itch.io

Hi, thanks for playing!

I'm glad you liked it! Worry not, later cases are indeed more challenging. I'm obviously biased, but I'm pretty happy with how they're coming up.

Oh, and I really appreciate the corrections! Man, I've been looking at that 'Foresincs' card for a whole year and didn't even notice. Embarrassing. I've been using spellcheckers too, but that must've slipped through the cracks, I guess. I'll probably get a proper editor to review the whole thing at the end of the development cycle, because English is not my first language, so I imagine there're many lines that sound kind of sketchy.

Thanks again, I hope I can deliver something fun and solid in the end!!

Yep, you're absolutely right. What's funny is that what you say applies the most to people who are into the genre, so it's definitely something I want to address. Glad to hear you're interested, I'm hoping I can deliver some cool mysteries!

Yoo! Video is much appreciated! Thank youuuu.

Regarding plot density, every level will be similar to the demo: There'll be some character interactions and a bit of exploration of the chemistry between the cast, but for the most part it'll be pretty mystery-centric.

Regarding object examination, I have a few improvements in mind that tackle what you say. In general, though, the spirit is to plainly show what's relevant to solve the mysteries. In this case, since you can't inspect inside the cabin, you can't assume there's a hideout. Not sure yet the best way to communicate this, it's something I want to keep receiving feedback.

I made notes of a few other things you mentioned. Again, thank you very much!!

Mighty kind of you! I'm looking forward to it too!

Hey! So, I just played both this and the previous one. Let me give you some of my thoughts. I'm just going to ramble, because it's going to take too much time to structure all of this.

So, first of all, I think it's really funny! The original Dream Team is hysterical. This Gamescom version is funny too, but it did feel a little less potent, some things didn't quite land for me (like the Retro part). Still had plenty of laughs, and I feel like doing a game that actually makes you laugh is pretty hard, but you do it every time man, so you're goated.

The absurdity of the situations in both games are great, you came up with some really funny ideas and bits for both cases. I also really like how nothing serious or really dramatic ever happens. But the style it's not wholesome either, so I feel like there's nothing quite like what you're doing. So I'm pretty interested in what else you can cook up.

Talking about the characters, Vreena is awesome, she's super cute, unhinged and hilarious, you did a great job with her. In general, her lines and her comments are super enjoyable. On the other side, I feel like Joe is a bit generic. It feels like he's there only to bounce off Vreena. I guess it's not necesarily a bad thing, but yeah. I mean, he's funny too. Then the rest of the cast was pretty cool too. In general everyone was interesting to talk to, since they all have their own ridiculous traits... And Vreena helps a lot here, because it's always funny how she interacts with all the different characters. Again, nitpicking, I felt like the guys in the Gamescon version were a bit more normal, if that's to be believed.

Art is cool! Again, I really liked Vreena's sprites in particular, but everyone's was nice.

Also, can I talk about Dream Team's case? I feel like the idea of the motive being snitching, is fricking genius, because not only is a bit clever how you get there (snitch is the only one other than killgore that's not on the list), but the answer that snitch is a snitch is just so ridiculous, it's great. I love it.

Uhhh, so I really liked the games, right? If I get nitpicky again, let me tell you things I felt could be improved in the writing:

* I felt like there were moments that felt a bit weird to me, where characters that are generally ridiculous suddenly get serious for a few lines. I'm thinking of like, there's a part where you're interrogating Snitch in the first game, and when you get something wrong he goes something like 'Are these really the guys who'll sent me to the chair?'. Or similarly, there's a part in the Gamescon where el Presidente also cuts Vreena off with something. Just thought it was a bit of a mood shift.

* I feel like you go a bit too ham with some lines. I guess this is going to depend on wheter you want to sell this, or you're just HOBBYing it, but I feel like like getting an editor or getting a second writing opinion could improve the overall product. My opinion obviously, I just think that it's just very unapologetically you (I'll mention just a thing in particular, the guard making a 'Genshin Impact' joke got me, but it also felt like kind of not cohesive with the character). Take that as you want.

* So, I feel like there's an obvious Ace Attorney comparison here... But while the formula is similar, I do feel like this is it's own thing. In particular, it's way more absurd, right? Which is great. I do wonder though, how that scales on a longer game. I don't know what your plans are with this (hopefully you'll want to make something long, 'cause I want to play), but I can see the level of absurdity and non-stop humor could get a bit stale. Because in general you want sort of ups and down in the narrative, right? And the demos so far have been all up, you know? So, yeah, I do have that question.

