Play opus
How To Be A Hugh Mann's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #3 | 4.005 | 4.200 |
| Sound | #3 | 3.909 | 4.100 |
| Overall Bad | #5 | 4.195 | 4.400 |
| Overall | #7 | 3.544 | 3.717 |
| Overall Good | #12 | 3.432 | 3.600 |
| Gameplay | #15 | 3.146 | 3.300 |
| Modifier | #24 | 2.574 | 2.700 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
If you have implemented the modifier, how have you done so?
I implemented several of them as gags, didn't keep track of them all.
Any additional information for voters?
There's some flashing lights if you decide to use the toaster in a certain way. You can adjust volume settings from the pause menu, accessible by pressing ESC
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Comments
That was definitely a bizarre fever dream of a game. I was in another world there. I really hope that people randomly discover this game years later, and get to experience this bizarre universe, with no context as to why it was created. Thank you for making this piece of art.
Thanks for taking the time to play my game in the last few minutes, I fully appreciate it!
And thanks for the kind words! My secondary goal for all of my SBIG submissions has been to create something, that if found by someone with no context, would cause them to ask "what is this, and why would someone make this?!".
So I hope your dream comes true as well!
Honestly, so much love for this entry!!
I admire how much attention you gave to every detail.
- Oh my god, the voice-over got me laughing straightaway! The more I heard it, the worse (better) it got!
- When I interacted with the "control scheme tutorial", the zoom in my on character's ass was :chef's kiss:
- The pointed staring at the tutorial board thingis or people as I walked past it/them.
- The alien shadow cast on the ground.
- The body double behind or mouth when the camera spun to bring a character into focus
- Really awkward rizz, flirting and bath date.
- Senseless plot resolution
Only nitpick is that you had a toilet in the game that I couldn't interact with. Otherwise, 20/10 for amazing entry and for calling me a big boy!
Thanks for playing and all the kind words!
It was nice being able to do some voice acting again (though admittedly for 6 different characters it did get a bit tiring lol) so I'm glad the stupid voices worked!
I knew from working with it for the past couple years that the Inverse Kinematics on characters could do some really dumb looking stuff so this time I just decided to ramp it up. So that's why Hugh Mann can bend over backwards to look at stuff! One of my favourite things in the game honestly.
For the dialogue camera I do wish I was able to setup fixed player positions so all the NPC animations could be seen. But, I'm happy someone else found the clipping into characters skulls to be funny!
The dialogue was an absolute cringey dream to write, I was giggling to myself most of the time! I figured at best people will laugh at it, at worst it will just be a weird aspect to the game.
Yeah the ending came together rather awkwardly, but I think the game is improved by it. Especially if you choose the option where you run from the agents which was one of my favourite cutscenes to work on!
I'll have to make a note to add some level of toilet interaction next time! Thanks for the feedback!
Already revving up for the post-mortem, I see!
Glad to hear back on what went on behind the scenes, and that you clearly enjoyed yourself!
This year I was a little more prepared than last year, but wow, that was still quite an experience. The whole presentation is pretty great, walk and run cycles are hilarious, the premise is funny and voice acting that sometimes has reverb and sometimes doesn’t is a great touch. I took one very specific path through the game and have no idea if it’s the only viable one, but it did work out in the end. Writing was a little weird at times, but overall pretty good.
The only thing I want to complain about a bit is the unskippable and slow dialogues. I feel like having an option to play them on 1.5x or 2x speed might also help if you don’t want them to be completely skippable. Otherwise, very neat entry!
Thanks for playing! Nice to know I can still keep you on your toes!
I'm glad to hear all the silly stuff had the intended effect, I knew there was some funny stuff in it but wasn't sure how people would react to it.
Frankly there's no real non-viable path, the game was made in such a way that its impossible for the player to lose outside of an unintended bug. So there's unique dialogue for every suspect being arrested, but there's also a unique case for every suspect getting killed. Sadly though the game doesn't really broadcast this, as I was kinda hoping it would be a fun surprise but after seeing feedback I realize that just made players overly cautious.
Yeah the unskippable dialogue was sadly a result of how I made the dialogue trees. I wanted to add the ability to skip lines so players could quickly get through multiple plays but I jsut didn't have time to add it. The way the dialogue nodes are setup also made it a bit messy to attempt it during the jam. It'll be the first major update I put out post-jam though!
Thanks for the feedback!
This opus certainly was worth the wait. I certainly wasn’t expecting the surprisingly tasteful jokes about unpleasant subject matters (which I shall refrain from spoiling here), the very deep and complex web of interpersonal relationships between characters, and a tasteful mix of dry and absurd comedy.
