Play adventure
FFS 24 Suspects on Christmas's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| IDEA | Was this game innovative, or did it use interesting mechanics? | #52 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| AUDIO | Did this game have great music or sound design? | #114 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Overall | #122 | 3.233 | 3.233 |
| MOOD | Did this game have atmosphere, or did it make you feel something? | #134 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| FUN | Was this game satisfying to play or did it bring you joy? | #146 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| VISUAL | Did this game have nice graphics, art or design? | #197 | 2.833 | 2.833 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Let people know how long this project has been going, or share a bit of its history.
This game was pretty incomplete when I submitted it to Dec 2020 2-button game jam. I finally finished it, and it has a lot more buttons now.
You can clone the git repository here: https://koreyhinton.org/git/ffs24susx.git
Inspired by a lot of games since I mashed a lot of concepts together, but mostly inspired by KQV
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Comments
I was also confused what was going on at first too, lol. I really like the way you made the screens and how you traverse them sorta like a speed run adventure game :D, but yea it was somewhat hard to tell where to leave a screen or how to access some that have multiple adjacent ones. Maybe a border on the map tiles that is open on edges that are connect, and maybe the red tiles could have a question mark to indicate they have something to investigate there. I was able to find Ghost Face, but wasn't sure what to do after that, I explored the whole map but must have missed the coin the other npcs were mentioning. The audio cues were great to inform something was special on that screen though! Overall I think this was a cool take the classic adventure game genre, that just needs some more work on the game flow.
Thanks for playing, I appreciate the feedback! I really like the question mark idea.
I got a lot of ideas from the old Kings Quest V adventure game where there are puzzles and you have to find items and trade with the npcs to get to the item required to win, and come to think of it even that game is impossible to win without a walkthrough. I might do this one again next FFS jam, and I'll be sure to provide a walkthrough.
If you're curious the pattern is that you need the coin on the vampire scene, then you take it to trade the hunter for the werewolf mask. With the mask you'll scare ghostface enough to drop presents and to win you'd pick up those presents and take them to the Santa character.
I didnt really get it lol anyhow find my video review below:
47:00 FFS 24 Suspects on Christmas
Thanks for taking time to play the game, seeing your video review helped me realize how unintuitive it is. I think I spent too much time on content rather than making it easy for the player to understand what's going on.
Originally this game was only 2 buttons for a 2-button jam: left and right arrow keys which pointed the character in circular/radial angles. I later added more controls to make it easier to navigate: WASD for grid direction angles and Up/Down to adjust speed and to stop the character. However having all those controls might have just added to the confusion.
Interesting game. I had no idea what I am doing for some time but it somehow made me more interested in the result. :D I like the style of backgrounds.
You may consider some info the first time you see the evidence cards that you it is something that will lead you to the Ghostface somehow. I had now idea why I am looking at someone in the baloon and what the fact that there is Ghostface in another baloon means.
There were some things that confused me with the map and locations:
The first one was that it wasn't clear for me sometimes that I can or cannot move in some directions. The road showing possible directions in some places was a grat hint. At the same time, there were places with the road that wasn't leading anywhere, like at the place with train. There were also some moments when I thought I have only 2 possible exit points, but there were more and it wasn't clear for me because of the background suggesting something else.
Another thing are the red squares on the map. At first I thought they mark places I can't go, so I didn't even try to go there. When I realized it was wrong assumption I had to go back to some places.
I think it is worth working on collisions in some areas, as the blocking was sometimes irritating, as I didn't expect it in some places.
There wer some plot points I didn't really get at the beginning, possibly because of the order I visited areas. For example I didn't even know who the hunter is when I found a coin and still when I pressed 0 I had a hint that I should use it to trade with the hunter. And when we traded I didn't know why he gave me this particular item.
It was a fun play overall, the music accompanying some specific events was a cool idea. It made the game more intriguing in some sense. :D
Thanks for playing! This is a lot of great feedback, thank you!
I threw together a lot of content for a December game jam and tried to finalize a whole lot of loose ends for FFS, and you've found some more loose ends which is appreciated. I was inspired by the King's Quest V game, not realizing the level of effort required at first. There's no way this would have even be possible if I didn't make use of a tool that converts photographs into pixel art (phixelgator).
The idea with the 2 air balloons is that the *unmasked* elf has an alibi as it is in a separate air balloon than the ghostface. The ghostface-masked elf has stolen the Christmas presents. There will be 1 elf though that is not accompanied by a 2nd air balloon, this is the only 1 of the 24 elves that doesn't have an alibi, so it is the culprit and you must return to find him again once you have a mask scary enough to make him drop the gifts. The air balloon thing is a bit cheesy, but I was trying to cut corners and air balloons can move as they please in front of any photograph without looking mispositioned over the image. While I've tried to hint at this in different ways, it might need to be explained specifically at the start of the game.
Great feedback on the red dots looking like you don't go there when toggling the help screen, but really those are the exit points that you need to go to.
I tried a few different approaches/algorithms to the edge detection, I'd be curious to learn how KQV did it.
Visiting the vampire (for the coin) first before the hunter (for the werewolf mask) was an oversight. I think my narrative text assumed you'd go to the hunter, then the vampire, and then back but that isn't explained well when vampire is visited first. Great feedback I can improve on for that.
Glad to hear that the music integrated well with the gameplay :-)