Oh, and I feel like this is important, these QoL would be great:

- A way to see which dialogue options the player has already seen

- A way to skip text without using 'A' (maybe holding another key), in case you want to skip already seen text without fear of selecting an unwanted option after said text ends

Okay, so I probably said too much. But yeah, I really liked it, you should do more. I wish it was an anime or something.

Have a video of me playing both parts, I sped up a few empty bits to make it a bit shorter. Still lots of empty silence, though:

You're the goat, thanks bro.

Heh, thanks.

>It's become obvious the controls are not up to snuff, im thinking i'll make the balloon rotate on key taps instead of holding, that might give more control (+ more player gas). any other suggestions are welcome.

Yeah, I actually ended up tapping instead of holding, since I realized you're locking the angle into 8 directions. You could also just free that restriction and allow the player to accelerate in every angle, but I feel like you tried that and didn't like it.

>do you have any suggestions on the whole gravity part or is it something you can get used to?

I mean, just like you did, I could probably get used to it. Regarding alternatives, I'd say adding some dampening to the speed in the Y axis. So, if you're falling, and then you start accelerating to the right, the speed on the Y axis should gradually go to 0. Same deal if you have non-zero speed in the X axis and you start going up, or in any direction really, so that you gradually end up moving wherever you're accelerating towards. That feels more intuitive to me, but at the end of the day it's your call. Good luck man.

Hi, interesting concept! I've been meaning to play this since the last DD, now I finally have.

First thing first, walking around, hovering your cursor and entering rooms feels pretty cool, I liked that.

I had a bit of a struggle with the gameplay. I'm not good with strategy games or games with complex input, so that probably explains it, but it was exhausing for me to hold right clicking while clicking through so many options. Again, personal bias, take it with a grain of salt.

I felt like in general the only viable strategy to breach a place was to have a guy throw a stun grenade, and then enter yourself and shoot the barricade guys from behind. I don't know why would do anything different, but I couldn't really test that theory since there's only one real level where you have your team.

Also, doors really bothered me, I never knew where they were going to open, how many kicks it would take to break them, or at what exact range I could open them.

Mmm that's pretty much it I think. Here's a video of me playing:

'Sup, played it.

I think it looks cute! The sprites and the VFX are nice.

Immediatly after starting to play, the sound of the baloon bugged out and it just continued to play, so I ended up muting it.

Regarding the controls, you've probably got used to them and you're pretty good at the game, right? But um, I didn't quite like them personally, it felt a bit sluggish.  A lot of latency on the input too, which doesn't feel very good. The latency also seems to be changing depending on how long you're holding the direction keys. Holding a single key also makes everything bug out.

It's bit weird how the ballon interacts with gravity. Namely, when you start accelerating, whichever vertical speed you had stays constant. This is weird, because it means that if you're one the ground and you accelerate horizontally off a cliff, you won't fall. But if you're dropping from a distance and then accelerate horizontally, you keep falling. So there's like a lack of inertia, I guess it's the word, but only when you're accelerating. Something similar happens horizontally when you accelerate vertically.

Have a video of me playing the game. I didn't beat it because it bugged out at the end, sent me back like 3 screens, and I tilted:

Not really a lot to go on. Music's good. The only thing I'll mention is that I feel bad hearing the cat's howl on the Game Over.

It's just a way of saying the full game will be on Steam, the levels aren't even finished yet. I don't even know how you would check that the player wishlisted on steam from inside the game.

Thanks man!

Bro what kind of idiot would release a free version online of something they intend to sell? Also, remember that itchio has its own traffic too, so the demo build isn't really closed.

I'll hand out keys on launch, I'm not that ungrateful, don't worry about it.

Also, thanks for the interest!

No new cases, just uploading it for people who haven't played it.

New build has these changes with respect to last DD:

• Game auto-saves on every answer, so you can resume where you left of after exiting the game (it'll be more relevant on longer levels)
• Transcript screen so you can check old dialogue
• Updated level selection with a glimpse at future levels
• Smoother cursor
• Various bug fixes
• Changed the eye color of the boy (yeah I know, holy shit)

Also, there's a steam page now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2468670

Thank you, thank youu.

Just sticking my nose to share this video since you talked about pixel perfect upscaling, it's pretty cool:

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.

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

>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!

>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.

>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.

> 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.