The janky presentation (tastefully implemented in a rather non-intrusive manner) just sweetened the deal. Sure, the unskippable dialogue does hinder replayability a bit, but I think I got the ‘true’ ending on my first playthrough, so 🤷♀️
Overall, this was a very SBIG experience!
Thanks for playing!
I was honestly worried what people would think of the game when it was finally finished, so I'm happy you enjoyed it!
Yeah I tried to keep everything as light-hearted as I could, or if it was more unpleasant then I ramped up the absurd aspects. I still laugh everytime I see the initial Marvin dialogue. I wanted to make more interaction between the suspects, but sadly that would've ballooned development time by another few days so it got scrapped. And the mix of comedy I was mostly happy with, I was hoping that if one part of it didn't land with certain players then other parts would.
The unskippable dialogue was sadly a result of my dialogue system tools, the full explanation is perhaps a bit too lengthy but the short answer is it would've required a fair bit of work I was just did not have time to do. That'll be the first major feature I work on post-jam though.
Frankly there is no true ending as long you had fun! Though tbh I'm hoping you got the cutscene I'm thinking of since that took a lot of effort to finish lol.
Wew this was a blast!!
I didn't know what to expect going into this game this year, but it had a lot of nice and not a lot of not nice, if you know what I mean!
The premise of the story is absolutely hilarious, and leads to some very goofy hijinks! The whole story is amazingly cohesive and well-told, and you did a great job at exploring the concept! Some of the conversations and characters really did make me laugh out loud, and I liked the way that you could really learn stuff about different characters by looking around their rooms and talking to other people.
The way the faces and conversations work is also really great! Sometimes you'd see heads bent in ungodly fashions, or have the camera clip through and have some lovely internal organs to look at. Worst case the body or head just blocks the camera completely, but to be honest managing dynamic cameras in unity is so hard that does take a lot a faffing about just to make something work acceptably, and having the angles different with every conversation at least puts some fun in it!
The nonsensical nature of some of the murders (and arrests) is hilarious and I loved all of them. I managed to pull the plug on violet then electrocute her in the bathtub which I'm especially proud of 😛 The ending worked really well and was really worth playing through for!
I guess the only thing that makes me sad when it comes to games with branching dialogue/options, is that I don't get to see it all at once, and I don't have the patience to play multiple times 😅 if there was ever an update that allowed dialogue skipping, or possibly even unmurdering/unarresting to try out different combinations, it would be really interesting to try and explore all paths and dialogue options!
Overall this game was so so good! I really liked the way it was presented and could even see this idea being taken much further. The idea of a hitman/detective/alien could easily be escalated to crazy levels, and there are a lot of avenues for this concept unexplored!
Thanks so much for submitting! Absolutely worth the wait!
Thanks for playing man!
I said it before but I also had no idea how people would react to this, so I'm glad you laughed at it a lot!
I honestly wish I was able to do more detective/investigation stuff with the game, but I dragged my feet in the first half of the jam. I'm happy that at least some characterization came across through the game world though.
The camera angles was something I knew would be an issue before I submitted the game, but it just kinda had to be left as it was. That's probably something I'll add in the first post-jam patch.
The electrocution sequence was one of my favourite things to make, I literally giggled as I made it so I'm happy someone else found it and loved it! And its good to hear you liked the ending, I put a lot of work into it and it marks the first time I've actually successfully collaborated with someone for a jam game!
Yeah the branching does mean players miss a fair bit of content on a first playthrough, which I knew would be the case and was frankly more of a stress test on the dialogue system itself more than anything. I definitely plan to implement dialogue skipping somehow, not sure how yet but I will lol.
The concept was intentionally made to be malleable since I had no idea exactly what I was gonna make, and thank god it works for so many cases ha ha! I don't know how many different scenarios and gags I had thought up originally, but yeah much like Frank Mallone I think Hugh Mann could easily work in a variety of different games.
I'm just happy I was able to submit, thanks!
This is excellent and probably the best game out of all of these, the only things that you should try to fix is the camera constantly clipping and making dialogue skippable:)
Thanks for playing and the high praise!
Yeah the character controller I used was the Unity StarterAssets pack which has the camera move when it detects a collider object. And for whatever reason the house prefab I took from the asset store has random "holes" throughout the house so the camera gets behind things sometimes (this also means that any wall the camera goes through the player can go trhough, and there is exactly one gag realted to this).
Also yeah dialogue skipping was something I wanted to add but couldn't come up with a quick solution to since theres so many events triggered in the middle of dialogue lines.
