Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

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redpandastudio
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Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#1 Post by redpandastudio »

We finally did it. Curse of Slate Rock Manor is now available for download.

Image

The free demo is available here:

http://ftp2.bmtmicro.com/Curse_of_Slate ... r_DEMO.exe

More information about the game can be found here:

http://www.visualnovelgames.com/VN-Curs ... Manor.html

Here are some screenshots:

Image


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Image

I really appreciate whatever feedback you may have. Please PM me if you would like to provide feedback via our survey. Thanks!
Last edited by redpandastudio on Sat May 21, 2011 10:14 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor

#2 Post by DaFool »

Hmmm, this announcement got buried amidst the tons of late Sunday evening replies. Maybe tag this game as [commercial]? (I know a few people who only look at commercial work). I was also expecting a blog post at Planet EVN announcing the release, but only saw the Magi sale.

I don't know why the threads you make seem to be empty. You should be more pro-active because there are many commercial makers now, so lots of competition. (If you want to take it to PM, let me know).

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor

#3 Post by redpandastudio »

Thanks for your interest. I went ahead and posted the tag as commercial.

For some reason I am not on the Planet EVN list anymore. I don't know why.

Are there a lot of commercial games? I think the market is still very small, but I hope that it continues to grow.

Thanks for your help!

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#4 Post by Mirage »

The demo is huge ^^;;; It will take more than 5 hours before it will finish downloading. I'll review the demo later after I played.

As for commercial games, there are plenty of them on-going in WIP section, but very few actually ever got released.

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#5 Post by jack_norton »

Congrats on the release. I see you put also a cat in the game screenshot, nice! That will surely bring lot of luck and sales! :D jokes apart, good luck with the game.
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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#6 Post by Mirage »

Ok, I finished the demo. I'm not expecting the demo to be so short considering how big the file size is. I guess the voices must be the cause of the gigantic file size.

The story seems interesting, but I feel the demo ended way too quickly before I can feel invested to the game. I quite like the addition of the voices because it was quite americanized rather than the usual trying-too-hard to sound like an anime dub. There's a lack of soundtrack, but the voices made up for it.

As for the graphic, I like the usage of the photos. It makes everything look realistic. I'm not sure about the anime sprites though. It feels a bit of a mismatch.

There are couple typos, most of them happened to be the names. Like it was supposed to be Trent's mother who's talking, but it was written Delilah. When Gabby was talking, it was written Delilah. And then Maid was written Gabby instead. Officer Dooley was written Office Dooley.

Aside from that, the script is quite solid. I find it pretty easy to follow.

By the way, how long is the game?

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#7 Post by redpandastudio »

Mirage wrote:The demo is huge ^^;;; It will take more than 5 hours before it will finish downloading. I'll review the demo later after I played.

As for commercial games, there are plenty of them on-going in WIP section, but very few actually ever got released.
Yeah, sorry about the demo size. I didn't realize how much audio we had until I had to spend about a month cutting and pasting all of the clips into separate files. I am a little worried that it could affect the games' success, but I think that as long as you stay around 150MB, you're usually okay. The Nancy Drew games are up to 1 gig sometimes!

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#8 Post by redpandastudio »

jack_norton wrote:Congrats on the release. I see you put also a cat in the game screenshot, nice! That will surely bring lot of luck and sales! :D jokes apart, good luck with the game.
I really appreciate your support and thanks for the luck!

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#9 Post by redpandastudio »

Mirage wrote:Ok, I finished the demo. I'm not expecting the demo to be so short considering how big the file size is. I guess the voices must be the cause of the gigantic file size.

The story seems interesting, but I feel the demo ended way too quickly before I can feel invested to the game. I quite like the addition of the voices because it was quite americanized rather than the usual trying-too-hard to sound like an anime dub. There's a lack of soundtrack, but the voices made up for it.

As for the graphic, I like the usage of the photos. It makes everything look realistic. I'm not sure about the anime sprites though. It feels a bit of a mismatch.

There are couple typos, most of them happened to be the names. Like it was supposed to be Trent's mother who's talking, but it was written Delilah. When Gabby was talking, it was written Delilah. And then Maid was written Gabby instead. Officer Dooley was written Office Dooley.

Aside from that, the script is quite solid. I find it pretty easy to follow.

By the way, how long is the game?
You can actually play the demo for a long time (no time limit) because there are dozens of choices available, but you will be stopped before you are able to make significant progress in the plot, and you will be returned to the beginning. I spent a long time trying to figure out the best way to do the demo, and yeah, some choices will stop you pretty quickly. It depends on your luck I guess. I also try to stop the game at areas of interest, so that the player would be motivated to purchase the game and complete the chapters.

The backgrounds and the sprites are mismatched, but there wasn't much that I could do about it because I couldn't afford to paint over 60 backgrounds, though I took considerable effort to find a way to do it. I just didn't have any more money to spend towards the end. When I put the art through focus testing, people did not report significant issues with the visuals.

There were some bugs reported that the names didn't match, however I was unable to replicate them in-game. I'll try to find the rogue "Office Dooley". That's the first that I have heard of that one. I'll take another look in the opening scenes and see if I can find anything out of place. I probably just don't see it for some reason.

I think the game is 15,000 words or so, but I will have to double check. It usually takes people 2-4 hours to solve the case. It depends on how fast you read and whether you skip through the voiceovers. A lot of script was typed directly into the builder, so I have not accounted for that.

Thanks for your feedback! It will really help me as I continue to prepare the next upgrade.