Cute as always! You can poke can poke fairies, very nice. No witch fairy, very sad.

Thought the test levels were fiiine, maybe with a little too many things I'd say.

I thought these two were the weakest:

* Three lanes: I just thought the first part was a bit annoying, it's just touching buttons in the right order, the puzzle was really the second part, which was fine.

* Priorities: Not sure if I got the intended solution, but it seems like an exploit to me, I didn't find it really intuitive. I guess it's a rule you can roll with, but I wasn't too keen on it, and I wasn't a fan of how the level was discovering that sort of corner case interaction.

For levels I liked, probably these two:

* Dream jumping: It's just kind of different from the other puzzles in a good way.

* Base of operations: Not a test level, but hadn't played it before. I reeeeeally liked this one. So, I actually struggled a lot in this level, but I wasn't just stuck, there elements in the level were just right to keep testing out ideas until I eventually find the solution. I felt like it built a narrative too (for me at least), because I tried to find a way to start from the right, got stuck, then to the left, got stuck for a different reason, which really baffled me, until I found the solution, and I was stuck because something I was assuming was wrong and me go 'ohhh wait'. I liked the level that's now a bonus one for that reason too, although I couldn't solve that one.

Have a video:

>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!

ty!

> 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?

>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!

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).

totally

Thank you! Hoping I can release an update in the following months.

Thanks!

ty! :)

> As for the brain scrambler, my trickery kind of worked for a moment even though you were taking notes. I guess it's not a viable idea in the end because it's immersion breaking.

Ohhh, ok, I see what you were going for. Then I wouldn't necesarily give up on the concept of just fucking with the player then without really explaining it to him. Maybe you could fuck with the player in a really direct and obvious way at first just to set the player's expectations.  I think with something like that, when my password didn't work I would've leaned more towards 'oh wait is that shit happening again?' instead of 'is this a bug?'. Maybe.

> The password accessability is kind of tricky to improve... I guess holding shift key to enter or open might work out?

Maybe? Doesn't seem very comfortable though. My key complaint is the fact that an important function of the game is three clicks away: 1. clicking menu arrow, 2. clicking password, 3. clicking on the text bar, and then type the password. It's not the biggest of deals, but I did feel a little bit of resistance every time I had to enter a password.

> As for the question from the video, my other project is Space Dementia.

Ohh shit, you're that one engine dev. You're goated.

> Thanks for playing, you made my day!

♥

Hey there. Played it. I'm actually not a huge fan of point and clicks, though... But I wanted to play it because it said 'detective'. I thought it was ok. It's pretty short and straight-forward, so it's unclear to me if it's going to be interesting. The demo was essentially go here, then here, then here.

I got stuck at the beginning, I don't think the system is intuitive at first, it'd be nice if you eased the player into it in a more controlled and direct manner.

I thought the writing was funny, that was probably what I liked the most. That and, looking around when entering new areas, the environments look cool.

The character is too slow, it's annoying to backtrack.

I felt like the inventory system was a bit clunky. Like, grabbing something and then trying to avoid other items in the inventory, but then overshooting and closing the inventory.

Oh, and, when I put the 8 turnips in the box, one of them stood on top of the others, and because of that the game didn't count it. I feel like that should've still counted as inside the box. I understood immediately what happened when the game told me there was 1 turnip left, but I might have not, you know?

So all in all, uh... I'd be down to play more, but I haven't really been sold yet. I don't know if I got a taste of what the game is about. Like will it have interesting puzzles? Will it require some deduction? I don't know. But it's cute, so if you make more content I'd like to play more.

Have a video:

Hey.

First of all, 'Metroidvania Book Game' is a pretty good hook in my opinion. I don't know about the name 'Cosmogonic Overflow' though, although I'm sure you picked it for a very specific reason.

The setting, and the atmosphere is really cool. It's like a weird sci-fy, lovecraftian thingie, and I was pretty immersed the whole way through. I especially got excited by when things got a bit meta. So, the thing were you grab a page and paste it. Or, the elevator page that has holes in it. Or the fact that you can read things across the page. That shit is cool, it ties really well with everything else, and makes me wonder what other things the game will do next.

Hated the combat, couldn't figure it out, reading the instructions pissed me off because I couldn't understand them. I ended up spamming auto-battle.

I was usually confused when backtracking. I found myself clicking on things sort of wishing they would led me to where I wanted to go. I got disoriented pretty quickly. It didn't cause me issues to progress forward, however, I guess.