This is great, cracked me up real good. Laughed my ass off at the dialouge and animations. I got the "all suspects are dead" ending by accident, even though the red eyed woman was alive lol. Also some bugs that added to the experience, like when i killed marvin, i could talk to his corpse, and i got to the part where i challenged him to a foot race, so the polise shot at air lolol. Also i got stuck in the bathroom after i flushed the girl down the bathtub.
Overall I got a very good laugh out of this lolol.
Thanks for playing man I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah I'm already making up a fix for that bathroom scene, some of the other ones I think I'll jsut leave becasue they're funny.
Making the player laugh was the overall goal of the game so I'm happy I succeeded!
That was definitely an experience!
There are some literally familiar faces here, but with new outfits, and it feels simultaneously new and familiar. The outfits, animations, and general character design are peak uncanny valley, and the awful voice acting (including a completely botched line) completes the ensemble. There are lots of hilarious fun little details like how you bend your neck to look at things. The humour is top-notch too, and blends the expected and the totally out of left field well.
Every one of your submissions has been hugely ambitious, and this one is no exception. I can't help but feel you've reached too far this time, though. It's a janky mess, which is on point for SBIG Jam, but possibly because it was pushing it even more or maybe just because of the general design, it has some issues which take away from the fun. The whole thing has the feel of a ship that's about to capsize, which is never a good feeling, and it's compounded by slow, unskippable dialogue that's fun the first time but quickly gets tedious the second or third time around.
Because of this, I always tried to take safe options and feel like I might have missed part of the game. Fortunately, I was able to complete the game, but I don't think I would have tried again if I'd hit a game over or dead end. I did run into some minor bugs, but nothing that ended the run. I might have even hit a glitch that saved the run; I eliminated everyone, but I could still talk to Marvin even after he was supposed to be dead and arrest him.
Another issue I'd file under the "actual issues" category is the camera, at least in the dialogue system. Third-person camera in a cramped house is questionable, but wasn't really a playability issue. The dialogue camera, however, was a really cool feature rendered almost entirely useless because it would always end up behind one of the characters. To be fair this only was a problem for the Marvin dialogues which you really need to see the animations to understand; in the other cases it covered up the animations which is a bit of a shame but didn't affect the gameplay.
I have no idea if I solved the mystery correctly or whether it's meant to be solved- I have my own theory on it- but I did finish the game, I think handle the agents correctly, and got the spiffy ending cutscene.
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
Yeah I wanted to have elements of my past work with a touch of new ideas and I think thats pretty much what it ended up being. I genuinely had no idea how people would react to it.
This definitely ballooned into a lot more work than I was expecting for the jam, and took form MUCH later than my entries typically do. And while being possibly the most mechanically thin game I've made its ended up being more hacked together than my last two SBIG entries. I think this was probably due to me working on the dialogue trees at the same time I was making a tool to make the dialogue trees with (I'll go into a bit more detail on athat in postmortem). But the setup with the events happening mid-dialogue is what prevented me from implementing the ability to skip dialogue lines. That'll probably be the first major update post-jam.
It's a good point about choosing the safer dialogue options, because I noticed from feedback so far that most players haven't gotten two of my favourite sequences in the game (which were also the most complex to make). The game actually does handle if the player kills all suspects, with some unique dialogue from Officer Wilson, but that doesn't really get conveyed properly through the game I don't think. For as janky as the game is I think there's only one point in the game where the player can get stuck? There's no actual lose condition as it were. Also yeah another player found the bug with Marvin, and I don't know why it happens, but I think I might just leave it because its funny.
Yeah the house layout definitely doesn't do any favours for the movement camera, which is literally just a reskinned unity StarterAssets third-person controller. It ende up being that way because I just pulled the house off the asset store and removed almost all the doors. The prefab for whatever reason is missing some colliders, and due to how the third-person camera script detecting collision it can seemingly clip through walls often.
The dialogue camera I did actually try to setup pre-defined character positions for, but I just ran into enough issues with it that I had to axe it in the final couple days. I'll probably try to fix it post-jam.
As for the mystery I'm kinda sad I didn't have time to make the gameplay more detective-y, but yeah in my opinion it doesn't matter if the player solves the mystery or not, as long as they aren't bored! Also yeah I don't know if I'll be able to top that ending credits sequence for a while...
Definitely looking forward to the postmortem!
Shipping without a crucial quality of life feature is rough but it's a position I've been in before.
It wasn't clear that the game would always be completable, but I was also worried about stepping off the critical path and slamming into some game-breaking edge case. As I said, I don't think I could stomach having to restart and claw my way back to where I was.
The ending credits was pretty impressive!