itch.io

'tis done. Ask and ye shall receive! Thanks for insisting!

Hey, thanks for checking in. I just uploaded an update with some QoL changes and fixes to the Steam version. If no bugs pop up, I'll make an Itchio build next week.

It's triggering me that I can't go to fullscreen. Options seem to be non-existant. Am I missing something? I seriously dislike playing windowed in a game where I have to aim with the mouse.

Oh, and, personally, I'd rather have a 'lab' where I can discover things for myself, rather than a tutorial. But that's just me, I don't really recomment it for other players, lol,

> A different playtester suggested using a modifier key, like CTRL, to access the bottom row of chemicals. For instance, you'd press 2 to add one fire and CTRL+2 to add one ice. What do you think of that idea?

I'd have to try it, but attempting that right now strains my hand, I'm not a fan. I didn't want to overload my senses so I didn't try it on stream, but I was thinking of doing R and F, so it wraps around nicely around WASD. But at any rate, just in case, I don't think 5 and 6 are super bad, they're okay bindings. And they're intuitive for someone who just picks up the game.

>What about instantly filling up with a chemical if you hold its key down for a bit?

Eh, I don't like it, it feels like it'd slow me down. Maybe a modifier to do a full charge? Like Shift+2 and so forth (no idea if overloading the dash would be annoying, but it's just an idea). Although that only would make sense if it's a prevalent strategy, I'm naturally biased because full charges are all I did.

>I don't want to reduce the maximum number of charges since that would reduce the amount of combinations you can make by a large factor.

I see. Well, do what you think it's best.

>A tutorial that includes this is a high priority and should be in the next update.

Alright, but just in case, I was talking about an option in the menu that takes me to a "playground". My method of playing was to try incorporate new things in-between runs. It'd be nice if I could hop in that mode after any run to test stuff out, regardless of tutorials. I feel like for this game in particular, having a 'lab' would be thematic.

What's up, played the game. I fucked it up and for the first minutes I wasn't showing the game, but I realized eventually:

I don't play FPS games, so take that into consideration, but I thought the game was neat. To be honest, with the difficulty and how sparse ammo was, combined with that I played like a bitch doing peek-a-boo at every corner, to me it felt like I was playing a survival horror game. Which is not a bad thing. But it didn't feel like I was playing the game 'the intended way'.

At any rate, I had fun. The only bad thing is that I didn't finish the level because I couldn't find where the key was. Your levels kind of... You know...

But fr a map would've been nice. I think Doom had that, yeah?

I played your game, good sir:

I don't play FPS games. It seemed to me that with all the dive mechanics and shit, that your intention was to play really fast. But the few times I tried I died miserably. So instead I just peeked at every corner and slow-moed, and finally managed to die a bunch of times more and quit. Not sure if I would try it again. But I did honestly have a good time with it.

So yeah, the main thing I'd say is that the way I played it isn't particularly interesting. But I didn't know how else to play the game. If that makes sense. Again. Not a FPS player. So perhaps my opinion doesn't matter. At any rate, you have the stream if you're curious to see how I fared.

Good luck with the game!

Yo, cool mech game.

here's a strem:

Walked around, shot some dudes. In the story mode, I stopped in a spot where I kept dying to dude that was very far away. I never got to understand how to avoid his attack.

I think it's an interesting game. I'm curious to see harder levels, or what future scenarios there could be. But tbh, from what I played, the gameplay didn't click for me. There wasn't anything that got me excited while trying it. The enemies I fought seemed kind of just be standing there and shoot really slow missiles. But to be fair, I've never played a mech game,  and I don't really play FPS games, so yeah.

Something I wanted to mention that may be kind of silly but big fan of the anime girls. It's not only that the portraits are cute, but I really dig their designs.

So yeah, not a lot of feedback, but hopefully the footage is useful to you somehow. Good luck!

Cool game bro, here's a stream:

Hitting numbers keys multiple times to charge up feels cool, but it's also a bit tiring when you're going back and forth between elements. And it's specially annoying to hit 5 and 6, you pretty much have to stop moving. Another thing is, I usually just went for full charges and just mashed the number keys. But often I wasn't sure of if I hit it 3 or 4 times. For these reasons, I personally would prefer if there were 3 charges, or even 2, that would make it feel less annoying input wise for me.

