Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law|British][Demo+Kickstarter][UPDATE 15/08/2017]

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sjgriffiths
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Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law|British][Demo+Kickstarter][UPDATE 15/08/2017]

#1 Post by sjgriffiths »

Update 15/08/2017: We're updating a number of aspects of the project based on useful feedback received so far. Namely, we're going to be updating the character sprites and certain aspects of the GUI, as well as partially reworking the first episode as seen in the demo in order that it be more indicative of the sort of quality and themes of the later stories. Please do follow us on Twitter and our dedicated subreddit /r/AcquittalGame as our main development logs to follow the project's progress -- we'll also be setting up a simple donation system so those who supported the Kickstarter can pledge regardless of its success. We'll be looking to release the fully polished version of game on Steam/iOS/Android before Summer 2018. Thanks, and enjoy!

For starters, here's a first look at the improved evidence menu and standing bar!




Capital punishment hasn't occurred in the United Kingdom since 1964, but, on the 15th March 2019, a colossal domestic terrorist attack on the state's most prestigious law school leaves the criminal legal system in chaos. With thousands of deaths, survivor Storm Sente, a mere 20-year-old law student, finds himself called to the bar to fulfil his premature duty.

But as the so-called People's Movement for the Revival of Capital Punishment grows into an ever-larger, ever-present threat, the bar is by no means a safe place to be. With even the long-standing local police corruption rearing its ugly head, there's more to fight against than the cases themselves as friends become almost indistinguishable from enemies – the very future of law and order hangs in the balance, from forces both inside and out.

Join Storm and investigate crime scenes, defend clients in court, achieve justice for the innocent and – with a bit of luck – uncover the truth of the fateful terrorist attack and the sprawling cult behind it.




Acquittal: Induction™, the first instalment in a planned series, was born from inspiration from Capcom's Ace Attorney series and is in many ways a homage. Alternating between the investigation of criminal cases at the crime scene and the defence of clients in heated courtroom trials, it inherits its basic mechanics from the classic visual novel series, while taking and running with those core concepts.

The game draws more inspiration from both British courtroom dramas and real-life cases, also adapting the genre to a format more befitting the PC/Steam platform, featuring updated, stylish graphics and new Sherlockian game mechanics (such as Testimony Analysis, Brainstorming and Concatenation) in the way of divergent thinking. These new game modes allow for logic and puzzle-solving like never seen before, moving from pointing out simple contradictions in testimonies to deducing complex facts and theories in order to fight your case and uncover the truth.

Featuring a distinctive style, innovative gameplay mechanics and an epic story with a colourful cast of characters to match, Acquittal: Induction is comprised of five episodes, each longer and more challenging than the last. The 1st of these (The First Daybreak) is available to be sampled in the demo. The subsequent episodes will be released incrementally (as free updates included in the purchase) as development completes with funding.

This law-drama adventure game will be available for PC, Mac and Linux, to be released on Steam.
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The first episode of Acquittal: Induction has been completed, of which the entire first half is available for free to download as the demo. With further funding, the remaining four episodes will be completed in turn and released incrementally, as updates to the original game. Releasing episodes in this pseudo-agile way ensures security for the project, allowing players to be able to download and start playing content as soon as it's ready, rather than waiting a potentially painfully long time until the entirety of the game is completed.

In addition, we'll be launching on Steam in order to get the game released on one of the best and most powerful distribution platforms around, supporting cloud save services, achievements, and much more!

Though produced, developed, programmed and written by Procella Games, a great number of hugely talented people have already contributed to the various elements going into the game:
Not to mention the wide range of voice talent:
The graphical interfaces and sound design for the entire game have already been fully completed. The original soundtrack has been fully composed (available physically as a reward tier...!), while the tracks for the first episode have been fully mastered - funding will also complete mastering for the rest. Here's a sample of the orchestral/electronic soundtrack as composed by Caleb Cuzner/Sherrick Wiegel and arranged by Ryuno.

Acquittal: Induction's sleek GUI was designed by Juan Mojica, allowing for streamlined organisation of collected evidence and personnel profiles, with the dynamic screen animations and stylish divergent thinking interfaces being designed by Lazcht of Stellar-Ø.

