Murder
In this game you play as a detective. You are invited to a party by Sullivan, an owner of a mansion with 8 other people. You need to solve the mystery behind Sullivan's murder by inspecting suspicious things and talking to the other guests... Can you solve it?
Use A & D to Move, E to Interact. You can also use Left Mouse Button on objects to Inspect them.
LINKS: You can download our game from here: https://fingames.itch.io/murder FinGames homepage: http://fingames0.webnode.fi/ FinGamesTwitter: https://twitter.com/FinGamesTeam
Game is designed to be played in resolution 1920x1080.
You can leave feedback after playing the game. We always love to receive some feedback.
Genres: puzzle
Comments23
Graphics are very cool, i think there are many ways to improve mechanics of this game and i wish u luck with this project <3
We had planned a lot of things for the game, but unfortunately we ran out of time and couldn't implement them. That's why it might feel a little lacking. We'll also take a closer look into the bug you found.
You might have run out of time to implement more tricks and turns in the murder case itself, but you should be happy with the underlying game code because it seems rock solid; the UI responds exactly how one would expect.
(By the way, the Ludum Dare page has a place underneath the description where you can put download links, which is where most people will look first... although maybe you just wanted them above the images?)
And about the links: Yeah, we wanted the links above the images.
Graphics are good, very polished, and the sound/music was great for adding atmosphere.
My critique would be that within 60s I felt like I didn't read the text much and would skip to the important bits.
Good work :D
How recent is the game you downloaded? We have updated it a while ago to try to fix some bugs. If the bug still persists, we will look deeper into the matter.
The 60s timer is kinda the mechanic for you to reinvestigate the murder again and again to get the "loop effect".
And to answer your question @freso, we haven't played the game.
Unfortunately, I found the incorporation of the theme to be more irritating than engaging. Having to adhere to a strict time limit while also finding your way through the house and investigating just feels like so little time can be taken to get engrossed in the mystery and find the clues. I get that the time limit is part of the theme, but it feels like without the 60 second timer, the game would have been a lot more fun. That or the timer could have been longer, or pause whenever the player is looking at dialogue or investigating items.
It also doesn't help that many of the game's keyboard controls are convoluted. The game feels like it could have functioned better as a point-and-click. It's weird having to move a character around to talk to individuals but also use the mouse to investigate. I dunno, to me, it felt like it should be either all mouse or only keyboard. The E to talk, B to go back also comes across as unnatural, considering how far that key is compared to the A, D and E keys (on a QWERTY at least...).
In a game where the goal is to solve a mystery by investigating testimonials and items, I really wish it had like an in-game notebook or something similar to keep track of what clues I've collected and the accounts of all the suspects. Something that would show the evidence I currently have rather than just at the answer screen.
Overall, I think this game could be quite interesting if it leaned more into the horror aspect, visually. Maybe subtle panned footsteps or shadows/silhouettes moving around in certain locations to give the sense that the player is being watched and is a prime target for being murdered. Having a loop mechanic in a mystery game is quite ambitious given that the leisure of time is what one can expect from those types of games. I just wonder if there's a way to make it so that the theme doesn't hinder the gameplay. But that asides, the mouse related controls are generally well implemented and the sound effect cues are good.
Nevertheless, it was just a feedback in a "I want you to learn on your mistakes" way, not the criticism in "game is bad" way, because I loved the game. I guessed correctly, I liked dialogues, graphics, music and atmosphere, so it is solid 5.