I didn't figure out any complex combinations. I eventually figured out that Fire and Ice were weak points of some of the enemies, so my strategy was just to full charge them individually to deal with them. After a few runs I figured out that I could heal myself. And that's about it. But I liked the exploratory part of figuring that out (helped by the manual).

I would have liked a sort of training room with dummies or something to test stuff out. I like to experiment with mechanics normally, but I don't feel like you have too much room to try out stuff while you're fighting against dudes in the wild.

But at any rate, it feels pretty nice when you manage to do what you want in this game, it's super tight. I also felt like I learned new stuff after every run. And obviously, I bet it gets pretty nutty when you factor in chemical combinations. So yeah, pretty cool, looking forward to more updates!

Mmmmm, sure, I don't see why not. I'll wait for a bit before thinking of other platforms, though, I'm still following how the Steam release is evolving.

ohhh that sounds interesting. godspeed.

Hi, I played it! Here's a stream:

The main thing I'd mention is that it was a lot for me. I usually play games that are on the simple side. And this is anything but, there's lots of dialogue, lots of little things to remember, lots of UI to traverse, etc. These aren't negatives. But they're not really what I like to play, so I definitely zoned out a few times during gameplay. I was not good at it, to the point where I couldn't solve literally every puzzle I stumbled upon.

The thing that I see is that... The design seems brutal and not hand-holding at all. It just throws you out there and there's a bunch of items, documents, notes; 3 pages of things you can ask people about; lots of uncompleted boxes you can fill, etc. I just find like it's too easy to get stuck and have no idea how to progress. If you played Ace Attorney, I got filtered by the investigation portions because sometimes you had to click on a certain object or ask a person about a specific item before knowing to continue. And that's a game where you're solving a single specific thing and items you can click on are on 2D backgrounds. This seems 100 times worse, because you have a full 3D world to explore, there's so much more stuff you can interact with, so many more 'case pieces' that you need a filter to even reasonable search it, deductions you need to make and you can potentially be working on multiple cases at a time? That's what I'm thinking... But I don't know, maybe you've thought about this, maybe you have a hardcore audience who can tough it out. My brain's not big enough, I'm afraid.

Having said that, I did really like the idea that you're trying to implement. Like, the dialogue, all the systems, all the freedom you give the player. I think it's super ambitious and I'm very impressed by it. If you told me this was an old game made by a legit studio, I'd believe it.

Yo, warap. I played this. I'm not about roguelikes and that kind of stuff, but I'm always down to try them to see their mechanics. And this didn't disappoint, I thought the system was pretty nifty. It's very cool.

I stremed it in case you're interested:

But uh... I mean, this looks like a really, really solid concept. It's easy to pick-up, and if you can add more content and depth to it I totally see this doing well. I had fun with it!

Hi, thanks for playing!

I'm glad you liked it! Worry not, later cases are indeed more challenging. I'm obviously biased, but I'm pretty happy with how they're coming up.

Oh, and I really appreciate the corrections! Man, I've been looking at that 'Foresincs' card for a whole year and didn't even notice. Embarrassing. I've been using spellcheckers too, but that must've slipped through the cracks, I guess. I'll probably get a proper editor to review the whole thing at the end of the development cycle, because English is not my first language, so I imagine there're many lines that sound kind of sketchy.

Thanks again, I hope I can deliver something fun and solid in the end!!

Yep, you're absolutely right. What's funny is that what you say applies the most to people who are into the genre, so it's definitely something I want to address. Glad to hear you're interested, I'm hoping I can deliver some cool mysteries!

Yoo! Video is much appreciated! Thank youuuu.

Regarding plot density, every level will be similar to the demo: There'll be some character interactions and a bit of exploration of the chemistry between the cast, but for the most part it'll be pretty mystery-centric.

Regarding object examination, I have a few improvements in mind that tackle what you say. In general, though, the spirit is to plainly show what's relevant to solve the mysteries. In this case, since you can't inspect inside the cabin, you can't assume there's a hideout. Not sure yet the best way to communicate this, it's something I want to keep receiving feedback.

I made notes of a few other things you mentioned. Again, thank you very much!!

Mighty kind of you! I'm looking forward to it too!

Hey! So, I just played both this and the previous one. Let me give you some of my thoughts. I'm just going to ramble, because it's going to take too much time to structure all of this.

