itch.io

Hey Marshall, thanks for your comment!

This game was built as a master's project with the central theme of promoting intra-diegetic immersion, which is what led to a few design choices like the removal of checkpoints, a save system etc. The core concept was to create an experience you'd sit down for and finish in one go, or die and come back to later, rather than picking it up intermittently, with the idea being it would improve immersion to not have breaks in the story.

This is also the reason for a lack of clear direction, outside of what is given to the player in the dialogue. A lot of the sequences reward a player reacting naturally to the situation, e.g. trying to use the phone to call the police, which was an experiment to see if the situation could guide player action as oppose to it being driven by linear instructions. Whether that worked or not is up for debate, but I hope that helps explain the thought process.

With regards to scripted events failing it's entirely possible, but some also have variants based on what actions you've taken, so what may seem like a failure may infact be an alternate event happening. I did test all events thoroughly prior to the last build so they should all be functional.

Sequence breaks should also have been compensated for but if I get the chance I will revist the project and apply a lot of fixes i'd been interested in making. Unfortunately during the past year I was under a contract that prevent me from further developing the project, and so now it's a case of finding a stable build and picking that back up if I get the time.

Glad to hear you enjoyed elements of the game though!

Sorry that was my bad, I got confused about which page I was on! Yes for now It Will Find You is complete, and all 8 endings are playable. While the story is complete though there are definitely improvements i would like to make somewhere down the line :)

Captive Audience is finished yes! We originally designed the game as part of a group project at University, and unfortunately could not continue development after. Our writer did create a spin-off/sequel though called It Will Find You! Its also free on itch so check it out :)

It sounds like maybe your download corrupted? There's nothing you need to sign into for the game :)

Hi Folks,

So patch 0.1.2 is here, and with it a slew of fixes and upgrades to the game as it stands. I'm just going to dive right in with a list:

Fixed the Safe - Reworked the safe mechanic to prevent players removing objects through the side, and fixed an issue with the initial door script.

Fixed Skip Issues - Some players were reporting issues with the Skip function not working. This turned out to be due to a duplication error with the options menu, and has now been fixed.

Fixed Car drive on if left - Fixed a bug preventing the car from driving on from a spin out if the player had approached the house

Improved Cultist - Reworked the cultists path-finding to prevent him getting stuck, and allow him to be more sneaky.

Reworked Deer Hide loop - The Deer Hide was presenting issues where certain dialogue elements and events could be triggered before an appropriate time, so this has been reworked to make it more efficient.

Reworked the way books handle dialogue - Some books had quotes that sounded out of place if read at the wrong time. This has been fixed so they only play at appropriate moments.

Fixed Can issues and other held items at crash - Players should no longer get stuck, or have UI elements persist if holding items during the crash.

Found the Final Cookie - A cookie had escaped and was roaming the map. This should now be in the correct place with its brothers and sisters.

Options Menu Tweaks - You can now exit the pause menu from the options sub-menu with ESC

Fixed an issue with Timescale - Found an issue where exiting back to the main menu kept the game in a paused state. This has been fixed.

Overall this should make the gameplay experience a lot more fluid! A massive thank you to everyone playing so far, for both the bug reports and for taking the leap into the next chapter of the Captive Audience saga! I hope you're enjoying the experience.

Until next time,

Nick

Hey Jack,

Thank you so much for playing It Will Find You, and for the awesome review. I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed it :D I've recently added a lot of quality of life changes to enhance replay-ability, so I hope you enjoy your next play-through's just as much!

Link to It Will Find You Page: https://captive-minds.itch.io/it-will-find-you

Hi Folks,

After almost a year of solo development, i'm thrilled to announce the launch of It Will Find You - a story driven horror game on Itch.

What is It Will Find You?

It Will Find You is a first person narrative driven horror experience, utilising a reactive narrative system that alters narrative elements based on player actions.

With a focus on environmental interaction and progressive narrative through game-play, It Will Find You aims to provide an immersive experience where the world evolves in tandem with your decisions, and a dark, twisting narrative is slowly revealed through fully voice acted dialogue.

It Will Find You is also the next chapter in the Captive Audience storyline, expanding upon the universe created in the first game to reveal more shocking twists and secrets.

Synopsis:

It Will Find You follows Julia, a woman struggling with depression after tragedy has caused her life to fall apart. Needing some time away from the world, she returns to her now empty family home, seeking solace in her childhood.

