Ludum Dare #52compo

Inside

by captaindreamcast

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.40

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.25

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.19

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.25

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.48

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.12

Humor★★★★★★★★★★4.11

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.46

The great detective club is facing its first and greatest crisis yet: Summer farming homework. Will they make it through alive? Does heart-radish really exist or did someone mix up horseradish and stubbornly refuse to rename it? And what is the true meaning of manhood? All these questions and more will be answered if you dare go...

INSIDE!

This game had a strange lifecycle: First it was supposed to be about dating plants, then it was about dating humans and impressing them with cool plant facts™, then in the end I went "what's so great about dating anyway (;_;)" and just disabled the "love bar". And there we go! Detective game.
Would have loved to do actual character animations, some more text effects and more sound effect shenanigans, but the Ludum Dare deadline is a cruel unforgiving mistress. I hope you can still get a little something out of it if you try it, I hope it works for you.

Thanks a lot for playing/rating!

Edit: Dreamcast port is live too.

Tags: #detective

Genres: visual novel

Comments16

Pe7e8 Jan 2023, 23:55

Worked well in the web player. High marks for innovation. Which plants were you planning on dating?

caranha9 Jan 2023, 03:50

lol, this was fun. Loved the cow sound effect. Also sega dreamcast version? O.o

Well, well done! *claps slowly*

(Font size could have been a tiny bit bigger, I felt myself squinting at the text, and it didn't even fill the dialogue box!)

CaptainDreamcastauthor9 Jan 2023, 12:31

@pe7e Carrots were planned, carrots were the one throughline through every iteration, carrots are the key to it all. Other than that cabbage (queen of the vegetables, really), potatoes (I assume they're lazy, like couch potatoes), and finally an unfunny joke option that's not really a plant, I don't want to spoil the climax of this game but it was a similar take on harvesting to the one in the ending to this game.

But it wasn't really all that fun and kinda too similar to a previous Ludum Dare entry I did, so I pivoted away from that.

Zonoxx9 Jan 2023, 13:17

Really fun and different entry!

Oliver9 Jan 2023, 18:31

Great and funny writing, and a great sense of comedic timing.
I found this story entertaining and funny all the way through. Great job! :thumbsup:

LDJam user 3151709 Jan 2023, 18:50

First game that genuinely made me laugh LOL, I accidentally restarted the game halfway through by pressing escape trying to cancel an action. I'd recommend changing that. Otherwise, fairly solid experience, I can't wait to reach detective heaven!

LDJam user 2445049 Jan 2023, 20:27

Bahaha I had a good laugh ! :smile: This was quite enjoyable. Good job ! :tada:

Furraran9 Jan 2023, 20:43

Visuals feels nostalgic and I kind of like the atmosphere it creates. :D
My respect for recreating good ol’ vibes in a funny caricature manner.

imyellowfish10 Jan 2023, 04:59

This game is truly impressing! I love the how the plot goes and the mood is great!

Lex10 Jan 2023, 20:24

I totally clicked with your sense of humor, and those voice over really got me laughing, haha. Thanks for this submission!

Raphytator11 Jan 2023, 13:43

Nice work, fun and interesting. Good Job !

Frogman11 Jan 2023, 22:21

Hilarious game! I loved the characters, dialogue, premise, voice acting - everything! There were some really awesome and surprising moments I did not expect, especially the one with the scarecrow. The amount of content was amazing, and it's even a Dreamcast game? Insane! The music felt a bit repetitive, and the font was indeed a bit hard to read, but other than that, incredible entry! Probably my favorite thus far.

Matank13 Jan 2023, 08:58

Cool game! Jokes were funny and some actually made me laugh which is rare in a video game :laughing:
Ending was awesome.

Ethan Hair14 Jan 2023, 00:30

I loved Giovanni

Echo GameWorks16 Jan 2023, 00:25

Cute game! Loved the jokes and the art style. Great work!

blobo21 Jan 2023, 04:49

I played this with my room mates, and we had a blast the entire time. The story is absolutely absurd and the characters are well drawn. It definitely took us too long to figure out what we were doing, but we played until the end. It took like, 27 minutes to realize extra dialogue options were arriving. Definitely our fault not yours, ha! I recorded it for maximum feedbackage, and I hope you enjoy all of our terrible voice acting, and all of our occasional dyslexia butchering your script. (we didn't hear any of the game audio while playing, sorry if the audio of the game is too loud!)

I can't believe it took me all the way until the end to catch on to what the characters were parodying. (see 39 minutes and 39 seconds into the video) I only made the connection of 'Toto' while watching the footage. ahhhhhh.

Other games by @captaindreamcast

★3.76

★3.54

★3.57