Regeria Hope [Lawyer, Mystery] KICKSTARTER LIVE NOW!

[Leafwing]

1. First impressions? Were you you able to figure out the murderer early? How about why they did it? Any surprises along the way?
-2099? Still looks like present day, though...
-Hmm, I have a Victorian gentleman with a monocle as my mentor...he's kind of cute!
-Gack, what happened to the groom? Why is he suddenly a surfer dude?
-Wow, it's a female version of Phoenix and Kristoph! From the...70s?
-How come we're suddenly facing a Western-styled sheriff?
Loved the characters, just seemed like they came from a mishmash of different times.

The murderer was easy to figure out as soon as

I saw that photo and learned that Victoria was married to a girl. It might have been harder if it was the other way around—say, they were served by a very well-disguised waitress or something, mention Victoria's a suite ex, & then drop the bomb that her ex was a she.

Also, I never thought love was the motive, only greed, since Jordan/Hemmings didn't seem even an ounce sorry that Victoria died. I thought she's at least try to be more sympathetic if she really loves her...but I guess you were going for a she-is-totally-obsessive-to-the-point-of-heartlessness kind of thing?

2. Is the game easy enough to understand how to play? Were there parts of the GUI you tripped up on?

Yes and yes. Although, being an AA fan myself, I was a little misled by all the superimposed text. Since AA has set variations of Objection/Take That/Hold It, RH was a bit overwhelming with all the Have At Its/Enough/Sustained/Overruled/etc/etc covering the screen. I think it's be nice to stick to a few default phrases for every character in superscript and leave the rest as normal text. Otherwise the messages tend to lose their power and impact. Artemis' foreign Objection was a nice touch, though, & I loved the voice acting for all characters. Nathan did a good job differentiating between P and Judgey-puff!

3. Did you like being able to skip the tutorial sections by saying you didn't need help?
YES!

4. Were the testimony rebuttal sections too hard? Too easy? Just right?
Might be just a Renoy GUI thing, but some parts seemed too eay, like when Regeria used Interrupt to present her own evidence and forward the plot when the reader might not have caught on just yet. Could be a handover from my AA game days—the cases always made you present evidence step-by-step from 1, 2 and 3, but it felt like Regeria could jump from 1 to 3 in some cases when she was talking, whereas the player had to follow the 1, 2, 3 formula without fail. Anyways, maybe she's just smarter.

Like others, I completely missed the

last Interrupt buttons thanks to the heat of the moment, the sparkly distracting background (darn you Artemis!!) and surprise over the fact that you could Interrupt the prosecution during their objections. I blame my ingrained AA gameplay from that; perhaps players unacquainted with the AA franchise would pick up on it better. And like one reviewer, I presented the final evidence on the wrong sentence—it should've the second to last one, I believe, but the last one seemed like a good place to give it as well. Maybe have an option for players to present the same evidence on equally probable statements to progress the plot if that happens?

All in all, I really love AA and I can tell you do too with the effort and heart you put into making this piece. Love the big screen that Renpy offers and the characters and everything. Am already dreaming up wonderful back stories you must have in place for all of them and crushing on Pharrell (why is his name so hard to spell, haha) like crazy. Tell me, does he prefer his lassi in mango or original flavor? And what's his favorite flavor of naan bread? And did he have British ancestors with connections in colonial India?

EDIT: Forgive my typos, it's really hard typing replies from a phone. :p

[octacon100]

Thanks for the great feedback Leafwing! Glad you liked being able to skip the tutorials, that was always one thing that got to me with the PW series. I'll have to play around with the superimposed text a little bit, see what works for the game.

Yeah, the next things I'm working on now are being able to present several pieces of evidence at different places, and having the game know where it should be heading. That might be tough, not sure yet. I'm hoping 2 arrays will do what I want it to do. I'm also going to have the interrupt button flash a bit during storylines, so it's more noticeable when the button is there.

Also, I've been hearing a lot about the GUI not being very easy on the eyes. Is it because it is red? I'm guessing darker colors are better for GUIs, right?

