itch.io

Ha ha, it's okay. I understand completely. As I've mentioned to some of the other reviews I've gotten, I knew what I was getting myself into. The fact that everything up to that point is still seen in a positive light even after the fact is reward enough for me.

Thanks so much for reading! I'm very happy to see you've read read it at all, especially since I'm a huge fan of Divine Deception.

It's actually a fault of the walkthrough.

It's been years, but looking at the code suggests the missing step is pressing the last statement before presenting.

Thanks for reading! Unfortunate that some of the aspects didn't manage to land, but I totally get it. I personally liked the first part the best, but, y'know, bias.

Thanks for reading! glad to see the misery

Unfortunately, I have no dedicated forum to offer you any additional discussion. A place for general mystery novel/game discussion (Golden Age/Japanese/amateur) is the Honkaku Discord, but I'm not sure how many people there read it.

as intended

Thanks for reading!

cool game. gonna go and pray to the devil to get back to level 3. the co-creator told me this was a metaphor for capitalism so i can believe it

joking aside, super-cool for a jam game; may need some work in terms of box placement (current setup does slightly rely on a lucky configuration where boxes are nearer to the top or not buried), and there's definitely few bugs in the game recognizing when the boxes are placed in the truck (some boxes are placed but the game never registers it properly making it impossible to finish the level -- usually happens in cases where the box lands in the truck but instead of the "success" ding sound there's like a "hit" sound effect -- if it helps)

Thanks for playing!

(Not sure what the translation bit means, since I made the game -- but if you happen to be referring to the community's translations into Italian and Chinese then yes, I am indeed grateful for those!)

Thank you! That was exactly the experience I was going for!

Thanks for pointing this out! This should now be fixed.

Well yes, but the days are randomly incremented so in one reality i'm sure I can get away for some player :)

Well, yes, technically [B] has two variations, but I'm only counting the paths, given that the actual point of the path is achieved by that point. [C] path also has a completely different scene somewhere in the middle depending on your relationship with Ikuko, but the conclusion is still the same.

Nope, only four endings!

Actually looking at it, I can kiiiiind of get away with having a tab, looking at the timeline? It would be down to the year and god knows how widespread it would've been but y'know according to wikipedia y'know technically accurate y'know y'know y'kn

oh no no worries -- i can't say i'm prideful enough to consider any way of solving as bad -- as long as it's solved it's solved! that means you can't complain that it was too hard!!

overboard is fun but it's fundamentally a choose your own adventure -- the events that happen are all generally pre-determined so you're just tampering with existing routines. and Gnosia is mostly just mafia at the end of the day.

Thanks for playing!

I found the post for this! I don't speak Chinese myself (so I had to use machine translating to take a look at the post on tieba) but thank you for taking the time and effort to translate it! I hope you and the people who play the translation like the game!

Thanks for playing! Sorry for the delayed response. Your reaction of seeing how to submit the locked room solution was quite enjoyable.

This is kind of off-topic, the idea of a killer simulator is something that's been constantly on my mind; it's just that it's tricky to come up with a consistent implementation. Not in terms of the actual gameplay but a satisfactory game loop itself -- if you make a hypothetical game where you're the killer, to keep it fresh, you need to introduce a kind of randomization/roguelike component to it. And I've been racking my brain for years now trying to figure out how to do it in a way where the randomization components are not obvious after the first few attempts. Do too much randomization, though, and it becomes an implementation mess.

Still thinking of it. I'll get it someday, I'm sure. Eventually.

When it comes to the remote kill, the idea is that Nanjo had pulled on the string so hard when bursting through the door after being shot that it was pulled from the opposite room out in the hallway. It was a small-caliber gun, though, hence why it was less noticeable.

Anyhow, thanks for playing again!

Hello! Thanks for playing!

Feel free to translate! I'd be honored!

The file is indeed 'script.rpy'. Everything is there. I'd note the "false_solutions" variable as it contains the "wrong answer" explanations during the mystery-solving minigame. There may be other points in the script where I've put some dialogue in the "code" sections but in general -- yeah, everything you need should be in there!

Thanks for playing!

To answer your question, it is the former (but also, in addition to that, they poisoned the rest of their family). It's not outright stated, but implication was the chain of complicity, yeah.

Interesting. I kinda thought the narrative itself got around that idea, but I can see how you could slip through the purples, at the very least, if you assume a certain person is the culprit. Might tighten up the purples a bit to disallow that option completely.

Looking at your reasoning, it's also good to see that the intended hint on the third murder worked!

