itch.io

I'm really sorry about that- I forgot to make it so the link doesn't expire so I had to generate a new one just now. Also, I put a space in the middle of the invite URL, right after the forward flash (I was advised to do that since there are supposedly a lot of discord bots that scrape webpages for invite links,) but if you copy/paste the link and remove that space, it'll work

Hi! Thank you so much for your well-written and thoughtful reply. I absolutely lved reading your thoughts, and it was especially great that you have some background with the other murder-mystery VNs that inspired mine. You might be interested to know that my VN was actually originally slated to be a Danganronpa fangame, before I decided I’d rather do something that stands on its own a bit better. This case is actually very close to the first case I drafted out in that fangame stage of development, with just some minor tweaks.

I’m very pleased you enjoyed the characters and their poses- I was worried it might be a bit overkill giving them all between eight and ten full-body pictures, so I’m happy to hear you enjoyed that variety and motion in the characters’ “vocabulary” of poses. 

I’m glad that the plot pleasantly surprised you! It was not easy coming up with a mystery that was both complex but could also be presented in such a way where I’m not throwing new players immediately into the deep end. I also tend to agree with you on the hints from Chive- I did want to make sure that none of the gameplay stuff was missed (like presenting profiles, for instance,) but I did definitely go overboard in some places. 

The point you make about the supplies testimony makes a lot of sense, I think that even though the direct wording makes the supplies fit more with RJ’s statement, I 100% agree that the framing as a whole makes it seem like either statement would be valid to present the evidence to. There are a few moments in this case where multiple statements are potential answers for advancinng, but this particular section does not function like that, so I’ll have to go ahead and change that to better fit with the direction the writing implies you’re supposed to take. Thank you very much for the feedback on that part, by the way!

I’m sorry to say that in terms of the pauses, I’m totally stumped as to why that’d be happening. I tested out the build today after reading that, to see if I unwittingly messed up something with the game’s pauses when I was reworking the UI, but it ran as expected for me on both my Mac and my roommate’s Windows. If you don’t mind, would you be able to tell me if there were any other times when timings felt off? For instance, each “interjection” is supposed to last precisely three seconds before auto-advancing, which means there’s no downtime between the end of the shouting animation and the start of the next message- was this behaving as it was supposed to for you? I definitely want to get that fixed, at any rate- that issue sounds very awkward and frustrating, and could really take someone out of the moment.

As for the Patreon/Discord stuff, I didn’t realize exactly how it worked until now- I thought there’d be a link to join it on my page, which obviously ended up not being the case. I put a link up on this page, if you’re still interested. Sorry about that!

I do subscribe to a lot of scambaiters, I watch Kitboga religiously, in particular! So yes, you are exactly write when you say it seems like he was written by someone who’s listened to hours of actual scam calls. (His theme music actually contains a car insurance robo call, if you listen closely, too.) 

Thanks again for your thoughts! Hearing what people think about my VN, especially in such detail, is easily the most rewarding part of this whole venture. I’m very excited to keep working on it, and I’m looking forward to sharing more progress!

I'm very sorry to hear you had such a negative experience with my VN. I have just now uploaded a new build which allows the accent flashing to be toggled off in the Settings menu (which can be accessed at the title screen as well as during gameplay.) Hopefully that will help if you choose to re-attempt it.

I'm so glad you're gonna try it out! Unfortunately, although the window is resizable, there's no fullscreen option yet. I can try to have a build with fullscreen enabled posted within an hour- I'll just need some time to test it on both Mac and Windows. I hope you enjoy the game ^^

edit: it's posted

Hi! Sorry for the late response, I really appreciate your feedback- it makes me so happy to hear that you liked the character writing! I actually went ahead and added the feature you suggested after reading this (it'll be in the next update,) letting the player choose to end the investigation once all the critical scenes have been viewed.

Thanks again for the suggestion and for the comment I'm really glad you enjoyed it ^^

Thank you so much for the feedback- I'm so glad you're liking it so far!

As for the audio and text speed settings, I'll make sure that gets added very soon. I'll also take a look at the songs and make sure they're all roughly the same in terms of volume range- that should also help with the audio side of things being more user-friendly. Thanks again ^^

Thank you so so so much- that means a ton to me! I’m so glad you like it! I hope the rest of the case continues go well for you if you decide to play more :D

I’ll make sure to post a Devlog in a little bit, I actually didn’t realize it wouldn’t show up in Updates without that, so thanks a ton for letting me know ^^

Cool game! as someone who's tried to make a Puyo Puyo clone in the past, I know how hard that can be, >-< I like the use of the grid, it gives it a very simple but artsy look to Puyo. My only complaint is probably how slowly the Puyo fell when not controlled by the player, like after starting a chain, for instance. Nice work ^^