As such, the majority of funding for the remainder of the game will go into producing more of the vibrant character designs and animations and stunning backgrounds. The backgrounds for the courtroom were designed based on real British Crown Courts, expertly brought to life by Badriel, with the colourful cast of characters vividly designed and realised by Daphne Robinson and fluently animated by David Fuentes.
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I've always been interested in English criminal law, and have toyed around with the idea of bringing the magnificent British courtroom dramas into a collaboration with one of my favourite game series, Ace Attorney. I hope fans of Phoenix Wright, Britain, criminal law, visual novels and PC gaming can all come together and hopefully enjoy this exciting project! Please do check out the demo, share your feedback and comments, follow us on social media and help share with others! :D In particular, liking us on Facebook and/or following us on Twitter is by far the best way to stay up-to-date with all the incoming news (we've also launched a dedicated subreddit).
Last edited by sjgriffiths on Tue Aug 15, 2017 2:32 pm, edited 20 times in total.

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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law+DEMO] [KICKSTARTER soon]

#2 Post by Dovahkitteh »

This looks awesome! As a huge (like HUGE) AA fan, if the avatar didn't give it away, I'm super pumped for this. Gave you guys a bump on social media, and I'll be sure to check out the demo! Just based off first impressions, your art and GUI look great, and the fact that you have voice acting is really appealing. I hope we get to hear some "OBJECTION!"s~
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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law+DEMO] [KICKSTARTER soon]

#3 Post by parttimestorier »

Oh this sounds really interesting! I also really like Ace Attorney and I'd love to see more games play around with similar concepts. Do you plan to have a linear structure like AA, in which messing up a trial just gets you a quick bad ending, or are you planning for a more branching storyline in which mistakes have bigger consequences? And would you say it has the same sort of mix of drama and comedy as AA, or are you going for something a bit more serious? (I'm totally planning to play it either way in both cases, but I just thought the answers to those questions would be interesting.)
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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law+DEMO] [KICKSTARTER soon]

#4 Post by sjgriffiths »

Dovahkitteh wrote: Sat Jul 29, 2017 6:14 pm This looks awesome! As a huge (like HUGE) AA fan, if the avatar didn't give it away, I'm super pumped for this. Gave you guys a bump on social media, and I'll be sure to check out the demo! Just based off first impressions, your art and GUI look great, and the fact that you have voice acting is really appealing. I hope we get to hear some "OBJECTION!"s~
Much appreciated - great to see such an enthusiastic response! :D
parttimestorier wrote: Sat Jul 29, 2017 6:43 pm Oh this sounds really interesting! I also really like Ace Attorney and I'd love to see more games play around with similar concepts. Do you plan to have a linear structure like AA, in which messing up a trial just gets you a quick bad ending, or are you planning for a more branching storyline in which mistakes have bigger consequences? And would you say it has the same sort of mix of drama and comedy as AA, or are you going for something a bit more serious? (I'm totally planning to play it either way in both cases, but I just thought the answers to those questions would be interesting.)
Overall, the story will be linear, generally speaking. However, a number of specific episodes and plotlines will toy around with nonlinearity in a way that AA hasn't quite - posing some pivotal moral questions which may affect the outcome of a case (but not so much that the overall story becomes nonlinear).

In terms of comedy, it does definitely delve into dry, meta humour in particular. However, a lot of the atmosphere is modelled after dramatic British law serials. But definitely a balance of humour throughout!

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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law] [DEMO] [KICKSTARTER soon]

#5 Post by sjgriffiths »

*Added two more screenshots to the gallery!*

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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law, Ace Attorney-inspired] [DEMO] [KICKSTARTER soon]

#6 Post by skyeworks »

I've just played the demo! it's amazing, Me and my sister really liked the humor, the expression and the writing really brought it together! I liked how game does it own thing while still being an affectionate homage of Ace Attorney. The writer could probably write an ace attorney abridged with that dialogue. lol. And I really like the analyze mechanic. I can't wait to play the full version!

Only dislike the save function which it's probably my own fault. (mostly probably because it took me a while to figure it out. (I thought the save game was just a visual) In most renpy games you just click on the box and it saved automatically. But in here, you had to select a box then select word save game (which I didn't realized was a buttlon )
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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law, Ace Attorney-inspired] [DEMO] [KICKSTARTER soon]

#7 Post by sjgriffiths »

skyeworks wrote: Wed Aug 02, 2017 9:01 pm I've just played the demo! it's amazing, Me and my sister really liked the humor, the expression and the writing really brought it together! I liked how game does it own thing while still being an affectionate homage of Ace Attorney. The writer could probably write an ace attorney abridged with that dialogue. lol...
Funnily enough, that's pretty much how the idea started off, many years ago now :lol: As it happens, one of the Kickstarter rewards will be an artbook which talks about the origins in a bit more detail.

