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The HawkZombie Bookstore MURDER's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Judge's Score | #3 | n/a | n/a |
| People's Choice | #5 | 3.917 | 3.917 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What genre did you decide to use for the jam?
Point-and-click murder mystery
Content Warnings?
Adult Language/Swearing & Suggestive Themes
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Comments
Things I liked about the game:
Now for some things I didn't like:
I played this game after watching Hawk's stream and learning that there are random elements, but it played out the exact same way as it did on the stream. A little disappointing because I wanted to see how things could differ, but the familiar experience wasn't bad. Maybe something to improve on next time. Anyway, this game is still an impressive accomplishment that you both should be proud of!
Thanks for playing!
I'm glad you had fun playing it! Honeynut's art is amazing, it really lifted this game to another level. :) As for the Options menu having non-used options, I did want to remove them but time management failed me again so I decided to ignore that problem and fix an issue with switching rooms... Probably was the smart choice, but I do want to go back and clean the Options menu up some more.
I swear there are other routes! I don't know why the drowned route is so heavily weighted, in theory each has a 1 in 3 chance of happening, but somewhere I must've messed with the code. If you want to see the others, there is a new game+ option that lets you skip the intro and start in the bathroom. You should have more of a chance to get the other routes after finishing the drowned route, but I clearly need to double-check the codes and variables when I update this.
Okay, this was short and sweet, and just to be a jerk, I purposefully accused the wrong person and chose the worst evidence to convict them. I like that you were able to give us enough clues to make the interrogation fun. I liked hearing what everyone had to say for each piece of evidence. I DO wish there were multiple endings for accusing the wrong person, or a different ending for choosing the wrong evidence (like the bad guy being able to get away with it). So, if you DO plan on expanding, one of the things you could think about is a multiple-ending route so there's more consequences for the player's choices. I also felt like it was a little too easy to figure out who actually did it. I know that for a short game, you don't always have the luxury of drawing things out, but maybe the character in question could use some tweaking to give more of a mystery to the end? That aside, everything else seemed really good. I loved the music, and the game taking place in a bookstore felt very chill for me. I also loved the writing for the employees because they felt easy to relate to. On a bad day, I am totally Elizabeth 100%. Good job on the entry.
Thanks for playing!
Multiple endings and different endings were in our rough plans, but clearly time got away from us so we had to cut things. If we do come back and fill this game out adding some more details and fun to the endings. As for the mystery being easy, I agree but it turned out that setting up enough red herrings and lies was too much work in the limited time. There were 40+ pieces of clues total and a lot of them connected and evolved when you asked the right suspect about them, so by the time I made 'enough' clues going into more detail wasn't possible.
Also, I didn't expect Hawk to solve things since he overthinks, so I tweaked it to be more obvious even with the red herrings and lowered the necessary correct clues to win. Making a murder mystery was a lot of fun, so I may make another in the future with a lot more challenging clues and suspects. :)
Haha, that was so cute. The art was all really clean and cohesive, the story was concise and clear. I liked that I understood the motive and felt rewarded for being thorough. Like, when it clicked it was a very nice "ah-HA!" moment, straight outta a movie lol. Very good work and in a funny roundabout way, the "murder" being about a literal mascot is a very funny take on the theme haha.
Thanks! The mascot was hiddenone's idea and I think it works in our favor. Mascot horror was big though I am glad we didn't go that direction. 😅
Maybe Mascot!Hawk might make another appearance again as well.
Thanks for playing!
Honeynut did an amazing job with all the art, all credit to her! I'm glad you had an 'ah-ha!' moment, I tried to build up to that but it's hard to judge if players will experience that since I knew everything about each murder.
I considered having a more serious murder at first, but felt that other devs would be able to do a story like that way better than I could, so I went with my favorite game genre: comedy. :)
This game is cute but the many evidence to shift through makes it hard for me to really hone in on the right pieces.
Presentation wise, this is cute. I enjoyed it overall. Doesn't blow me away that much.
Thanks for the feedback Berry!
Thanks for playing!