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#10 Post by Mirage »

redpandastudio wrote: You can actually play the demo for a long time (no time limit) because there are dozens of choices available, but you will be stopped before you are able to make significant progress in the plot, and you will be returned to the beginning. I spent a long time trying to figure out the best way to do the demo, and yeah, some choices will stop you pretty quickly. It depends on your luck I guess. I also try to stop the game at areas of interest, so that the player would be motivated to purchase the game and complete the chapters.

The backgrounds and the sprites are mismatched, but there wasn't much that I could do about it because I couldn't afford to paint over 60 backgrounds, though I took considerable effort to find a way to do it. I just didn't have any more money to spend towards the end. When I put the art through focus testing, people did not report significant issues with the visuals.

There were some bugs reported that the names didn't match, however I was unable to replicate them in-game. I'll try to find the rogue "Office Dooley". That's the first that I have heard of that one. I'll take another look in the opening scenes and see if I can find anything out of place. I probably just don't see it for some reason.

I think the game is 15,000 words or so, but I will have to double check. It usually takes people 2-4 hours to solve the case. It depends on how fast you read and whether you skip through the voiceovers. A lot of script was typed directly into the builder, so I have not accounted for that.

Thanks for your feedback! It will really help me as I continue to prepare the next upgrade.
Between the sprites and backgrounds, I would say the one needed to be changed is the sprites, not the backgrounds. I do think the sprites are good, but they don't seem to be compatible to the game's atmosphere. I thought something like semi realism might work better in this case.

For the typo, the sentence is something like "Okay, but we really need to get out of here. Office(r) Dooley has been patrolling the area nightly since..." when talking to maid after you chose checking window.

redpandastudio
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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#11 Post by redpandastudio »

Mirage wrote:
redpandastudio wrote: You can actually play the demo for a long time (no time limit) because there are dozens of choices available, but you will be stopped before you are able to make significant progress in the plot, and you will be returned to the beginning. I spent a long time trying to figure out the best way to do the demo, and yeah, some choices will stop you pretty quickly. It depends on your luck I guess. I also try to stop the game at areas of interest, so that the player would be motivated to purchase the game and complete the chapters.

The backgrounds and the sprites are mismatched, but there wasn't much that I could do about it because I couldn't afford to paint over 60 backgrounds, though I took considerable effort to find a way to do it. I just didn't have any more money to spend towards the end. When I put the art through focus testing, people did not report significant issues with the visuals.

There were some bugs reported that the names didn't match, however I was unable to replicate them in-game. I'll try to find the rogue "Office Dooley". That's the first that I have heard of that one. I'll take another look in the opening scenes and see if I can find anything out of place. I probably just don't see it for some reason.

I think the game is 15,000 words or so, but I will have to double check. It usually takes people 2-4 hours to solve the case. It depends on how fast you read and whether you skip through the voiceovers. A lot of script was typed directly into the builder, so I have not accounted for that.

Thanks for your feedback! It will really help me as I continue to prepare the next upgrade.
Between the sprites and backgrounds, I would say the one needed to be changed is the sprites, not the backgrounds. I do think the sprites are good, but they don't seem to be compatible to the game's atmosphere. I thought something like semi realism might work better in this case.

For the typo, the sentence is something like "Okay, but we really need to get out of here. Office(r) Dooley has been patrolling the area nightly since..." when talking to maid after you chose checking window.
Okay, thanks! That will make it very easy to find. I will look for it now.

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#12 Post by Blane Doyle »

I will be buying and playing this in the near future (LOVING the demo right now!). The graphics are great, and while I also think the sprites and backgrounds don't quite match each other, I think it adds to the feel of the game. I quite like it.

Also... are you aware Sankaku Complex has an article about this? http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/05/1 ... errifying/
Apparently they like it.

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#13 Post by redpandastudio »

Bane Reiko wrote:I will be buying and playing this in the near future (LOVING the demo right now!). The graphics are great, and while I also think the sprites and backgrounds don't quite match each other, I think it adds to the feel of the game. I quite like it.

Also... are you aware Sankaku Complex has an article about this? http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/05/1 ... errifying/
Apparently they like it.
Thanks for your support and thanks for letting me know about the review! They e-mailed me and told me it was up and said that one of the staff said they were afraid to play it at night. LOL! So funny! I think that they may have just been kidding, but I'm not sure... I never intended for it to be a horror game.

I'm glad that you like our graphics. Funding the visual elements was really a hurdle for us.

Thanks again!

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#14 Post by Muse »

Any chance on a Mac version of this game? (I should probably say the same for Linux.) I know there aren't as many of us Mac/Linux users as Windows, but there do seem to be a decent number for us visual novel fans. Just thought I'd ask. :)

Looks quite interesting, and congratulations/good luck on the release!

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Re: Curse of Slate Rock Manor (VN, Commercial, Mystery)

#15 Post by redpandastudio »

Muse wrote:Any chance on a Mac version of this game? (I should probably say the same for Linux.) I know there aren't as many of us Mac/Linux users as Windows, but there do seem to be a decent number for us visual novel fans. Just thought I'd ask. :)

Looks quite interesting, and congratulations/good luck on the release!

Thanks for your interest. I am not sure if we will do a port at this point. It took a very long time to make the game, so I'm not sure if we could afford to do it again. If you have a Mac, try using VM or virtual machine, or boot camp. Some windows games can be successfully played on Macs in this way.

Thanks again! Good luck, and let me know if you manage to get it to work!

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