So, first of all, I think it's really funny! The original Dream Team is hysterical. This Gamescom version is funny too, but it did feel a little less potent, some things didn't quite land for me (like the Retro part). Still had plenty of laughs, and I feel like doing a game that actually makes you laugh is pretty hard, but you do it every time man, so you're goated.

The absurdity of the situations in both games are great, you came up with some really funny ideas and bits for both cases. I also really like how nothing serious or really dramatic ever happens. But the style it's not wholesome either, so I feel like there's nothing quite like what you're doing. So I'm pretty interested in what else you can cook up.

Talking about the characters, Vreena is awesome, she's super cute, unhinged and hilarious, you did a great job with her. In general, her lines and her comments are super enjoyable. On the other side, I feel like Joe is a bit generic. It feels like he's there only to bounce off Vreena. I guess it's not necesarily a bad thing, but yeah. I mean, he's funny too. Then the rest of the cast was pretty cool too. In general everyone was interesting to talk to, since they all have their own ridiculous traits... And Vreena helps a lot here, because it's always funny how she interacts with all the different characters. Again, nitpicking, I felt like the guys in the Gamescon version were a bit more normal, if that's to be believed.

Art is cool! Again, I really liked Vreena's sprites in particular, but everyone's was nice.

Also, can I talk about Dream Team's case? I feel like the idea of the motive being snitching, is fricking genius, because not only is a bit clever how you get there (snitch is the only one other than killgore that's not on the list), but the answer that snitch is a snitch is just so ridiculous, it's great. I love it.

Uhhh, so I really liked the games, right? If I get nitpicky again, let me tell you things I felt could be improved in the writing:

* I felt like there were moments that felt a bit weird to me, where characters that are generally ridiculous suddenly get serious for a few lines. I'm thinking of like, there's a part where you're interrogating Snitch in the first game, and when you get something wrong he goes something like 'Are these really the guys who'll sent me to the chair?'. Or similarly, there's a part in the Gamescon where el Presidente also cuts Vreena off with something. Just thought it was a bit of a mood shift.

* I feel like you go a bit too ham with some lines. I guess this is going to depend on wheter you want to sell this, or you're just HOBBYing it, but I feel like like getting an editor or getting a second writing opinion could improve the overall product. My opinion obviously, I just think that it's just very unapologetically you (I'll mention just a thing in particular, the guard making a 'Genshin Impact' joke got me, but it also felt like kind of not cohesive with the character). Take that as you want.

* So, I feel like there's an obvious Ace Attorney comparison here... But while the formula is similar, I do feel like this is it's own thing. In particular, it's way more absurd, right? Which is great. I do wonder though, how that scales on a longer game. I don't know what your plans are with this (hopefully you'll want to make something long, 'cause I want to play), but I can see the level of absurdity and non-stop humor could get a bit stale. Because in general you want sort of ups and down in the narrative, right? And the demos so far have been all up, you know? So, yeah, I do have that question.

Oh, and I feel like this is important, these QoL would be great:

- A way to see which dialogue options the player has already seen

- A way to skip text without using 'A' (maybe holding another key), in case you want to skip already seen text without fear of selecting an unwanted option after said text ends

Okay, so I probably said too much. But yeah, I really liked it, you should do more. I wish it was an anime or something.

Have a video of me playing both parts, I sped up a few empty bits to make it a bit shorter. Still lots of empty silence, though:

You're the goat, thanks bro.

Heh, thanks.

>It's become obvious the controls are not up to snuff, im thinking i'll make the balloon rotate on key taps instead of holding, that might give more control (+ more player gas). any other suggestions are welcome.

Yeah, I actually ended up tapping instead of holding, since I realized you're locking the angle into 8 directions. You could also just free that restriction and allow the player to accelerate in every angle, but I feel like you tried that and didn't like it.

>do you have any suggestions on the whole gravity part or is it something you can get used to?

I mean, just like you did, I could probably get used to it. Regarding alternatives, I'd say adding some dampening to the speed in the Y axis. So, if you're falling, and then you start accelerating to the right, the speed on the Y axis should gradually go to 0. Same deal if you have non-zero speed in the X axis and you start going up, or in any direction really, so that you gradually end up moving wherever you're accelerating towards. That feels more intuitive to me, but at the end of the day it's your call. Good luck man.

Hi, interesting concept! I've been meaning to play this since the last DD, now I finally have.