Arriving amidst a terrible storm, Julia quickly realises she is not alone, as a horrific entity stalks the once beautiful woodlands surrounding her family estate. Under the deafening roar of the raging storm, Julia will have to fight for survival against the creature, while plagued by horrific visions that make her question her own reality.

With the climax, the curtain will be drawn back revealing a shocking conclusion that turns the game upon its head, in a shocking conclusion, you won't see coming.

So here we are, launch day, and I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone for the support and encouragement over the past few months.

When I started developing It Will Find You as a solo project for my Masters project I knew I was in for a challenging journey. And what a journey it has been so far. I have enjoyed every second of it, and am thrilled to be able to share the final product with you!

A massive thank you has to be said to the Voice Actors and Composer for this project, all of whom are listed in the credits. They did phenomenal work over the past few months, and really bought the world of It Will Find You to life.

So I hope you enjoy the game as much as I have enjoyed working on it.

To celebrate the launch i'm running a 1 day sale  at 25% off to thank everyone for the support they've shown over the past few months, so grab it while its hot!

Hey Shienoful,

Thanks for playing Captive Audience! Really glad to hear you've enjoyed it so far, looking forward to seeing part 2 : )

Hey Hopinsteadofjump,

Thanks for taking the time to play our game :D! Really glad to hear you enjoyed it, i'll hopefully have a trailer out for the sequel soon so stay tuned!

Really glad to hear you enjoyed Captive Audience, and thank you so much for making a video on it. :D

Make sure to keep an eye out for the sequel!

Hey ScottishGeekPlays,

Thank you tons for taking the time to play our game, I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed it, and that the ending stood out :D

The next chapter in the Captive Audience story, It Will Find You, is coming out in the next few months, so be sure to check it out!

Have a great weekend,

Nick 

Hi Dinah, 

Nothing in the game files is forbidden, and I seem to be able to download and run the game still, so i'm not sure what the issue is unfortunately!

Hope you get it working soon!

We've just announced a sequel set for release later this year called "It Will Find You" :D Keep an eye out for more details in the next few months!

Hey Acrxm096,

Thanks for letting us know how much you enjoyed the game! We always love hearing from fans and really appreciate it :D

So there is only one ending by design, as the twist is directly related to the outcome, but there is a couple of hidden events you can unlock prior to the finale that show you some extra story :)

We'd love to do some multiple endings in the future though so it's on our list!

We've currently got a Kickstarter running at the moment to help us make part 2 :D check it out!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1398278224/captive-audience-a-first-person-...

Hi 987tails,

Thanks for getting in touch, we do our best to answer any comments, as really interacting with fans / players is a huge part of the experience for us and we really enjoy it :)

You're correct in there not being multiple endings, though there are various events during the game that only occur if you perform certain actions / choices, so keep an eye out for those! The achievements hint at a few. In the full version of the game we fully intend to incorporate a variety of endings :D

It's awesome to hear how much you enjoyed the game, we really appreciate the kind words! Captive Audience was definitely a passion project so it's great to hear people liked it :D

With Matt's behaviour you essentially have to look at it as two characters. Matt himself, who is full of rage and despair and hit situation, And the Matt he is forced to be on camera, positive, calm and engaged. He's been stuck on this show for five years, So mentally separating himself is a survival mechanism.

This of course starts to break down with the stress of the game though, And that's where you see the most extreme reactions!

Again though thank you so much for your kind words :D We really hope our Kickstarter succeeds so we can do Part 2! There's a lot of story left to tell.

Nick and the Captive Minds team.

Hey Kay,

So our biggest problem with developing for Mac is that none of us have one haha, so we struggle to test how effectively the game will work.

Whilst were not sure we can make one for the prototype, the full game would be released across multiple platforms including Mac :)

Hi Elizabeth,

Firstly thank you for your kind words. We really appreciate it!

I'm the lead writer for Captive Audience, and a novelization of the story is something I have definitely been considering based on the positive feedback we've been getting since our prototypes launch.

Currently our focus is the Kickstarter for Part 2, which we believe can help us expand and elaborate on the story greatly, so unfortunately a novel isn't something were looking for quite yet.

That being said, dependant on how the future of the project plays out, I'd never say never, so I'll add you to our list of contacts. Should we decided a novel is where we'd like to take it next, we can re-asses the situation.

