“Have you ever seen this…?” (Contradiction - Spot the Liar!)
I’ll write myself a note to post you more tomorrow, but this should keep you occupied for a while. From the limited insight I have, I suspect this might be right up your alley. :)
Viewing post in Any Good Detective Games?
If you haven’t played it yet, The Wolf Among Us has elements of a good whodunit and is overall a good game - but not a great one. More importantly, I think it might give some good pointers in how to fill the space between the puzzle pieces, so your story doesn’t look like a straight-up tunnel and it shows off some pitfalls that you can then avoid in your own game. ;) And for that reason, I would recommend The Wolf Among Us to you.
I thought I had played more of these games, but on closer inspection, most of the ones I had thought of don’t really fit the specification… I can give you “a” list of detective-y games, but I wouldn’t think trying to emulate The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker[*] or Her Story would be what you’re after.
On top of that my current issue is that I am interested in a lot of games, but I can’t make the time to actually play them. The (aforementioned) Tex Murphy series and The Dame Was Loaded seem good, but I couldn’t personally vouch for them actually being good or standing the test of time. (I bought the Tex Murphy series and looked into buying The Dame Was Loaded, if that’s any help…)
[*] Truth be told, I wouldn’t describe The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker as “enjoyable”, due to the topic, but it was… interesting. Not so interesting to inspire a second playthrough though…
Oh man, I feel a bit bad for not replying sooner when you've given such a thorough response! The Wolf Among Us and Doctor Dekker's Insanity Party ( or whatever ;) ) look pretty awesome.
In fact, far better than what we can hope to do on a budget of a few hundred quid so. As ever- we need to concentrate on squeezing every pound and penny- and playing to our strengths (dialogue, story-telling, puzzles etc.).
Can you think of any really crap detective games to give us reverse inspiration- as in- "oh wow, we can do better than that"? ;) I'll start- The Agatha Christie ABC Murders on NDS- which opens with a maths problem...
A game that comes to mind would be The Last Express. It’s not so much a detective-y game and more… Well, more of some kind of device to torture yourself. Absolutely not my cup of tea, but PushingUpRoses did quite a good retrospective review on it - back when she still did those. The developers poured lots of time and energy into details that might have seemed really important to them when they were sitting together - but which did have very little importance or impact on the player’s experience.
I might come up with a better negative example if I had all the time in the world… But right now, that game seems like a very good pick for your specific request. :) (You don’t have to take just my word for it: It even made it into a certain list.)
The Last Express is available on GOG and went on sale rather regularly back when I still used GOG - just in case you want a closer look. The game itself, the manual and their making of video might be interesting, but truth be told: You will most likely get the most important parts just by watching PushingUpRoses’ YouTube video.
And another thing, I forgot to point out: Don’t worry too much about having to present something that was created on a budget. Your Bunny Hill Horror series drew my attention way before the first time I ever interacted with you in the forums. Because it has a certain look to it. ( I’m not going to lie: The intense lipstick helped as well. ;) )
While there is an overabundance of great games that were pretty much created on no budget I would like to pick one - being fully aware that this is unfair towards the others I could have picked: If you deconstruct 11:45 A Vivid Life there’s really not much to it: A few animations, a little bit of text, minimal branching… But the story told gave me chills like nothing I had played before. I’ve seen Hellraiser and enjoy me some David Cronenberg. But because of the fact that this is a video game, an interactive kind of medium, it was me who made those horrible decisions. Video games are a powerful medium. Those who know how the sausage is made might forget this sometimes. I’m confident that, as long as you play towards the strength of the medium, your game will be a good one, even if your props may be cheap and some lines aren’t as polished. (Not meant as accusations - just some examples of what might or might not happen.)
(And one day I’ll check out Bunny Hill Horror & Bunny Hill Horror: Bunny Boiler. As soon as I checked out those 120-ish other games I already own… Sorry.)
Yeah, I've got an ever-expanding backlog of games, myself! Thanks for your comments- the Bunny Hill Horror thumbs are basically a funky font and a Deviant Art stock model photo over two photos I took and superimposed- and all edited with Gimp. If there's one thing that's been invaluable to me making games, it's having good experience of graphics software.
This thread, checking out other games and just generally chatting is definitely helpful too. Our coder Mike wanted to do a point n click, but I didn't think it was possible. Having now played Touch Detective on NDS, I'm thinking "wait, maybe we can do that".
And, yeah, working without much of a budget can really necessitate creativity. For the BHH games I made props, got a train down to Tamworth to take photos of its castle, got my friends and family to take photos (typically due to lockdown), learnt how to loop tracks and muffle sound effects in Audacity, played a character myself, begged people to use their music, got permission to take photos in a hospital pharmacy etc. etc. I really enjoy the creative aspect of developing.
And I'm definitely going to start using your sausage analogy in conversations now!