You are an Inquisitor who has infiltrated the den of the conspiracy—Stulti et Avari—a secret society of the rich and powerful.
Your task is to figure out who the real conspirator is and execute them.
There are three endings to the story, and your choices will influence the outcome.
Decipher Stulti et Avari’s secret signals.
And use the secret signals to lure out a conspirator.
The attitude of Stulti et Avari’s members changes depending on the signals you use. Lure them out before they lure you into a trap!
Tips/Tutorial:
- *Do not mix symbols from different cultists - focus on following a single one. You can reply with only one signal, while cultists may show sequences of up to three signals.*
- *Dialogues can be restarted using the mirror in the bottom-left corner of the screen.*
- *The game can be paused with the spacebar or by using the mirror in the bottom-left corner of the screen.*
- *Your ending depends on your reputation with each cultist. Reputation is cumulative: it builds based on your responses and determines the protagonist’s final decision.*
incredible art style!! great color palette! love the vibrant magenta, so eye catching. love the delicate lines art team has used, very exquisite, just fantastic!
Omg, the art and narrative completely blew me away, can't believe this concept came together in such a short time. And the use of sign language to fit the theme is brilliant. I got totally lost in that stage-like atmosphere. Pure genius.
Damn this is one of my favorite ludum dare games from all the years I've participated! Strong writing, cool mechanic and the art is a joy on the eyes. I really got pulled into the world with this one. Would totally play more of this. Has your group made other games besides these on ludum dare? I'm very intrigued.
Wow, what a great use of the theme. The whole entry feels very professional, there's a huge "Wow!" factor involved. I must say that even with pause, it wasn't entirely clear if I'm making the right choices (or the intended ones). The art style is superb. Congrats, I'm pretty sure this is going to get rated quite high! 🙃
Alas, while this game looks gorgeous, it was too powerful for my 1080p screen--I wasn't able to get the whole thing to fit whether it was fullscreen or not. Is it unplayable without a 4K monitor, or am I doing something wrong?
I got the worst ending possible, lol. But I had fun playing! I think the only thing is that I would like it if the player had a little more control over who is chosen at the end.
absolutely in looove with this. might be my favorite entry so far ! the art style is absolutely beautiful and i would love to see the process (as a fellow artist myself hehe :D). the execution of the idea was creative and the story was so fun, and the writing on the characters are super fun ! amazing game all around, i had so much fun playing this
Hey! I saw your post in Itch.Io and saw we were in the same jam again! What are the odds. I *loved* your game, again. It was a very creative use of the theme, with a beautiful art style and very mood appropriate music. Also the writing was stellar. I was silly and didn't realize i could pause but once I did the deciphering and reading was alot more straight forward.
Its great to see your teams work again and I can't wait to see what's next.
@shivvvy@awwwz@woooo@daliamha@wormwood@reimi Thank you so much for playing and leaving feedback! Going to check all of your games out ASAP! Also wanted to add that we have fixed the game, so if you're willing to give it a proper go, you can do it now. Love and peace!
@decentsauce Thanks man, this means so much! Gotta go check your entry too (we were so tired from fixing the game that we still haven't properly enjoyed playing any other games yet T_T)
Answering your question, we're making a full-fledged game as a team right now (and yeah you play as an Inquisitor again), but it'll still be a long time before we can show anything. We'll definitely let our followers on itch know once it's out so if you give us a follow, you'll get a notif ;)
Thanks for playing our game again and good luck at compo!!
@marudziik Thank you so much for playing!! Going to check your entry ASAP too—it looks really good!
To be honest, the choices being vague was intended: I wanted the Inquisitor to seem incompetent and the level of absurdity to slowly become more extreme by the end of the game. And there were definitely no "right" choices, so it's all good! You had the intended experience hahaha
@shanzpro Thank you so much for playing! Going to check your game as well hehe
And thank you so much for valid feedback! We were planning to add a feature so a player knows how his choices influence the attitude of the characters but didn't get to it yet T_T
@guardaro@tykki19 Yeah, there's a problem with fullscreen in the web build and long story short we won't be able to fix it for the time being ;( If it doesn’t fit your screen, please change your system resolution or download a build We'd be happy if you gave us another chance
@saffwong Heeeeeeey man!!! It's so good to see you! It's such a cool coincidence that we met at this jam again—loving the serendipity. Also loving your new game
Really really liked this. I love the mood and unique dreamlike world you created. Definitely very hard to play as an actual game though, very difficult to read the dialogue while watching the signals
What the hell, this is like by far the coolest mechanic and interpretation of the theme! And you wanted to call this just a "narrative game" while blowing all mechanics-based games out of the water haha
Absolutely phenomenal work from the whole team! Played through the game two times, and still can't say I didn't miss anything, but at least now I'm satisfied.
Would be very cool to do some more complex hand gestures sometimes (as part of "saw them, learned them, can use them"), but I imagine that would blow the scope immensely.
I really enjoyed my time playing this! I didn't end up finishing because I had a hard time parsing the cultists hand-signals while reading dialogue (which made it hard to tell how my replies were making an impact), but the setting and dialogue writing were intriguing enough to make me want to keep going!