Thank you again for the kind words and the offer though, we really appreciate it!

P.S. If you'd like to send us a portfolio of your work in the mean time, you can do so on our either our Twitter @captiveaudienc3, or to captiveaudience@outlook.pt

We've already done so :D but it's a really good suggestion! Hopefully we can bring more people through to our Kickstarter as the month goes on. Make sure you share etc if you're interested :)

Hey Sig,

Wow thank you, that really means a lot to us! We made Captive Audience as a total passion project, so it's really nice to hear that people love it as much as we do :D

If you haven't checked out our Kickstarter yet it's got some details about what we'd like to do for a sequel etc :) 

Thanks again for the kind words!

Hey Portabless,

Thank you so much for the kind words, it really makes it worth it to know fans are enjoying our game so much :D 

I've passed on your comments to Corin as in sure he'll be thrilled to hear it, all our voice actors did a fantastic job, we were really proud of them!

We're actually discussing our plan going forward now, and were thinking about a crowd funding campaign on Kickstarter. Is this something you'd be interested in? We'd like to know if fans would actually like that haha.

Thanks again for the awesome feedback :D

Captive Minds

Hey Ahriasre,

Firstly thanks for your kind words, were really glad to hear you enjoyed the experience :D our goal was to make the games end feel more realistic and open relevant to the situation, so I'm glad that came across well!

The audience are fully aware of the stars captive state, for them it's part of the thrill. 

As to the why it's allowed, and why various world governments donate their death row inmates to the show, well.... That's a story yet to be told.

Hey MaximumFunZone!

Firstly a massive thank you for the kind words, it really means a lot to us as a small studio of beginners, and we're so excited our game is getting seen by so many people :D

Both the theme song and the final score are original pieces we had composed for the game by two very talented musicians, and they're not currently available to download anywhere. We're getting a lot of requests for them at the moment though so keep an eye out as they may become available :) You can follow us on @captiveaudienc3 for updates etc!

If you want to check the composers other work out though it's Mathew J Rees who composed the final score for us, and Jo Henley of Beanie Studios who wrote the main theme!

Thanks again for the kind words, and we're really glad you enjoyed the experience.

:D

Edit: Here are some links to their work for you.

Jo Henley: https://soundcloud.com/Beaniestudios

Mathew Rees: https://www.mathewjreescomposer.com/

Thanks for playing and your kind words Joey :D we really appreciate it.

I'll be watching this as soon as I get home!

Hey GhastMode,

Thanks for giving Captive Audience a go. I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed the experience, bar the chair mechanic haha. I'll look into making this smoother in the future. Out of interest, would you prefer if it automatically sat you down when you interacted with the PC?

Thanks again for playing!

Hey CjuGames,

Thanks for taking the time to play our game! We're really glad to hear you enjoyed your experience with the game :D It makes all the development time worth the while.

We're still looking at optimisation for the game, as well as what's next for Captive Audience, so we hope you enjoy our future updates!

Thanks again for playing!

Hey Starlatrix,

Firstly a big thank you for taking the time to play our game, especially on stream! We really appreciate that.

I'm really pleased to hear you enjoyed the experience overall, and especially that you want more! Captive Audience was originally designed as an MA prototype for a University course, and we've expanded on it up till this point to give it a more full fledged experience.

That being said there is a lot more i'd like to do with the game, from expanding the backstage and increasing the threat of the drones, to adding in more tasks like the first day's baking challenge :)

We're currently discussing options of what we could do with the IP next, and where we want to take it, so keep an eye out for news relating to that!

The audio suggestion is a good one, and something we'll look into for future builds.

I'll take a look at the day 4 choice and try make it clearer as well!

Really glad to hear you enjoyed the game overall though, that's all we want with a title like this : )

Best Wishes, and thanks again for playing!

Captive Minds

Hey Dr. Dordle,

A massive thank you for taking the time to play our game in the first place! Optimisation is something we're still working on, and learning to fix as we go, so hopefully we'll be able to improve those framerate issues soon :D

Really glad to hear you had fun though!

Best Wishes,

Captive Minds

Hey Pyroclastic_Snow,

Thanks for taking the time to play our game! We're currently working on further optimisations, so hopefully it will run smoother in the future :D

In the mean time though thank you again for playing, we really appreciate it.

