Black Closet [Detective Work][GxG][Now in Testing]

[papillon]

Uploading the other major characters - the PC and the Student Council Advisor

Sorry I've had so little to say about this, but it's such a weird game (what is there to compare it to? nothign really!) and so technically complex that we're mostly busy dealing with cases and code. The game idea has also kind of... expanded a few times to become more epic. Yeah, yeah, feature creep is bad in some cases, but people often complain about my games being too short and really it felt more satisfying to build up to a bigger conclusion.

Originally, you were JUST trying to uncover the mole among your minions and that was pretty much it. By this point, that's basically act 1 of a four-act structure culminating in a BOSS BATTLE and graduation from high school. Since it's the PC's senior year, you're also dealing with college applications along the way, and how well you've been playing will affect which universities accept you.

Other things you may encounter:
Thieves
Drug gangs
Rival schools trying to sabotage you
Steam tunnels
Caverns
Jealous girlfriends
Cultists
Traveling carnivals
The army!

[papillon]

As some of you know this game has been seriously delayed by all the Steam stuff I've been doing in the past year, but it is still a thing!

While we're working on it I had a set of chibis done to keep up motivation - these versions are not exactly how they appear in the game but they get across some personality points, and they're cute, so.

http://philaphobia.deviantart.com/art/C ... -446123489
http://philaphobia.deviantart.com/art/C ... -446123141

(Also, she does commissions if you want chibis of your own.)

[Asceai]

I'm glad this project is still alive. Was a little worried about it

[papillon]

A vague update on this - All but one of the main characters have had routes written (Vonne was saved for last and I'll be getting to her shortly). There are still no CGs but the long-absent artist may have shown up again.

This project kept having to be put on hold so that Spiky could do Steam-related work, so it's only been going forward in fits and starts, but now that Date Warp is out we should be able to get back to it. Again.

More detailed information about the status of this game is available in the secrets area of my forum.

[kitsubasa]

Ooh, I hadn't seen this around until just now, but I am super intrigued. I like the fact that despite the school setting, you're going a very unconventional route with the story and the style of the school itself-- I love the look of the character designs, even just the small sections shown in the portraits, the pseudo-Victorian stylisation of everything really gives the screenshots an interesting sensibility, to match the obviously interesting (to say the least) structure of the game. Also, GxG! GxG with a flirtatious rulebreaking lady, swoon. I'm also pretty intrigued by Rowan at the moment. Average grades and unremarkable, but attending the school on scholarship? How curious.

Excited to see how this turns out! : D

[sasquatchii]

This looks amazing! The randomized plot/different betrayer each time is blowing my mind. I'm so curious as to how you're doing that? Doesn't that mean writing a lot more than usual? How does it work, exactly? Are there random scenarios that you can get each time? (Sort of like betrayal at house on the hill, if you've ever played that!) Or is it more like random elements/pieces of a story that generate and make a new story each time you start a game? Or is it something completely different than that?

[papillon]

When I originally conceived it, I thought your minions might turn out to have completely different personalities if they were actually the betrayer... but with my liking for non-linear narrative, what it slowly turned into was giving everyone reasons why they might do it if given a little push. That way, all their issues and backstories can stay consistent, although the drama level obviously hypes up if they were actually the mole that time.

It's hard to describe exactly without possibly giving away too much, but I'll try to give a quick overview. There's a Main Plot, with fixed timing/structure and some fixed plot elements, but a lot of room for variation. In RPG terms, imagine that you're on a big quest to fight the giant evil dragon at the end, and you have to go to three cities first to learn the dragon's weak points, but instead of you choosing which cities to visit, they choose you?

Solving a city's problems will inevitably give you a dragon clue, but the individual city problems can be completely different from each other, because that part of the plot is compartmentalised. It doesn't matter to the main plot whether the city is sinking into the swamp or facing an outbreak of bees or struggling with government corruption, it only matters that you get a clue to facing the dragon at the end. (For that matter, the dragon could be a different kind of dragon from game to game, as long as it's still a DRAGON and you get the correct clue for that kind of dragon as you go.)

And while traveling from city to city, you may have all kinds of random encounters with monsters who have no effect on the plot at all, but you have to fight them because otherwise they'll eat you. That would be the majority of the little mysteries in the game. Most of them aren't connected and are just things that happen, but you have to deal with them anyway.

Of course there's a ton of text written that you can't see in any single playthrough but that's pretty much how I work anyway. This is also the game where I had the idea to make every single thing the main character says into a player choice, so there are menus out the wazoo and the dialog flows in a more RPG manner.

[papillon]

This sort of thing, for example, is probably not part of a giant over-arching conspiracy... it's just girls being up to no good.

[melelisun]

Wow, the gameplay looks really intriguing! Sounds like it'll have a lot of replay value

[papillon]

Taking a stab at title screen design...

[KittyKatStar]

Oooh I love it! Sounds like a fun game to play at night with the lights off.

[xiaomao]

This is also the game where I had the idea to make every single thing the main character says into a player choice

Sounds awesome!
A lot of amazing indie games just end up being heartbreakingly short, for obvious reasons. So from a player's perspective, I am in favor of adding more stuff. Even if the development takes a lot longer.

[papillon]

News!

The first discount/alphatest versions are now available. If you're interested in this game and willing to help stomp bugs in exchange for getting the game half-price, mosey on down to the Hanako forums and take a look. (You have to be a logged-in forum user to see the Black Closet subforum, it's hidden while the game's in development.)

For those who don't want to solve the mysteries of bugs, here's a shot of some of what we're doing with load/save, trying to address the problem where players MEANT to load a save but accidentally save over it because in standard renpy its a little confusing if you're not paying attention

[jack_norton]

About load/save, if you try to save over an old save, a big textbox with "are you sure you want to overwrite old save?" will appear. I can't see how it is confusing

[papillon]

I have watched enough LP videos to know that it *is* confusing. People don't read those big popups. Seriously. They're distracted, for whatever reason caused them to need to load an old save, and they see a confirmation dialog, and the back of their minds thinks it's asking "do you really want to load" and they click yes. Then they realise what they've done and start swearing.

Other people do read the box and stop themselves from saving over it, but still keep accidentally doing the wrong thing and having to correct themselves. It seems a common problem.