I feel like some additional cues to draw your attention to which hand-signals each cultists would be really helpful (audio cues, a visual highlight, etc.), but also am very aware that those sorts of features are beyond scope of the jam workflow. 😅
Regardless, this project is still super impressive! Would love to see what a refined version of this setting/style/mechanics would look like with more time and iteration! Thank you for sharing! 😺
Super attractive art style. Great job! Unfortunately, I had some issues with my browser and couldn’t fully play the game because it didn’t display properly. But I can still tell your idea is really interesting, and the art style looks amazing.
The visuals are absolutely stunning. I was blown away by the art style the moment I opened it. It has such a captivating dark fairy-tale vibe. Absolutely mesmerizing. It’s just a shame I have to download it; it’s a bit inconvenient.
Amazing visuals. I am in love with that artstyle! The music is also very nice and fitting. The idea of the game and design are incredible. I like it very much. Reminded me a diner moment at tokyo ghoul with Gourmet.
Everyone's already mentioned the art style and it's just too good to not mention it again. The story was great and really complex and impressive for just a three day jam. Well done!
I really like the art and the theme and they drew me originally here. I was so hard trying to focus on hand gestures but I felt it was difficult but what worse I didn't have time to read what they told so I was quite lost. Could it be focused on one type of signals at time and then maybe give a pause to answer? There is still solid idea here!
I loved the use of laurel green and magenta in the artwork. The music, atmosphere and interpretation of the theme were all great. I've played the web version and experienced no issues. Good thing there is a pause button because I needed it. A lot.
Ooh, another mystery game! This is super stylish, and the dialogue is well-written & full of character. It's all full of intrigue and everyone has their own voice - plus, everyone's making hand signals on top of it all! Great humour too (*Stulti et Avari* - hilarious). I love the inclusion of a language-deciphering mechanic - I recently played Tunic and Chants of Sennarr and loved that aspect in both. The way signals combine with the words people are saying makes for some interesting deduction.
My main critique is that I didn't get to do a lot of that deduction. Characters are constantly making signals, but because the dialogue proceeds automatically, I have no time to decipher most of them. While I can enter signals into the bottom to figure out what they mean, doing that makes me miss parts of the scene - and replaying the scene to deal with that takes forever. That meant I missed a lot of the depth you put into the character writing. I know I could've paused more, but doing that every half-second gets tedious. The ability to rewind line-by-line (and maybe advance dialogue with a button-press) would allow me to dive into the hidden signals more.
I also didn't get a chance to use much of the language, because I could only reply with one symbol. That's a shame, because it looked like there was some real complexity to it! (I know this is probably because writing a dozen versions of each exchange isn't feasible for a jam, but I still wish I could've experimented more.) The game didn't let me try to solve the mystery, either - I was suspecting Stultus Frivolus because he kept disagreeing with defeatist statements about the emperor (or at least "begrudgingly agreeing"), but at the end my character accused Capricious without my input. I guess I was wrong, but I would've liked the chance to choose who to execute myself!
Overall, the game looks and sounds great, and the narrative & writing are really, really well done. I got really into the mystery and the social/language deduction aspect. I think the main point of improvement would be giving the player more time to think during scenes, and giving them agency in the puzzle/mystery aspects. Awesome work, guys!
I absolutely love this art style! The character designs are incredibly charming, and the gameplay fits the theme perfectly. It’s actually a bit challenging to play. I have to keep an eye on both their gestures and the dialogue text. Since English isn’t my native language, I constantly need to pause to understand what’s going on. Still, that doesn’t take away from how much I adore this game!I would love it even more if Chinese language support could be added!
I shared this game with few of the folks I roleplay Vampire: The Masquerade with because I thought it's an amazing inspiration for secret meeting of underground factions! Amazing concept, beautiful execution, GORGEOUS art style! If I have to be picky, the only thing I didn't vibe with was the first song in the game proper ("phase one" song, so to speak), because the loop was slightly too short; I was also lucky to discover the space button pauses the game early on, and had to pass on the news to other players I've seen struggling. These are tiny things in the grand scale, though, and you've done an amazing job with this!
I actually loved having to glance around at their hands and frantically decipher them. It gave a real sense of urgency and chaos to the experience, and I think portrays the anxiety underlying the frivolous high society talk.
One of the best games I've played from LD59, hands down. The concept is very clever and the visuals are just so fresh and fitting. The vibes remind me of some Stanley Kubric movies, like eyes wide shut..maybe because of the masks
Damn, I can't help but agree with all the comments above. This is one of the most interesting and stylish games at this jam. It's amazing, I wish I could make something similar.
