I had so much fun playing this game. The graphics are beautiful, the minimal sound design really made me feel like I was in front of the computer, the growing mysteries were captivating--it was the most scared I was while playing games from this jam! If there were to be future updates, a notebook feature that automatically adds the keywords you've searched and the places you've called would be super helpful, though having to write down physical notes also added to the immersion.
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Leaftaker's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| gHosts' Choice | #1 | n/a | n/a |
| Story | #47 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Creativity | #160 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Horror | #234 | 2.800 | 2.800 |
| Enjoyment (Best Game) | #268 | 3.067 | 3.067 |
| Aesthetics | #321 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Sound Design | #381 | 2.733 | 2.733 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What game engine did you make this project in?
Godot
Comments
This is a nice game entry. I like the way you implemented the whole setup for a murder investigation. You could've used office banter that plays in the background every so often to liven things up.
Submitted
Wingin' It!Interesting little puzzle game with original approach to investigations.
Keep up the good work!
Submitted
The Void In-BetweenSuper enjoyable game! Played it for over an hour and was gripped with figuring out the mystery. Had to use the walkthrough towards the end but this was super impressive to make in a week! One of my fav game of the jam :>
Submitted
Danse MacabreI just love this game. I spent a really really long time on it, the most probably out of the games in this jam. I just got absorbed into the story, the characters and the world! The writing is superb and thrilling. I found myself mapping out details on paper like names, locations and chronologies. I just wanted to ask as someone who also made a text based game using dialogic for the jam, how did you organise yourself, what tactics or tools did you use to storyboard? And what dialogic habits can you recommend for timeline management? Anyway very well done, so glad I found this!
Submitted
ParasiteThank you so much! I'm really glad you liked it!
For storyboarding I just used loose-leaf paper and had them laid out on my desk so I could see everything at once. For writing the dialogue, I used ellipsus, which is a google-doc alternative, and just copy pasted it into Dialogic.
As for writing the story, I came up with the initial concept, then the gimmick with the evidence, and then the body twists and worked everything backwards. I then figured out what I wanted the player to interact with the game, ie the box, the computer and the phone, and I made what I called an 'evidence-chain' where I determined what piece of evidence lead to what else.
When it comes to using Dialogic, I would recommend learning how to access features from the code, such as flipping variables and pausing for menus. The best example in this game is when you talk to someone the first time I have a variable that gets flipped, so if you call and talk to them a second time, an {if} statement gets triggered that sends a signal to one of the gd scripts turn on the end call button.
When it comes to timelines, personally I prefer to have a lot of little timelines. The phone, for example, jumps to another timeline when you input the correct string, using the string variable. That way if I need to edit something I don't run the risk of messing up too many things.
If you have a button or a trigger that opens up a dialogic TL, if you press it you can set it to open up even if the TL isn't null, in which it will automatically jump to that TL. I used this with the End Call button which just opens up a new TL that has a single line of dialogue then closes dialogic.
I hope that answers some of your questions!
Thank you for the elaborate reply! Yes some of the things you said about dialogic I was already practicing, but the thing you said about closing dialogic is interesting. We were struggling to find ways to bypass dialogics domination, in the sense that it hogs all inputs. Our programmer had a script for buttons to manually take the mouse order rather than the base godot code because dialogic wouldn't let the click go through. Disabling dialogic at key moments could be a good idea for us as well! Your game inspired me truly, it was really some time since I was this absorbed. The music and sounds also added to that atmosphere. Good job! If you want you could check out our game as well, your feedback about the story , the writing and feedback in general, would mean a lot to me! :)) Havea good day.
So what Dialogic does is it creates an 'input catcher' as a part of the scene, that means that you can't click anything. You can turn off the input catcher layer entirely through Dialogic by making a new Style, or you can shrink the input catcher by editing the scene. But if you need something on top of Dialogic, then you can always put it in a canvas layer and have that above Dialgoic which is at default layer 3.
Thanks! I'll check out your game when I have time!
I love the story so much, the mystery is so well crafted and well-thought-outl! It took me much longer than expected but I got so invested I couldn't stop playing. The tension is very well build up, even thought it's in general a very calm game I did get scared a few times. I'm also positively surprised with personalities of all side characters, they were all unique and interesting
System of filling the specific evidence is a bit annoying and difficult to crack even when I know the answer, It's great that there's some protection against people typing in random character names to win without really solving the mystery but it felt a bit tedious. Other than that game mechanics work pretty well :>
Submitted
DziadyReally intriguing concept — I love games that make you type and think like you’re actually investigating something. The story and atmosphere pulled me in fast! Some parts were a bit tricky to figure out, but that only added to the mystery vibe. Great job, super immersive for a jam entry!
Submitted
Ghost NurseI think it has a little bit too much text and is kinda anoying, really orignal and good visuals.
Submitted
We Are All Afraid...I set aside some time to play entries before bed but ended up only delving into this one, I was so invested! I was still thinking about it long after playing. It's exactly the type of horror that gets to me, the sense that there's something off -- but the more you try to uncover why the more wrong everything gets.
It was unfortunately also a frustrating experience, but I completely get that it's because it's a short jam and you didn't have time to do more testing or make it more user friendly. Still, well done!
Submitted
Unquiet Grey - Part OneReally cool game, I had to look over the walkthrough after trying out few times. I am still trying to find the secrets.
Submitted
Letter from Nadine
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