I liked game. The Jazzy music was also spot on. The card stacking mechanic worked well and felt intuitive. The analysis took a while, which slowed things down a bit, but overall it was a solid experience. Nice work
Play game
Stack Detective's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #53 | 3.591 | 3.591 |
| Music | #79 | 3.727 | 3.727 |
| Mechanics | #100 | 3.545 | 3.545 |
| Sound | #197 | 3.227 | 3.227 |
| Overall | #213 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Fun | #245 | 3.318 | 3.318 |
| Aesthetics | #361 | 3.318 | 3.318 |
| Theme | #539 | 2.591 | 2.591 |
Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game in total?
1
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Music by Matthew Pablo. https://matthewpablo.com, SFX by Cleyton Kauffman - https://soundcloud.com/cleytonkauffman and Lokif, https://opengameart.org/users/lokif
Comments
Interesting entry. The description says there are 4 kinds of cards, but there are 5? With the 5th one being ALIBI? The concept is pretty neat, it reminds me just a bit of nerdook’s cluesweeper. I got stuck too and I was looking in the comments to see if I can find any more hints to finishing the game. It seems like no body solved the murder mystery either. Wait until the end of the jam, if all you see is “Great game, cool concept!” probably nobody finished it. You would probably have to rethink game mechanics and execution a bit to make it clearer to the player as to how to finish the game. Under formulas, it would probably help if you have the word “actor” in blue, “alibi” in yellow and so on. I would even suggest to maybe have the “detective” as its own category. Anyway this is how far I got:
I got a tiny bit further than you: 3/4 of Victor's last steps but I forgot what brainwave + combination I did to get that last card to pop out :)
Frankly it was driving me nuts by the end and I started another instance of the game in a new tab in case I'd hit a bug somewhere, but seemingly not... I'm normally too much of a completionist to let it go but the actor unavailable mechanic wore me down and I gave up. Could really use a bit of handholding or a 'clue' button on a MASSIVE cooldown or something...
Still got the tab open until Windows decides to restart my computer for me, lol.
You are right! I designed the rules to be 4 cards: Fact, Evidence, actor, alibi, but as the thing iterated I found "motive" an interesting new card. So I forgot to update the description. I have iterated on my notes getting all the wonderful feedback and there are more types of cards. Of course I will improve the UX and provide a hint system (it was planned, but really no time). The are some rules missing: detective + evidence is the one that got you stuck. In particular: Detective + piano photo. I usually see detectives looking at the photos when thinking about how to solve the case. That generates "questions" that you can ask actors and keep getting leads.
I also found myself thinking how to make the detective card special. I simply thought of making it all white / blue.
I got impressed you found the bank confirmation, you are one of the first that I see reached that deep to the check Camila Alibi. Have not seen many ppl thought, but congratulations!
It is in my plan to make a commercial version of this game, so I will update a version with many more improvements.
Thanks a lot for all your feedback, I did write it all.
Fully agree with you!
About the time, well, I iterated few times in the 2 days I had to develop the concept. Initially I wanted more realistic, based on days, but later I realized that it would be better to make it more linear. The forensic takes about day and half to make the autopsy and so on. In the meanwhile you keep thinking and analyzing things. I wanted to get like the feelings in the movies, sometimes you feel stuck and you suddendly get something to advance. As time past, I started to make it more linear and remove those things, they are not good for a game mechanic.
The formulas representation will completely change (basically what you suggest, using the colors).
Thanks a lot for the feedback!
Well executed Stacklands like game.
Some feedback:
The moving time in the top left made me think there was a time limit to solve it, only after a couple of days I noticed that this simply limits the availability of the actors, however at that time I already rushed through the game quite a bit
The formulas in the bottom left are cut off and the scroll bar is not that noticable. Also this could have used some color coding, since I wasn't sure which of the cards were supposed to be facts. The wording of them being questions sometimes really threw me off here ;P
And finally, I got stuck. Would love to know how I should have continued in the gamestate below, think I combined nearly all the cards.
16 days ago(+1)
Mega thank you for the feedback. I fully agree with you. Since I designed the game and start changing it some things changed. If I would have more time I would get rid off the timer, do force the cards to follow the formulas (I think there is 1 case in which the cards combine and it is not the in formulas). And yes, I myself wonder the wording of the cards. The green ones are FACT, but I was testing whether it would be better to leaf them as FACT in the title and make them like the EVIDENCE or try to innovate. I got catch in the middle.
The game can be finished, but you are like in the middle of the game. Put Victor card on top of the weekdays staff. I will give you an interesting hint that you better checkout with the piano photo. Also put the detective in the piano photo, to make him think what was Victor doing at the end. Combining those thoughts with Camila you will get another character... Sofia...
Check also all the alibi (detective + Alibi)... some surprises may come out ;)
At the end the game will ask you who you think did it... the motive and the murder weapon.
After the jam I will do a more linear version. Under the jam preassure it is hard to polish things much.
Thanks for playing!
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.