Captive Minds

Hey Nahnah,

Thanks for taking the time to play our game! Yep those drones can be super sneaky, they take pride in the escaped stars they capture, though there are rumours even they've not got a 100% success rate.

That limbo of whether you're doing the right thing, and that you seem doomed to fail is an aspect I really wanted to come across, so i'm glad it came through for you!

I'll take a look at achievement timings for the next build, but i'm glad you enjoyed finding them and recognized them as a tool to guide players : )

Thanks again for playing, we really appreciate it!

Captive Minds

Hey Syphon,

A massive thank you from us for taking the time to play our game! We're really glad you enjoyed it :D Sorry to hear you got stuck, we'll add that to the list of fixes for the next patch!

We definitely had a Saw style mentality when designing the game, so glad that came across. If anything i'd like to take it a bit further in the future.

Rest assured we didn't put the tease in for nothing, and at some point Julia's story will be told : )

Thanks again for playing! 

Captive Minds

That's awesome to hear Draxalore, we really appreciate you playing the game. We definitely have plans to expand the narrative, with a potential sequel focused on Julia in the pipeline :)

Our main issue is lighting at the moment, which were working on optimising in the next build, so hopefully that should help improve frame rate!

As we mentioned above, if you recorded the live stream let us know and we can retweet it from @captiveaudienc3 :)

Thanks again for playing, really glad to hear you enjoyed it!

Wow thank you! That means a huge amount to us :D we've got more updates incoming so hopefully well continue to do the site proud.

Itch Page link: https://captive-minds.itch.io/captive-audience

Hi Folks,

Over the past month I've been working hard to turn our game Captive Audience into an engaging, narrative driven experience that grips the player and draws them through our world.

With the launch of 2.0, i'm happy to say I believe we've finally achieved that! It's still not perfect, so we'd love to hear your feedback, but for our first project we're pretty damn pleased.

What is Captive Audience?

Captive Audience is a first person Narrative Thriller set in the confines of the Compendium Estates, a dark-web corporation responsible for the creation of unlicensed programming using unwilling participants sourced from death row.

With a focus on object interactivity, as well as a fully voice acted story complete with multiple scenes of dialogue, scoring and object commentary, Captive Audience aims to be an immersive, engaging thriller that draws the player into its world and pulls them through to the shocking conclusion. The game is Fully Voice-acted by professionals, giving the world a sense of realism and consequence.

What's is Captive Audience about?

Five years ago Matt's wife Julia was convicted for a crime she didn't commit, and transferred to the Compendium Estates before her conviction could be carried through. 

In a desperate attempt to free her from a fate of servitude Matt attempted a rescue, only to be captured himself, imprisoned by the Compendium Estates and finding himself as the star for their latest show "Captive Audience".

Now, five seasons on, the intervention of a unknown forces offers a chance of escape to Matt, one he cannot pass up. Completing episodes of the show during the day, and attempting escape at night, Matt must work his way through the confines of the Compendium sound stage to free both himself and his wife.

How long has Captive Audience been in development?

Captive Audience was originally created over the course of 10 weeks as a University group project. When that was complete, some of us decided to take the concept further, and complete the game to the standard we'd originally envisioned. Over the past month we've worked to upgrade, develop and refine the game into a brand new product, and we hope you'll agree the effort was worth it.

We're really proud of how far the game has come over the past month, and are thrilled to share it with you, so let us know what you think! We really hope you enjoy the experience :D

Captive Minds

Hey Jakumie, sorry for the slow comment but we loved your video! Thanks a ton for playing Captive Audience :D We'd love for you to give it another go in a month when it should have a lot more features etc!

Claimable? I'm new to Itch so honestly have no idea what that is / how to do it haha

Hi electricshrock.

First of all thanks for playing our game! Really glad to hear you enjoyed it, and you raise a lot of good points in your comments. Some of the narrative blips are mostly down to condensing a long period of time into the small segment people see. Similarly the voice acting actors performing multiple parts was due to time limitations etc on the original project, though we still think it works nicely :D

Just to clear one thing up, with the choice on day 4 you can actually turn the photos over to see the names of the characters and inform your choice!

Again thanks for playing though, really glad you enjoyed the experience and we'll take your feedback into consideration as we continue development!

Hey Levont,

Thanks for taking the time to play our game, I'm really glad to hear you liked the story and the game in general :D also for making such an awesome video about it. I'll share it on our Twitter!