others). Thanks.

[azureXtwilight]

I think I've heard the music somewhere.... Could it be fatal hearts?

[ashogo]

hey I just played the game

It was a lot of fun, I always love mystery games (even though I suck at them). The characters were pretty good, although I agree with TMBpower that it's kind of hard to keep track of all them in such a short amount of time. I figured out the final solution when I saw the right option, but it probably would've taken me a lot longer to figure it out If it weren't multiple choice. Overall it was really solid, I liked how serious Ichigo gets about the case, as if he's an LAPD cop or something.

btw, what did you use to make the art in this game? It's not hand-drawn, I can see, but some of the characters look pretty nice.

oh yeah and,

just to check, how many good endings are there? I'm assuming 2 (I was hoping there was a Sakuya ending : P) Which brings me to the last question...why'd Nanako hit you at the end? The kiss was nice but she has to punch you out first? I must be missing something.

[Marcelo_Orlando]

Yea, two songs are from fatal hearts, (hope I don't get nailed!)

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it, well the thing about getting to know the characters well, this was my first game and I spent more time on making sure the story and clues were solid than anything else. It would have been sad if the mystery had a bunch of holes in it lol

I used cellshader and 3D for my art and a bit of Photoshop.

Yea there are two good endings, I was about to add a third but never did. Nanako? well that was supposed to be a thump sound, as in she dives on top of you lol guess I better get better sound effects...

Oh yea, and I should have the links fixed by this weekend

[Jo'ogn]

I just have played the game once: not solving the case!

I won't attempt to make the standard mystery game where you're not really solving the mystery rather than it on folds in front of you or as the story continues. I'd like to try a different style putting the player in complete control of the investigation. They will be given complete authority to look into the case as they see fit and it will be up to them to piece together the puzzle and solve the case.

Reading this created big expectations within me, I have to say. However I felt the "case" rather unfolded in front of me. Pretty much in the way you said you would not be doing it...

I hit on one girl rather than asking her about Natsuki, so I seemingly got only the choice of 3 bad endings o_0 I did not seem to get any chance to change the course after I decided to hit on the girl!

I was anticipating the moment were I could get out my list of names and see it. To chose who to ask and what to ask them and then making check marks. This "complete control of the investigation" you said you would give... but it never happened.

I furthermore felt that none of the (rather arbitrarely) accused girls was really suspicious. At least not in the path I chose. Every girl appeared only once and the only clue seemed that two of them went to the locker room. As a player I wasn't really picking up (m)any clues at all.

Do you know the game "Cluedo"? There was also a Commodore 64 game called "Killed until dead". Combining ideas of their game play with your story could make the investigation less linear.

Tip: if you turn the Wav files into ogg/mp3 the download will be about 15MB not 60MB.

I find the idea of a Ren'Py mystery interesting. There is much potential. Maybe you want to make another one with more control of the player!?


EDIT: I played again

and then looked at your script. The choices "to solve" this case do not really base on investigation or clues, but only if you try to get money from Nanako and not hitting on Sakuya... Checking for the lockers myself would be ruled out if I would ask for money from Nanako. Not really ~that~ elegant for a Mystery.

>_>

<_<

[Marcelo_Orlando]

This was only the demo lol this isn't the full version, it would have been kinda hard to stuff my full idea in a game that only follows a simple case in one day. Maybe you missed that part of my post, this was only the demo as I was only just introduced to renpy and as I said before I'm a big fan of mystery but I didn't know how many others were into it. I'd hate to put all that work into a game and post it and no one bothers to dl, I value my time, that I promise you. This demo was also kind of like a survey, I wanted to see if anyone would dl and get the thoughts of those who did and if they would dl another of the same type. I also wanted to see if the mystery was to hard or to easy, the mystery in the full version is much more complicated with many angles to investigate, I needed to see what level to start with. If this mystery was to hard I would have to go back and rethink everything or else no one would want to play it. If I were to create the full version I would do it just as I have written, no doubt about it but from the results I'm seeing it may not happen....I'll give it more time.....

As far as "this" demo is concerned, it's clue based, when investigating clues you want to get as much information as possible, when hitting on Sakuya you anger her thus you're not able to get the clues that she holds that are important in solving the case. I will say that in the full version I plan to make finding the clues much harder so it won't be as simple as right or left. In other words choosing to hit on a girl won't automatically screw up your case or lead you down the wrong path. All of the girls were suspicious because they were all in the class, one thing to remember when playing the game is that you have to look at it from every angle. Oh and asking Nanako for money has nothing to do with the case itself, it only applies to the ending.

Thank you for playing and for your comments