Locked-In [mystery, drama] - 100% - FINISHED

[saguaro]

Locked-In is a short VN about Jacqueline Brown, a business executive who has a car accident that leaves her paralyzed and blind. Jacqueline struggles to remember what happened to her, and in the third act of the game, she must decide who she can trust: her personal assistant, her sister, or her soon-to-be ex-wife.



DEMOS
[Demos removed]

I am looking for criticism, so if you do take the time to play and see anything you feel could be improved or is stupid or whatever, let me know.

The game is about 80% complete. The story and script are finished, but all of the menu screens need to be customized. I want to add more animations (I want to animate the crows, for example). I am trying to decide if I should attempt to animate the crowds in the backgrounds of the restaurant and café scenes. The final version will have 8 or 9 endings based on the player's choices in the last act, and persistent variables will allow skipping between the first three acts, so hopefully people will find some replayability there.

This was part of a personal challenge to make a short VN in two weeks (failed!) using only free resources (passed--so far). I've found some $$ sound effects I really want, so I will probably end up shelling out a little in the end.

Statistics (for the current version of the game, not the demo):
The game contains 348 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 4,225 words,
for an average of 12.1 words per screen.
The game contains 12 menus

[Egressus]

Looking good! What is in the demo? The first 2 acts?

[kaleidofish]

Wow, the way those animations worked with the sound and music and everything else...that was just great. The whole time I read through your visual novel, I kept thinking, "I have to learn how to do this some day." The demo might not have been that long writing-wise, but I kept stopping the story to roll-back and replay the animations. The storyline was definitely intriguing, too. Can't wait to play it when it's finished!

Caught a few mistakes. I'll put them under a spoiler cut.

"It was the only way I could deal handle it."

"How long has this been going on?" (Okay, I wrote this sentence into my notes but I don't know why I wrote it exactly. CTRL+F it in your script and double-check...I might have noted it because of the pacing or something like that.)

"sponsor," not "sponser"

"I've earned the right, I'm the one that keeps everything together, I'm the one that makes the money." run-on sentence?

"...I was foretting"

It was hard for me to be super critical, but hopefully those mistakes I caught will help you out. Good luck with finishing this!

[saguaro]

Looking good! What is in the demo? The first 2 acts?

It's the first two acts and the intro of the third. Basically, the demo stops right before you get to make decisions that determine the ending.

Wow, the way those animations worked with the sound and music and everything else...that was just great. The whole time I read through your visual novel, I kept thinking, "I have to learn how to do this some day." The demo might not have been that long writing-wise, but I kept stopping the story to roll-back and replay the animations. The storyline was definitely intriguing, too. Can't wait to play it when it's finished!

I'm glad the animations worked out. The graphics are simple so I was hoping ATL could help maintain visual interest. I will release the script.rpy when I release the game, for those who are curious about the different effects.

Caught a few mistakes. I'll put them under a spoiler cut.

I will fix these, thanks a lot for playing and keeping track of them. It's good to have fresh eyes to catch that stuff.

[Egressus]

I KNOW YOU'RE LOOKING FOR CRITICISM BUT IT'S TOO GORGEOUS ;_____;
The backgrounds are gorgeous, the animations are amazing, I totally adore the dictionary entries, Jac's text box is just beautiful, even with the simplicity.
You're really releasing the rpy? ;u;

"She wanted to be invovled"
"Do Not Resucitate"
"Magical Jewlery"

[saguaro]

Aw, you're too good to me. Thanks for those typos, BTW.

[AllegroDiRossi]

Is there a demo for mac or linux? I want to try it out. =]

[saguaro]

Shore. There you go.

[Demos removed]

[sapiboonggames]

Played the demo. I love how detailed it is.
The thing I love especially is the animation. It's too brilliant~!
I think there's nothing to change, they're all already good! I hope you can finish this game soon, am so gonna play it when it's finished

[saguaro]

Thanks for trying it out. I'm shooting for the next month, but we'll see.

[saguaro]

Making some changes based on critiques given here on the forum.



The "character intro" screens were actually the first graphics I made for this game and it shows. They are hideous; this is how we learn. So I've tried to make them more legible/eye-friendly and added some ease ANIMASHUNS because I must. do. that.

I have a list of THINGS MUST FIX and no matter how many things I mark off it just keeps growing. Awesome!

[FatUnicornGames]

This really looks fantastic. Really clean and interesting. I would be curious to poke through your code sometime to see how you got those animated bits to work so well! atl is something I am still trying to learn.

I am interested to learn how the story goes too! Good luck with everything.

[saguaro]

Thank you for your interest.

Yeah, I am hoping when the script is out people can either use it to learn or, if they already know ATL, show me better/more efficient ways to implement some of those effects.

[Gear]

I wish I could offer critique, but...there's so much I want to learn from your game! Argh! It is the coolest KN I've ever seen. I can't wait for the final!

[Graph]

This game has a really interesting style to it. Love the combination of silhouettes and ornate patterns. Writing's also very directed and maintains my interest, which works great for me.

Although, I had a kind of hard time remembering who I've seen before because everyone is in silhouette. I could recognize Jacqueline by the end since she's usually present and on the left side. And Charles because he's the only man. But everyone else I had a hard time remembering because they didn't have any real distinguishing features. I might be the only one having this problem though since I have a bad time remembering peoples' names IRL as well.

One thing you could try is to add more spot-color details on the sprites, like the white collars that everyone seems to have. Maybe have some minimal color, like for example have one of them wearing a green ribbon... well, I'm not sure how much distinction is acceptable in this very business-like setting you've created though.

But there's some real interesting ideas in this KN, and I'd love to play through the whole thing when you're done.