I guess other big news is that the game was featured on Silliconera, which was nice: siliconera.com/2014/12/29/regeria-hope- ... ale-leads/
There's definitely a mix of comments there, but it's great to see it get coverage. Just going to have to bring my "A game" for the next episode, or a HD version of the first episode which right now is probably more likely.

Big ideas for the the next episode:
- Defense Witness prep. Control what your witness will say, and resist Artemis' attacks.
- Much more animated inventory screen.
- Leaps of logic to generate your own facts to present, usually by tying people and evidence to facts you pick up along the way.
- Jury. Juggle 3 peoples opinion of your case, along with the timer and your own confidence.
- More animated Rebuttal screens. Eyes blinking and mouths moving
- Evidence you will need to buy off fences or bribe to get.
- Things are about to get a whole lot murkier. Will you be willing to get your hands dirty to save a client? Would you be ok with an innocent man dying if you stuck to your morals? Or would you just get rich off this whole corrupt system?

I'm hoping to put up a video of the new rebuttal section sometime this month. Should see a whole bunch of changes in it.

[SinAscendant]

Okay, I made an account here just to comment on this. I'll try to be as even handed/ not rude as possible, but I'm also going to be honest.

Number one. You either need to proofread your text or have someone else do it for you; there were a LOT of grammatical and spelling errors. It feels almost like English isn't your first language; if so I understand but there is quite a bit of work to be done there. But it's things like... You're a fan of Phoenix Wright and you don't remember that a 'defense lawyer' is an attorney?

I am gonna agree with everyone else on the last bit being confusing, I had to google it and come read through here to finally figure it out. The ability to check the case record during interrupts but not use it is also a little annoying, I kept checking it and realizing I couldn't reply to things.

The fact that one tap sends you to the next screen and you can't go back is also frustrating; there should be a way to check what people said, or just have one tap bring up the rest of the text and then the next continue. (I was playing it on Android).

Also, the interface is impossibly small on Android and things like the save menu can barely be read let alone tapped on.

Now, the writing itself is solid, and the game plays decently albeit short. And not fleshed out. Just the medium they're in isn't working all that well. I liked the way it's going, I just... Don't think it's there yet. It feels like a beta.

Oh. As a side note, neither the 32-bit nor 64-bit downloads will work on my PC (Windows 7 64-bit). They download fine, but when run they just open a white screen and do nothing else.

[octacon100]

Hi SinAscendant, thanks for your feedback.

If you want to be a proof reader, I'm looking for beta testers for the next episode.

Menus will be being revamped in the next episode.

[octacon100]

Tell me, does he prefer his lassi in mango or original flavor? And what's his favorite flavor of naan bread? And did he have British ancestors with connections in colonial India?

Lassi: Original flavor. Naan: Garlic. It's the best naan! Ancestors: I haven't looked all the way through his family tree, but he might have some great, great, great, great grandparents that traveled there for fine silks and spices.

[octacon100]

Regeria Hope has been updated, you can download it here changes include:

- ​Smaller timer and confidence bars.
- An easier to see "Interrupt" button.
- An easier to press menu button for Android Phones. The Android version should be updated very soon.
- Improved grammar and spelling.
- And you can show the evidence you're expecting to show at the last statement in the area you'd want to show it. (People that have already finished it will know what that means.) Basically two pieces of evidence can work in the same statement.

There's likely to be some much bigger changes later this month, but if you haven't tried the game out yet, it's much more user friendly.

Please keep the feedback coming, it's definitely being used to make the game better.

[mjshi]

In regards to the update--

The UI for the timer and the morale bar look so much better. I can't say anything about the visibility of the button, though, since I already played it and know what I missed, thus making me a terrible piece of data for the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the new flash.

[octacon100]

Thanks for having a look mjshi!

Also, in other things I'm working on:



Trying to animation to work. It's probably a fair few updates down the track, but it's a start. Looked at the animation and lip flap code, was hoping to do something similar with image atl, but anytime I do a repeat, the whole image stops moving. Anyone know how to get around that?