This is a really solid snake game, the idea of a multiplier is really clever and elevates the Snake formula to a new level. The art is nice, too! I like the apple colors you picked, it sets them apart from one another and makes the snake really fun to look at as it grows. Nice work ^^

Cool game! I really enjoyed the mechanic, it's a great puzzle to begin with, and adding a time limit makes it even more challenging. The colors you chose are really nice, and the history behind the project is really interesting, especially the genesis of the project as a game representing "justice." Nice work ^^

This is great! It took me a bit to get the hang of controlling the car, as well as the mechanic of claiming the checkpoints, but it's a very fun and hectic driving game, and seeing the blocks bouncing around the vaporwave background is pretty awesome. ^^

Good Tetris game, it has a nice simplistic look.  One thing the original Tetris game did was use a pool of tetriminoes to choose from instead of selecting completely randomly, this meant that it was very unlikely to get many of the same block in a row or go a large time without getting a specific block- that would be something cool to see implemented

This is really clever, it has a very unique premise and the models are really smooth. The misfiring animations are really well-done as well. I'd love to see more guns and grenades to check! (Maybe some more weapons to check, too, like an old musket or a crossbow?) 

Super cool graphics and really satisfying sound effects. The jumping felt a little float-y, but eventually I came to enjoy it. The ground-pound in particular feels really great to pull off. This is what Mario Run should've been :P Nice work!

This was really cool! I love the sound effects for volleying the tennis ball back and forth, and the sprite art makes great use of the small resolution. I enjoyed the power-ups a lot, they added a lot of excitement to the game, as well as some replay value since it takes a bit to learn the pattern of the various power-ups. Great work!

Super cool, I love the aesthetic and colors of the game and the puzzles were the right mix of clever and challenging. I didn't get especially far (stopped at the moving platform level), but I had a great time with this. Nice work!

This was really cool! The color palette was very pleasing, and the dual-tail cells-things were very fun to control. Running into another player and rushing to pick up all the dropped cells was also really cool, and was a hectic yet satisfying element of the game. Nice work ^^

This was awesome! I love just how in-depth the skills are and how the different character traits and backgrounds affect them. Probably my only real complaint is that the "days until rescue" kept counting down past zero into negative numbers. Other than that, this was really great ^^

Nice game! I got 2585

The concept is super creative and fun! I had a lot of trouble with the fourth level, titled "Easy." Eventually, it'd switch to some reversed controls and then immediately back to regular controls on the next frame, getting me stuck and unable to move. The interface and hint system is really nice though, they help a lot! Great work ^^

I really enjoyed playing this. It had a great atmosphere an I really enjoyed the music- it was a great mix of pious harpsichord music and contemporary drum set rhythms. The story is really engaging and a bit unsettling, it reminded me of The Giver a little bit, which was really cool. I can't wait to try out the finished product!

I really enjoyed being able to jump on clouds- that was a neat twist. The screen scrolling was a little odd- it seemed like the camera would snap to the last platform I jumped on instead of following me. The music reminded me a bit of the Papa Louie's restaurant management games, so I appreciated that a lot. Nice work!

Ah, the continue screen? If you press return/enter on the title screen if should take you to the game itself. Sorry, should have made that more clear >_<

This is great! Very solid pixel art, and the music is nice. You were able to do a lot with the palette and resolution, especially the subtle paralax scrolling in the first area ^^

Nice work! I've never seen a physics game combined with a keyboard-teaching game, so I really enjoyed seeing that in action. ^^ It also made me realize I'm not as good at typing as I thought I was :P

This is such a neat spin on the formula of a Snake game, I appreciated the fact that I had to dodge the enemies even when they were being bounced away- it added another layer of strategy towards making my lines. It did take me a little bit to fully understand what I was supposed to do, but it ended up being pretty fun

This was really cool, the menus are pretty slick, and I love the way the doodles float and spin around on the "Manage Brawlers" screen. Getting to choose a color was also a nice touch :3

I really enjoyed the screen-looping, it's not something I've seen in a snake game before so it was surprising in a really good way. The controls felt a little unresponsive at times, but other than that, it's a very solid snake game ^^

I had to make a "communication" project for a Sustainability class I'm taking, so I decided to make a game about the importance of infrastructure in creating a sustainable society. I think there's a lot of people who believe that the actions of individuals are largely responsible for pollution. Although that's definitely part of it, a large amount of environmental issues come from industry and the inaction of governments. I know this probably sounds really preachy, but my game is actually really chill and I'd love it if it got some attention.

Also, it took me nearly a year to discover that there's a cool community I can post my itch.io releases on. Cool, huh?

https://robert0504.itch.io/something-to-cry-about

Thanks so much! You did a great job organizing this, I had a lot of fun!