First thing first, walking around, hovering your cursor and entering rooms feels pretty cool, I liked that.

I had a bit of a struggle with the gameplay. I'm not good with strategy games or games with complex input, so that probably explains it, but it was exhausing for me to hold right clicking while clicking through so many options. Again, personal bias, take it with a grain of salt.

I felt like in general the only viable strategy to breach a place was to have a guy throw a stun grenade, and then enter yourself and shoot the barricade guys from behind. I don't know why would do anything different, but I couldn't really test that theory since there's only one real level where you have your team.

Also, doors really bothered me, I never knew where they were going to open, how many kicks it would take to break them, or at what exact range I could open them.

Mmm that's pretty much it I think. Here's a video of me playing:

'Sup, played it.

I think it looks cute! The sprites and the VFX are nice.

Immediatly after starting to play, the sound of the baloon bugged out and it just continued to play, so I ended up muting it.

Regarding the controls, you've probably got used to them and you're pretty good at the game, right? But um, I didn't quite like them personally, it felt a bit sluggish.  A lot of latency on the input too, which doesn't feel very good. The latency also seems to be changing depending on how long you're holding the direction keys. Holding a single key also makes everything bug out.

It's bit weird how the ballon interacts with gravity. Namely, when you start accelerating, whichever vertical speed you had stays constant. This is weird, because it means that if you're one the ground and you accelerate horizontally off a cliff, you won't fall. But if you're dropping from a distance and then accelerate horizontally, you keep falling. So there's like a lack of inertia, I guess it's the word, but only when you're accelerating. Something similar happens horizontally when you accelerate vertically.

Have a video of me playing the game. I didn't beat it because it bugged out at the end, sent me back like 3 screens, and I tilted:

Not really a lot to go on. Music's good. The only thing I'll mention is that I feel bad hearing the cat's howl on the Game Over.

It's just a way of saying the full game will be on Steam, the levels aren't even finished yet. I don't even know how you would check that the player wishlisted on steam from inside the game.

Thanks man!

Bro what kind of idiot would release a free version online of something they intend to sell? Also, remember that itchio has its own traffic too, so the demo build isn't really closed.

I'll hand out keys on launch, I'm not that ungrateful, don't worry about it.

Also, thanks for the interest!

No new cases, just uploading it for people who haven't played it.

New build has these changes with respect to last DD:

• Game auto-saves on every answer, so you can resume where you left of after exiting the game (it'll be more relevant on longer levels)
• Transcript screen so you can check old dialogue
• Updated level selection with a glimpse at future levels
• Smoother cursor
• Various bug fixes
• Changed the eye color of the boy (yeah I know, holy shit)

Also, there's a steam page now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2468670

Thank you, thank youu.

Just sticking my nose to share this video since you talked about pixel perfect upscaling, it's pretty cool:

No problem, got it, thanks for the data!

There was a Linux build, though, so it wasn't necesary to run it on Wine. I wonder if that would've worked.

Oh, damn, I just noticed what you meant with the weird behaviour of going back when zoomed in. Yeah, I have to fix that.

>perhaps you could add a light source to it that matches the source of the diorama shadows.

Hm... What do you mean? Because the light source would be like on the ceiling, and you can't really look up, so the player wouldn't be able to see a light if it was there... idk, is that what you mean?

>played on linux and all seems to work, only nitpick is that the mouse seems like a sprite that follows the real cursor with that slugish delay.

Yeah, it's not linux specific, it just works like that, I need to fix it. Thanks for pointing it out!

>EZ S rank.

Naisu.

>The answers to both questions were both logical but the puzzle was a bit too simple

Yeah, that's how I'll hook them in.

>I'm looking forward to playing the later levels, especially if the player will also need to poke holes in testimonies and identify the criminal among some suspects, that would be fun.

Cool. The last case does have characters and you do have to figure out who is lying to figure out what happened. In general though, the game is less of a whodunnit and more of a howdunnit, so in most cases you don't even have clear named suspects, but rather, you need to figure the tricks of the crime.

>i like how clean and structured the solving processing is.

Glad to hear.

>i wish there was a better way of discouraging brute force guessing than the points, though that's always been an issue with the ace attorney games.