I'm glad to see you enjoyed it so much! I can only thank my beta-testers and some of the other players who helped me root out some of the tedium from the previous iterations of the game!

I'm curious, though -- what was was your solution for the third murder?

Well, it would be simply remiss of me if I didn't share the appreciation right back -- not only for seeing how much you enjoyed the work but that you took the time to write this feedback! Thanks so much for playing. It's things like this that really have an impact and make a person want to create more, so it's really appreciated.

I see your point on the second murder. Admittedly, my thought process for solving the mystery relied on the player recognizing the nature of the mechanism didn't really matter that much, but I can see how it might've been a leap in assumption. When it comes to this things, it's always difficult to gauge what a person's thought process may be, and my own has years of experience in the ways Umineko gameboards are constructed, so what I think a player might reach may not be the same for everyone.

Again, thanks so much for taking the time to write this!

Thanks for playing, glad to see you liked it!

The "goddammit Battler" option was implemented two hours before release since my girlfriend suggested is as a theory that I hadn't considered. ^^"

The choice of visuals was ultimately arbitrary on my end. I wanted to visually communicate a different feel of the story from the get-go. My original plan was to have a UI similar to the MGS codec layout, with a rectangle containing the background being in the middle of the screen and character portraits being on the side, but I ultimately decided it against it since it didn't seem that aesthetically great. The final result kind of invokes those old adventure game/visual novel vibes which I think work well in the long run.

It was admittedly also an efficient way of cutting corners. The portrait and background art I had at my disposal wouldn't have managed to fill up the 1280x720 screen, and I wasn't in the mood to go digging and downloading massive files of several GB size. They perfectly fit the little window, though!

Great to hear, thanks for playing!

Admittedly the code is a bit hacky on certain parts, and there's probably some qualify-of-life improvements to be had, but I'm glad it works, at least. I'm kind of thinking of iterating on it if I decide to do somethin like this again.

I liked this! I feel like the optimal experience is going through the game once following the "Nice" mood and only then moving onto the other ones. In fact, I'd say it loses most of its purpose otherwise. The art style was good, I enjoyed the atmosphere the 3D rendered backgrounds helped give, and I enjoyed the story and ultimate solution to the mystery.

Most of my complaints come from the minigame department. The first puppet minigame in the "innocent" route (as noted in the other comments) was a bit frustrating; if you pick Takuma, then you're basically going under the assumption that we're talking about the actual murder, in which case there's no point in picking Nao. If you pick Nao, then you're talking about the fire incident, which Takuma has no place being in. The easiest fix is probably just removing both of them and sticking to the key players. 

The logic train puzzles I admittedly cheated through. I'd consider simplifying the wheel and just making options that "seem the same but aren't" just merged into one thing. Of course, I say "just" but that'd obviously take a lot of re-tweaking, so I'm really just grateful that the point to cheese through it was there.

The mood system was interesting. I appreciated the way the choice recontextualized Nao as a person. They were a nice touch. That said, some admittedly felt more satisfying than others. I'd maybe suggest tweaking the conditions for the true endings, though; I actually went through all six paths, picking the paths that each mood felt more geared towards, only to realize how the true endings were actually unlocked. In the end, that part felt a bit tedious, even when skipping through everything.

Either way, it was fun! Happy to have come across this and given it a play!

Really tugs at your heart strings. Especially at the end.

I've tried it a few times now, but I've unfortunately failed to solve it. I love the atmosphere, the premise and Ragman's character all on its own, though. Very neat. Nice cover art, too. My one suggestion would be to maybe extend the size of the screen on the page, or just make the game fullscreen automatically. As it is now, the scrollbar is a bit distracting.

This was pretty interesting. I like how the majority of the story is just the family talk. It's simple, relatable, and all the more tragic when the ending slowly shows itself. I've replayed it a few times now and I'm not really all that sure the story gives any hints as to what the observation mission's ultimate purpose is, but I guess it doesn't have to in the long run.

Good job!

This was pretty fun! I played it a few days ago, so I don't remember exactly, but I think I managed to get most things crossed off my checklist. That was a neat little system in itself. Haven't played Untitled Goose Game, so I might not've been able to appreciate the references/homages, but the game was entertaining on its own. My one gripe -- and it's really a minor one -- is the section where you need to type in that one specific thing. I knew what it was immediately, but it took me a few tries because I didn't know the textbox was case-sensitive.

Overall, though, great work!

Thank you so much for playing! We're thrilled you liked it so much!

Might I suggest turning it upside-down?

(Also, thanks for playing it so far!)