And thanks for the feedback! I'll be sure to take a look at the save menu Have added a simple blinking animation to the Save/Load button to make things clearer!

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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law, Ace Attorney-inspired] [DEMO] [KICKSTARTER soon]

#8 Post by skyeworks »

sjgriffiths wrote: Thu Aug 03, 2017 3:33 pm
skyeworks wrote: Wed Aug 02, 2017 9:01 pm I've just played the demo! it's amazing, Me and my sister really liked the humor, the expression and the writing really brought it together! I liked how game does it own thing while still being an affectionate homage of Ace Attorney. The writer could probably write an ace attorney abridged with that dialogue. lol...
Funnily enough, that's pretty much how the idea started off, many years ago now :lol: As it happens, one of the Kickstarter rewards will be an artbook which talks about the origins in a bit more detail.

And thanks for the feedback! I'll be sure to take a look at the save menu Have added a simple blinking animation to the Save/Load button to make things clearer!
Oh wow! I am totally psyched for that kickstarter, now! (Am sucker for artbooks/bookmarks) And I just realized that my post was missing stuff,...Probably because I clicked send too quickly. haha. I also love the characters (Main guy is totally adorable!) and how the poses were similar but not the same. And I like how they actually had a legit reason to do their own investigation unlike ace attorney . (Love you Ace attorney but you lawyers ended up doing gumshoes job waaaay too often haha.) That's all I remember I wanted to say on my last post but I'm probably missing something. haha.

AND YES making the save function blink would make it more obvious! Thank you! That would help a lot to differentiate it from a button from just a title!
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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law, Ace Attorney-inspired] [DEMO] [KICKSTARTER soon]

#9 Post by sjgriffiths »

NOTICE: If you downloaded the Windows version of the demo within the past day, it may not have launched properly for you. This issue is now FIXED in the latest version.

skyeworks wrote: Thu Aug 03, 2017 6:50 pm Oh wow! I am totally psyched for that kickstarter, now! (Am sucker for artbooks/bookmarks) And I just realized that my post was missing stuff,...Probably because I clicked send too quickly. haha. I also love the characters (Main guy is totally adorable!) and how the poses were similar but not the same. And I like how they actually had a legit reason to do their own investigation unlike ace attorney . (Love you Ace attorney but you lawyers ended up doing gumshoes job waaaay too often haha.) That's all I remember I wanted to say on my last post but I'm probably missing something. haha.

AND YES making the save function blink would make it more obvious! Thank you! That would help a lot to differentiate it from a button from just a title!
Brilliant to hear - thanks for the useful feedback! Incidentally the original design of Storm was loosely based off yours truly, so I could take that as a compliment :lol:

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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law, Ace Attorney-inspired] [DEMO] [KICKSTARTER soon]

#10 Post by sjgriffiths »

The demo has been updated with minor improvements, including the ability to click on numbered statements during witness examinations.

Watch this space for the full trailer and Kickstarter campaign within the next day or so!

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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law, Ace Attorney-inspired][DEMO][Trailer+KICKSTARTER live!]

#11 Post by sjgriffiths »

We've officially launched our Kickstarter campaign! Please do support us and encourage others to download the demo and support the project, too, be it IRL or social media!

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pr ... -induction
Demo: https://procellagames.itch.io/acquittal-induction-demo

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ProcellaGames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProcellaGames

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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law, Ace Attorney-inspired][DEMO][Trailer+KICKSTARTER live!]

#12 Post by sjgriffiths »

We've just launched a dedicated subreddit for updates and discussions: /r/AcquittalGame

Also, there may be an announcement within the next couple of days regarding iOS/Android support...

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Re: Acquittal: Induction [Adventure|Law|British][Demo+Kickstarter][UPDATE 15/08/2017]

#13 Post by sjgriffiths »

Update 15/08/2017: We're updating a number of aspects of the project based on useful feedback received so far. Namely, we're going to be updating the character sprites and certain aspects of the GUI, as well as partially reworking the first episode as seen in the demo in order that it be more indicative of the sort of quality and themes of the later stories. Please do follow us on Twitter and our dedicated subreddit /r/AcquittalGame as our main development logs to follow the project's progress -- we'll also be setting up a simple donation system so those who supported the Kickstarter can pledge regardless of its success. We'll be looking to release the fully polished version of game on Steam/iOS/Android before Summer 2018. Thanks, and enjoy!

For starters, here's a first look at the improved evidence menu and standing bar!

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