If you haven’t played it yet, The Wolf Among Us has elements of a good whodunit and is overall a good game - but not a great one. More importantly, I think it might give some good pointers in how to fill the space between the puzzle pieces, so your story doesn’t look like a straight-up tunnel and it shows off some pitfalls that you can then avoid in your own game. ;) And for that reason, I would recommend The Wolf Among Us to you.
I thought I had played more of these games, but on closer inspection, most of the ones I had thought of don’t really fit the specification… I can give you “a” list of detective-y games, but I wouldn’t think trying to emulate The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker[*] or Her Story would be what you’re after.
On top of that my current issue is that I am interested in a lot of games, but I can’t make the time to actually play them. The (aforementioned) Tex Murphy series and The Dame Was Loaded seem good, but I couldn’t personally vouch for them actually being good or standing the test of time. (I bought the Tex Murphy series and looked into buying The Dame Was Loaded, if that’s any help…)
[*] Truth be told, I wouldn’t describe The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker as “enjoyable”, due to the topic, but it was… interesting. Not so interesting to inspire a second playthrough though…
Oh man, I feel a bit bad for not replying sooner when you've given such a thorough response! The Wolf Among Us and Doctor Dekker's Insanity Party ( or whatever ;) ) look pretty awesome.
In fact, far better than what we can hope to do on a budget of a few hundred quid so. As ever- we need to concentrate on squeezing every pound and penny- and playing to our strengths (dialogue, story-telling, puzzles etc.).
Can you think of any really crap detective games to give us reverse inspiration- as in- "oh wow, we can do better than that"? ;) I'll start- The Agatha Christie ABC Murders on NDS- which opens with a maths problem...
A game that comes to mind would be The Last Express. It’s not so much a detective-y game and more… Well, more of some kind of device to torture yourself. Absolutely not my cup of tea, but PushingUpRoses did quite a good retrospective review on it - back when she still did those. The developers poured lots of time and energy into details that might have seemed really important to them when they were sitting together - but which did have very little importance or impact on the player’s experience.
I might come up with a better negative example if I had all the time in the world… But right now, that game seems like a very good pick for your specific request. :) (You don’t have to take just my word for it: It even made it into a certain list.)
The Last Express is available on GOG and went on sale rather regularly back when I still used GOG - just in case you want a closer look. The game itself, the manual and their making of video might be interesting, but truth be told: You will most likely get the most important parts just by watching PushingUpRoses’ YouTube video.
And another thing, I forgot to point out: Don’t worry too much about having to present something that was created on a budget. Your Bunny Hill Horror series drew my attention way before the first time I ever interacted with you in the forums. Because it has a certain look to it. ( I’m not going to lie: The intense lipstick helped as well. ;) )
While there is an overabundance of great games that were pretty much created on no budget I would like to pick one - being fully aware that this is unfair towards the others I could have picked: If you deconstruct 11:45 A Vivid Life there’s really not much to it: A few animations, a little bit of text, minimal branching… But the story told gave me chills like nothing I had played before. I’ve seen Hellraiser and enjoy me some David Cronenberg. But because of the fact that this is a video game, an interactive kind of medium, it was me who made those horrible decisions. Video games are a powerful medium. Those who know how the sausage is made might forget this sometimes. I’m confident that, as long as you play towards the strength of the medium, your game will be a good one, even if your props may be cheap and some lines aren’t as polished. (Not meant as accusations - just some examples of what might or might not happen.)
(And one day I’ll check out Bunny Hill Horror & Bunny Hill Horror: Bunny Boiler. As soon as I checked out those 120-ish other games I already own… Sorry.)
Yeah, I've got an ever-expanding backlog of games, myself! Thanks for your comments- the Bunny Hill Horror thumbs are basically a funky font and a Deviant Art stock model photo over two photos I took and superimposed- and all edited with Gimp. If there's one thing that's been invaluable to me making games, it's having good experience of graphics software.
This thread, checking out other games and just generally chatting is definitely helpful too. Our coder Mike wanted to do a point n click, but I didn't think it was possible. Having now played Touch Detective on NDS, I'm thinking "wait, maybe we can do that".
And, yeah, working without much of a budget can really necessitate creativity. For the BHH games I made props, got a train down to Tamworth to take photos of its castle, got my friends and family to take photos (typically due to lockdown), learnt how to loop tracks and muffle sound effects in Audacity, played a character myself, begged people to use their music, got permission to take photos in a hospital pharmacy etc. etc. I really enjoy the creative aspect of developing.
And I'm definitely going to start using your sausage analogy in conversations now!
Hello!
At first I wanted to make a list here with a good bunch of old point&click adventure games with detectives or private investigators (Sherlock Holmes, Tex Murphy and Discworld Noir games first things getting in my mind) that I'd love to recommend, but I imagine it's better to make this short an offer a concise idea:
A few years back I was able to play one of the Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes iterations: Crimes & Punishments, and one of the aspects in gameplay that I found very interesting was the case resolution mechanic.
I was able to find a video:
Looks like very doable: the player must connect the correct nodes (if he/she was able to discover the clues while investigating on site), and try to achieve a conclusion.The game story then diverges in case of your conclusions.
I hope this gives you ideas at least!
Good luck!
P.S.: Again, there is like A LOT of detective games if you look in the point&click adventure genre.
Hello!
Thanks for these.
Yeah, I'd love to do a point n click at some point but we don't really have the graphics/ technical ability yet. We might have to go more down the Phoenix Wright road (which is still a good road!).
Discworld Noir's very much on my list of 'games I'll get round to playing at some point' XD Did you play the first one? The puzzles were absolutely insane, like- tie up octopus, put octopus in dunny, replace stall guy's caviar with prunes. I don't believe anyone could complete it without help.
I'll check out the video too, although I'm a bit wary with Sherlock Holmes. Outside of the books, I've not seen many versions of him that I've enjoyed. He's a very difficult character to get right. Interesting mechanic though.
Oh! Yeah! I played all three Discworld games, but actually, I needed walkthrough help for the first two, puzzles were completely illogical as you say. I imagine that's part of the charm of those games :P. Discworld 2 being actually more enjoyable than the first in my opinion.
About Sherlock Holmes games, there are a ton out there, from the eighties to nowadays, but to tell you the truth, I don't really like those from Frogwares, if I can recommend Holmes games these are the ones:
Sherlock Holmes - Case of the Serrated Scalpel
Sherlock Holmes - Case of The Rose Tattoo
Both are from the same studio, Mythos Software. And as Sherlock fan as I am (I hope so, I read most of the books twice and watched the Granada TV series like four times, lol), these games are actually extremely well inspired, especially the second one. I wonder if you ever tried them.Cheers!
Funnily enough, I've been playing that one recently for the first time. Really enjoying it myself- and it's very inspiring how they make the most out of fairly simple graphics and animations. I've currently gone into the dream world after eating the microwaved herbal mushroom biscuits and I've just seen the paper bag man who's stolen Penelope's dreams! No spoilers please XD
