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A jam submission

Little Locked RoomsView game page

Investigate tiny 3D crime scenes and solve their mysteries!
Submitted by Fishking (@rio_lucci) — 1 minute, 31 seconds before the deadline
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Little Locked Rooms's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted (1 edit)

Recorded myself playing. Sorry for the dead times where nothing was happening, I received some text messages I had to answer : 

The game idea is super interesting! And the general ambience is very cozy. I remember watching this on stream other DDs but I forgot the answer to the questions and I was very close to use a hint. My only nitpick is that it wasn't too obvious who of the two kids was the one speaking.

Very nice, this has a lot of potential.

Submitted

I recorded playing games with commentary, and your game is one of the games I wanted to try out.

Unfortunately it did not go well with me using Wine on linux. I still provide what I recorded.

Here's the link to the whole DD50 folder:

https://mega.nz/folder/GclCXISL#gwE9S1kRTbe6amYLH2RiYA

sorry about that.

Developer

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.

Submitted

Did you upload the linux build much later? I was downloading games ahead of recording time. I am sorry if I missed it.

this is great so far, i really wanted to continue solving more mysteries. the cosy cabin background is also pretty cool. perhaps you could add a light source to it that matches the source of the diorama shadows.

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.

Developer

>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!

Submitted

EZ S rank.

The commands are intuitive and the diorama style is comfy as hell.
The answers to both questions were both logical but the puzzle was a bit too simple, 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.

Developer

>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.

Submitted

i like how clean and structured the solving processing is.

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.

Developer(+1)

>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.

Submitted

Main Menu is nice. Gives of a comfy Feeling. Kind of wish Background was interactable tho. No new Levels is disappointing.

Why are the Footprints red? Why is there no Portrait of Dad or whoever the hot Guy is, telling his Kids the initial Story of the Thief? Only pops in after the Explanation is all done. Camera rotates weirdly underneath the Dioramha when transfering from the Truck-view to the Cabin-view. 

Nice that everyone gets so into Character, even the Kids put on some Costumes to solve a little Dioramha Crimescene with their Dad in the Evening near the Fire on a cold and snowy Day while warming up in their Cabin. (I don't care if non of that is explicitly said or told.)

Bo is a stupid Name.

Nice that you fixed the clipping and backface Issues, nice that you have a background and everything, nice that you can zoom into interesting Pieces. Not nice that the Dioramha is so empty looking, could use some more generic Scenery, maybe a rock or two, maybe a Tree. How about some Firewood next to the Cabin, and a slightly more interesting Shape? Slightly angle the Car maybe? I think I recall them talking about a River, maybe a bit of that aswell? 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'. More like an actual Toy Dioramha. Als the Road kind of is flat and floats above the Snow, pretty immersion breaking.

The little walking "Animation" is adorable. Don't know if a slight wobble would make it better, but maybe worth a Try.  Thief-Peeps mask is visible from the Back, you have some normal-issues there. Also the mask could be enlarged with a slightly more exaggerated Shape I think. But that might also just be wrong.

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

Can't say more, theres no more Riddles to solve. Boo.

Developer (1 edit)

> 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.

Submitted

>Example

Something like some sparks flying if I click on the fireplace. Nothing important, just a bit of interactability with background Elements.

>Camera

The Frontview of the Truck. When the Camera has to turn around fully to get to the view of the Cabin. You're in Truck backview.

>Screen

I didn't swap to "look-mode" in that screen, because I forgot it existed. Basically have that enabled all the Time while in questin answering mode. You have RMB und MMB unused anyway during that if I recall correctly.

Doesn't seem to have changed much from when I last played, but it's a good prototype. The diorama model looks appealing, though it runs the risk of aggravating pixel hunting with contextual camera angles. It might be interesting to let the player cycle through all available choices in a scene, or otherwise use a special shader for selectable elements. It's interesting to imagine how this might scale to more complex cases, because that will probably create a bunch of other issues too.

Developer (1 edit)

>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!

I called it a prototype because it's just long enough to barely showcase the gameplay system. In terms of polish it's fine, don't worry.

Submitted

Really liked this, the whole style really gets me with the little diorama animations and the vn-esque portraits. The answers were pretty well phrased, never ended up particularly confused with the answers or why some where wrong. Interested to see where this goes.

Developer

ty!

Submitted

I REALLY like this and wish there were more games like this. It's going to live and die on the puzzles themselves but i like your way of isolating it to a small space, perhaps being able to enter buildings for more advanced cases. 

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.

Developer (1 edit)

> 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?

Submitted

Played through it twice; Did my best and got everything right first try in the first play and checked out the wrong answers while getting all the hints for the second.

Cute designs, fun premise, and the characters are charming. 

You also did a good job not giving any hints with how the questions were phrased and how deep you go into wrong answers before being told your initial assumptions were wrong. My only real complaint is that there isn't more content.

It's a bit of a shame you miss so much fun character dialogue if you get the right answer immediately. But I guess that's the curse of detective games.

Hints would be improved if the dadtective gave them in-character as dialogue.

Maybe have the "skip" button look a little more different from the hint button. Maybe a different color of text? I wasn't looking too closely at it and skipped ahead before I meant to, thinking I'd get another hint.

There's a few spelling and grammar errors here and there, but nothing major.

Right-clicking takes you back when zooming in on things in the diorama but not when answering questions. Bit weird.

Holy crap the first hint of the second question blew my mind. Staring you in the face right from the very start.


TLDR I love this and I want more.

Developer

>Hints would be improved if the dadtective gave them in-character as dialogue.

Yeah,  I had thought of that, but somehow buried it in my mind and ended up not including it. Thanks for telling me, I'll note it down for later.

>Maybe have the "skip" button look a little more different from the hint button.

Oh, yeah, good idea. Makes sense to me.

>Right-clicking takes you back when zooming in on things in the diorama but not when answering questions. Bit weird.

That's for sharing. Not sure what'd be intuitive though. Like, if a player is used to using the button to sum up, right clicking by accident on the questions could lead to some confusion as well. I could also remove right-clicking for zooming out altogether. idk, I'll pay attention if other testers bring it up.

> Holy crap the first hint of the second question blew my mind. Staring you in the face right from the very start.

Yeah, literally nobody notices it, lol. Thankfully the mystery is easy enough as it is.

Thanks a lot for commenting!

Developer

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

Developer (2 edits)

No new cases since the last DD, it just adds more stuff to the base case: dialogue animations, hints, and a point system for the questions. Also fixes some bugs (hopefully not introducing any new).

Looking forward to playing this again when you add new cases. Keep it up.