The other thing is, sometimes I feared forgetting something, and would note it down on a physical paper. I wish there was a way to do that in-game.

A couple of little improvements:

* When you get mind scrambled by the last enemy, it would be nice if you explicitly hinted in bold that the keywords got changed, because I thought it was a bug when my keywords didn't work

* It'd be nice if you didn't have to open the menu to access the 'Password' button, I wish it was just out in the open, since it's such an integral part of traversing through the book

* I didn't notice the 'Paste' button at first when pasting the cut page, and wandered around confused for some time. It'd be nice if it was more visible somehow. I also tried to drag the page into the book, which it would have been nice if it'd worked.

Presentation wise, what you have is pretty good. But I'm going to be overly critical just because your concept is so good. So, first, the drawings and the 3D effect on the book is perfect. The pages themselves feel a bit flat, like it's just a gradient, they remind me more of a webpage, rather than a book page, if that makes sense. In that same vein, the links look literally like web hyperlinks. Again, nitpick, but I feel like that's like slightly off the setting. And finally, the turning page animation is a bit too simple. I also wish that you could see many pages turning when you skip pages. Some VFX to juice it up and make everything more creepy and unsettling would be nice I think, although I don't have anything particular in mind. And lastly, just a thought, but it would be nice if the setting sort of creeped through the page. So, in an area that has fungus, maybe the page gets moldy. That'd be cool. All in all, again, your presentation is cool, and it doesn't deter from the experience, but if you really juice it up it could be something really amazing, I think.

Uhhh... So yeah, I think your execution of the concept is pretty godlike. The demo definitely leaves me with very big expectations.  If you ever release a full version I'd be stocked to play this. Very, very cool bro.

Have a video in case you find it useful:

Hey there, I played it, it was fun. Don't know if it's my kind of platformer, so I don't know if I'd buy it, but I'd be down to play more if you make more levels.

I'm a keyboard player, so that's what I tried at first, but the default rotation speed was too fast. Since control key makes it slower, I just held it down continuously. Eventually my pinky got tired, and I switched over to mouse. It felt pretty good actually, so I just used that until the end.

The mechanic were you lost your vision was weird to me. If you just want to clear the level, you'll just kill yourself to get it back, so I felt like it was a bit strange.

The vertical part was definitely the hardest, everything else was pretty reasonable in comparison. Although maybe that's just because I was still learning how the controls worked at that point.

The fact that R sends you back to the beginning, I didn't like. I didn't even notice it was possible to spawn from the last checkpoint at the beginning if you just died. Like, it shouldn't be possible to erase all your progress by accident, R should spawn you from the last checkpoint, and there should be another way to restart from the beginning, like from a menu

Anyway, it's cool! I kind of want to play a really hard level and get very tilted.

'k, ended up playing. It's still good, wish it was longer.

My biggest concern is that I'm still missing jump inputs. You seemed to fix the general case of not jumping if you hit a direction at the same time, but I could still reproduce it. If you see the video, at 9:04 I start jumping because I suspect I'm missing some inputs, and at 9:13 I just walk to the left even though I hit jump+left. I think it has to do with jumping to the opposite side, which is what I tried. So, you walk to the left, and then suddenly hit Right and Jump at the same time. It could be something from my end too, though, I guess.

The camera is way better in this build, and you fixed the leaps of faith, which is cool. I feel like it moves a bit to much when you change directions, though. Like if you spam left and right the camera wobbles a bunch. But I don't know, it's not like it really bothered me, but camera movement was noticeable, it wasn't quite seamlessly blending in into the gameplay.

I'd normally say that one part where you have to get hit to keep going is clever...But I don't think it's a good idea. The reason being, there was a part in a later level where I thought you had to get hit to continue too, when in reality I just had to look a little closer. Having the thought 'is this one of those parts too' for the rest of the game is kind of annoying, I'd rather have the certainty of knowing that I can clear everything without getting hit, and if I'm not finding a way to do, I'm missing something.

Finally, since people complain about difficutly, in regards to controls, the biggest aid I would like is being able to jump even after a couple of frames of collisioning with the wall when you're hooking onto it. It'd make the game a bit easier, but it would feel better progressing through the levels I think.

But yeah, pretty fun, I'd buy it if it was longer.

Would you mind publishing a web version? I want to play it, but Lua games don't work on my system for some reason.

ty!

Yeh, Phoenix Wright is one of my favorite games, it's a big influence.