[csky]

I really enjoyed this game. It was good fun an I will definitely play the next chapter.

A few notes on what I thought:

- In the future I'd really like to see Artemis and Regeria's history and backstory. Also why Artemis is so cold, since you are implying the death penalty is justice in this court, what motivates her to be so cruel. (I found the mirror funny)
- I did find this case was a little bit predictable, but it's good for a first case, especially if you were going to get progressively harder as they went along.
-Some of the audio of Regeria's and Artemis's lines were quite weak and muffled.

I played through twice trying different options and the second play through I picked the accepting the offer to lose the trial on purpose. This lead to being unable to win the next argument no matter what and infinitely looped the guy telling you to interrupt. This made it so that you just had to keep presenting random wrong evidences or wait it out until your timer or moral was dead and you lost. I think you could improve on that in that, the player may change their mind after picking that option, and looping is a bit boring. You could have some unique dialogue such as Regeria thinking "I was going to lose this... remember?" Or if the player changes their mind, the ability to still win and Artemis being all "I thought you said you'd lose!?"

I played this on android and it was pretty playable. So you must have fixed the things people we mentioning earlier well.

[octacon100]

Hi csky,

Thanks for your feedback, I'm glad you tried it out!

- Yeah, I want to go more into the backstory of Regeria, Artemis, and Justine, and how they all know each other. It's very much the first case, so I'm trying to get people into the action as fast as I can, and see if people like the way the game plays for them.
- Yeah, I'm looking to re-record most of the lines in the first episode for future episodes.

- It's a good idea to have extra speech for throwing the case. I'll see if I can throw in some extra lines for that case. I intentionally made it so you would have to actually throw the trial by presenting bad evidence, I wanted players to go through the motions of intentionally being a bad lawyer. It's weird that it wasn't working for you properly though. I'll have to have a look. What should happen is you bring the morale down to zero, the judge finds the defendant guilty and you get the other ending. Hopefully that will be interesting.

It's interesting to think about the "changing mind" option. I could try putting that in, and seeing how it works out. Not sure how will be affect the end of the case though, since Hawk wouldn't be heading out to get the extra evidence, so the player would have their client found guilty. I could have Pharrell call Hawk after you change your mind, so that might work, as long as people didn't think it was too Deus Ex Machina.

There should be another update out next Wednesday with an almost entirely new GUI (The Case Files and testimonies have been significantly altered) , the new witness prep gameplay, and new animations during testimonies. I hope people that liked the game try it again with the new updates and let me know if they think it makes the game better or worse.

[octacon100]

Regeria Hope 1.2​ has been released, changes include:

-All new case files menu screens.
-All new testimony screen animations.
-All new "Witness Prep" game play has been added to this version.
-New evidence has been added, and you can use it to prove certain statements wrong.
-New "Check pointing" system has been added. The game will save at regular intervals.
-Updated sprites for Regeria, Artemis and Hawk.
-Many other little updates, and hopefully no bugs!

You can download it here (http://goldengamebarn.itch.io/regeria-hope-episode-1) now to try it out! Thanks!

[octacon100]

If anyone is interested in voicing any of the characters, check out this audition info at the voice acting alliance: http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/sh ... ost1344680

Hoping to have the Android version updated soon, just trying it out before pushing it to production.

[octacon100]

I'm extremely pleased to announce that Sendo/Crestforge from these forums will be the background artist for Regeria Hope. It's very exciting to have the courtroom fully realized with stunning background artwork, and I'm excited to see final courtroom!

Here's art so far:





I'm sure you'll agree they are amazing!

[PyTom]

Nice!

I mean, massively wasteful of tax money, but that isn't really the game's problem.

[octacon100]

Thanks PyTom! Glad you like them.

The next big announcement is that Zack Parrish will be the musician for Regeria Hope! I'm really looking forward to seeing what he can come up with!