Eh, it's fine. I used walkthroughs in all my ace attorney playthroughs, so I'm the least qualified person to tell the player what they should do. Hopefully the points dispel a little bit the temptation of going fast, but if people want to take shortcuts I can't stop them. All I can hope for is that the game is sound enough so that people who do choose to invest their time to figure out everything on their own are satisfied when the solutions get revealed. If I can achieve that, I'm good.

> Main Menu is nice. Gives of a comfy Feeling. Kind of wish Background was interactable tho.

Not sure what you mean, what did you have in mind?

> Camera rotates weirdly underneath the Dioramha when transfering from the Truck-view to the Cabin-view.

Can't seem to reproduce this, were you just doing what I'm doing in the webm below shows when you observed that weird rotation?

> Why are the Footprints red?

Visibility, but people keep pointing it out, so I'll probably change it at some point since it's confusing.

> Not nice that the Dioramha is so empty looking, could use some more generic Scenery, maybe a rock or two, maybe a Tree.

True, true.

>Also a bit of Shaderwork to make the whole Thing look like Dad built it one Evening to entertain his Kids, instead of so 'realistic'.

Yeah, I guess it's not toy-like enough, but adjusting the texturing will cost too much. It's interesting that you bring up shaders, but I'm frankly a bit at a loss of what I could do with them to improve that aspect.

>Don't know if a slight wobble would make it better, but maybe worth a Try.

That sounds cute, I'll note it down.

>Thief-Peeps mask is visible from the Back, you have some normal-issues there.

Normals are fine, that problem is cause I'm using transparency with the built-in unity shader, and that causes the rendering ordering to get a little fucked. In fact, I made the mask small in an attempt to hide that. The real solution is writing a custom shader to fix it.

> Clicking the Tire in the Questions can be a bit finnicky, why can't I rotate and zoom the Dioramha there?

Weird... So you're saying in this screen you couldn't do anything?

Anyway, thanks for the comments! If you could elaborate on some of the points you raised that'd be awesome of you.

Cute as always! You can poke can poke fairies, very nice. No witch fairy, very sad.

Thought the test levels were fiiine, maybe with a little too many things I'd say.

I thought these two were the weakest:

* Three lanes: I just thought the first part was a bit annoying, it's just touching buttons in the right order, the puzzle was really the second part, which was fine.

* Priorities: Not sure if I got the intended solution, but it seems like an exploit to me, I didn't find it really intuitive. I guess it's a rule you can roll with, but I wasn't too keen on it, and I wasn't a fan of how the level was discovering that sort of corner case interaction.

For levels I liked, probably these two:

* Dream jumping: It's just kind of different from the other puzzles in a good way.

* Base of operations: Not a test level, but hadn't played it before. I reeeeeally liked this one. So, I actually struggled a lot in this level, but I wasn't just stuck, there elements in the level were just right to keep testing out ideas until I eventually find the solution. I felt like it built a narrative too (for me at least), because I tried to find a way to start from the right, got stuck, then to the left, got stuck for a different reason, which really baffled me, until I found the solution, and I was stuck because something I was assuming was wrong and me go 'ohhh wait'. I liked the level that's now a bonus one for that reason too, although I couldn't solve that one.

Have a video:

>Doesn't seem to have changed much from when I last played, but it's a good prototype.

Not sure if you played the new version, the WebGL version was outdated, I just uploaded the new version. It's true that is mostly the same, though, but it has a few more things: an actual background, hints, animations and system that ranks your performance.

I'm interesting in your phrasing 'prototype', would you mind sharing what is the most prototype-like thing? Because ideally I want to avoid that notion, the actual game will probably look fairly similar to the demo.

>The diorama model looks appealing, though it runs the risk of aggravating pixel hunting with contextual camera angles.

Hm.... Yeah, it's just something I'll have to keep receiving feedback, I think.

>It's interesting to imagine how this might scale to more complex cases, because that will probably create a bunch of other issues too.

Yep, for sure. More complex cases will get translated into multiple dioramas. Hoping I can make that shit intuitive.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

ty!

> I REALLY like this and wish there were more games like this. I

Thaaanks

> It's going to live and die on the puzzles themselves

Cool, because I have some good ones queued up.

>I dont really have any feedback, other than maybe being able to interact with the objects, "a tire rack with a tire missing" but that might become too easy.

Hm... What do you mean by interacting? You mean like, if you hover the cursor over the tire rack you'd see "a tire rack with a tire missing"? Or something else?