I wanted to include a lot of clues because I hoped it would confuse Hawk and make him overthink things, though I should have considered that other players may not enjoy it. I had a few ideas on how to display the clues in a better fashion, but time got away from me so we were left with the default item menu... If I make a game like this in the future, having the clues organized and easy to look through will be the first thing I focus on.
It was short and sweet, but I loved it. Who it was, was a little predictable by art sake(idk if that was intentional) and expressions, but for a jam that's fine. I love the art per usual I am always insanely impressed you can make so much incredible art so quickly, and the beginning was so funny it had me cracking up.
One thing I will note is that introducing a heck ton of characters at once can be insanely jarring and overwhelming---maybe it's just me. You can't really grow any attatchment or care about characters when there are so much thrown at you at once. The characters have personality- and are lively, that isn't it...it almost feels like...we are supposed to know about the characters ahead of time or before the game has started. It feels like there's a lot of maybe not inside jokes..but stuff we should be knowing about the characters or time the spent together. They are new to us, even if they are very familiar to you. I think they have a lot of personality and their designs are cool. I think it's just a lot of characters at once it isn't super neccessary to have so many thrown into the bunch immediately, it starts to get confusing even remembering the characters names or anything about them, esp since bc it's a jam we don't spend very much time with them. It might be a preference so this has nothing to do with my score, I 5 star this.
I love the dialogue and clicking on the items and investigating was fun, and the arrow scroll was a nice touch! Awesome game and one of my favorites so far.
Hey Phoenix! Thanks for the response! Honestly, hiddenone and I kind of wish we gave the game more time so we could flesh out these characters. The issue also was that the main 5-some of Oswald, Aimilios, Lumiere, Madison and Heather were all already in a previous Game Jam Game, Psychemis: the Forbidden Archipelago. hiddenone even linked that game on our page for it [which is pretty funny].
((Also, there was a cameo of a familiar face at the cafe.)) And it isn't just you actually. It's been a common critique of my games. Finding a good balance though is tricky.
Also which ending did you get, seeing we have three endings total? [They're RNG unlike Psychemis which was choice-based.]
ITS SO FREAKING GOOD aww it is not you guys' falt dw about it IT IS STILL 5 star it's got my vote 100%
It's sooo hard when there is a lot of characters going on at once, I get a weird overwhelmed feeling where I'm like whos who what's going on and I see name plates but i can't remember who anyone is xD It's probably just my brain honestly. I thought the characters were all wonderful and super cute and have great personality. Some little narrration bits not a long into but we've been friends for x years or some slight backstory or little comments or characters thoughts like a short summary of how they know eachother, I think would help the player connect with them a lot more! I hope this helps.
My first ending was accusing the guy with the glasses, it said i was correct, but idk what the name of that ending was...but Now I'm gonna go back and get the others xDDD
it was the gonsolo good end drowned ending what are the other ones, there are bad end but I can't seem to find the other two
Darius and Elizabeth? I think with the RNG, you can get Good Ends where they were the culprits too lmfao.
(Also sorry for the brief response. I actually just cried after playing Flight in the Dark.)
YOU CAN??? I kept trying diff things but idk what their evidence was!! that's so cool though! It's okay!!! That was so good
It's based on their moment of death. If you see a different death happen (So if you see a burnt Hawk or a Hawk ripped to shreds, then you can see that was their murder methods of choice.)
Thanks for playing!
I know the characters were a lot to deal with right away, but since it was sorta a sequel to Honeynut's first psychemis game I didn't want to spend too long introducing everyone. I also wrote a lot of it banking on the fact that Hawk would remember the characters at least a little (this whole game was made to make Hawk laugh and groan) so I skipped over a lot of the character development.
I'm glad you enjoyed the dialogue and investigating the bookstore, it was my first time making a point-and-click so I wasn't sure if it would really work or not.
OHH that makes more sense/ I understand tha, yeah introducing people would've been way too overwhelming, I mean a literal sentence of narration 'we;ve done x and have been close friends for years, and now we are doing y and z' a simple sentence, no introductions, like a thought bubble, or thought message!
xD the game was sooo much fun, i had so many favorites and this was one of them. Everyone went all out for this jam! I loved it, some of my fav type of game styles