What a great idea! I didn't get it at first and was puzzled, but then it all worked out! The style is amazing, I'd recommend finishing the game and putting it on Steam. It could be a fantastic story-driven game.
a great entry! i absolutely love the art style and the atmosphere — feels like you are actually joining a secret society :D
the gesture system is also impressive — it is not too easy nor too difficult to get a grasp of. i would only probably wish that the signs would be a bit slower, maybe in the beginning of the game. i sometimes got a bit lost cause i tried to follow the dialogues and then missed the hand signals, so then i tried to look at hands and missed pieces of dialogue haha.
maybe there could be a tutorial that leads you through at the very beginning so that you got a good understanding of the system at once. i was at first not sure why i could read signals composed of two or three gestures but when it comes to me i showed only one gesture. thought maybe i did something wrong :) and i also wasn't sure about the ways to get differet endings. i've read in the description that it depends on your reputation with each cultist, but maybe i would prefer to have some possibility to act on my own in the ending as well.
a cool game and a great interpretation of the theme!
Great visuals and story, feels atmospheric, creative mechanic. It's cool to learn world lore and character personality through short dialogue, with time you start to understand gestures without panel. My only criticism is that the text is slightly unreadable because it's gray and small.
Honestly one of my favorite games in this Ludum Dare. I love the concept, the execution is great, and the art style is lavish and elegant and I dig the premise so much. We need more games about social cues and the unwriten rules of communication, that is a lost art by this point. Definitely excited the latent conspiracionist within me!
I really love this style! As soon as I entered, there was a touch of the medieval vampire theme. I feel that it's quite rare to see such a style and design. It's very novel! The music is also excellent and the atmosphere is well created! I'm looking forward to the upcoming works.
WOW! i absolutely agree with all the comments - it's just wonderful! the narrative, art style, music, atmosphere - it's incredible that you managed to do this at the jam! It was a bit difficult for me to play, especially to read and try to understand the signals! For a non-native English speaker, it was especially difficult, but I tried to do my best x)
i'm not sure i fully understood the gameplay. as someone mentioned in the comments, that i wanted to answer all questions with one gesture: "yes, I agree.", but i'm not sure with whom I agree with, because as I understood it, cultists might disagree with each other? which of them do i then agree with? a bit confusing x)
A very beautiful game - I really like the character designs and their environments.
The gameplay turned out to be quite challenging, as it’s hard to keep up with reading the dialogue and watching the gestures at the same time, even with a pause feature.
Wow, this was incredibly unique! And also a lot of fun. This is a very unique way of experiencing a story. I was constantly jumping between reading what they are saying and then deciphering from their hand gestures whether they actually mean it or not. The text and gestures really complimented each other to make very interesting gameplay. The pause button was absolutely necessary though and I used it a lot :D
The art, music and overall vibe also matched with the gameplay beautifully well.
I really dont have that much feedback, other than that I accidentally pressed the replay button once. I was also expecting to choose the culprit at the end (I suspected the lady on the right :p), so I was a little sad the game just pushed me into an ending with one of them. Those are really minor nitpicks though.
Really love the art, music and overall tone of the game. They feel very cohesive together. I liked the premise and intrigue of the game. Though early on, it was unclear on when you are able to interact. Maybe an audio or visual queue on when to take action would be helpful. Great entry though!
Love the presentation it's so stylish and eye cathing, the art is excellent and the watercolor texture is such a nice touch. I also really like the choice of the CMY color scheme here it's a really interesting choice
The writing is incredibly good for a game jam I was intrigued the whole way through and i seeked all 3 endings.I think the hand signals are such a brilliant choice that really complements dialogue and adds so much personality to each character. it me to stay focused on the dialogue so i don't miss any important clue and they also fit perfectly within the overall aesthetic of the game. I loved the variety, the game makes use affectively of all the gestures which is great!
Holy the art style! and the music and all! This is like a beautiful nice book, such a nice and polished game! and i like the interpretation of signal in the game as well.
never in my history of jams have have i ever found my fav entry that fast (y'all are my second entry to vote in this jam, i'm kinda late in voting i know lol)
Very cool idea, nice story, great art and music. The only thing i would ask to change is the grain filter and to make the conversation text bigger, it was a bit hard to read, but that's my personal preference. Overall a very cool and solid game. Great job!
Comments78
working on it, it will be ready today
(def checking your game out after we finish fixing ours, looks fantastic)
and a very interesting concept of the game is to transmit signals using your hands
I *loved* your game, again. It was a very creative use of the theme, with a beautiful art style and very mood appropriate music. Also the writing was stellar. I was silly and didn't realize i could pause but once I did the deciphering and reading was alot more straight forward.
Its great to see your teams work again and I can't wait to see what's next.
Thank you so much for playing and leaving feedback! Going to check all of your games out ASAP!
Also wanted to add that we have fixed the game, so if you're willing to give it a proper go, you can do it now. Love and peace!
Answering your question, we're making a full-fledged game as a team right now (and yeah you play as an Inquisitor again), but it'll still be a long time before we can show anything. We'll definitely let our followers on itch know once it's out so if you give us a follow, you'll get a notif ;)
Thanks for playing our game again and good luck at compo!!
To be honest, the choices being vague was intended: I wanted the Inquisitor to seem incompetent and the level of absurdity to slowly become more extreme by the end of the game. And there were definitely no "right" choices, so it's all good! You had the intended experience hahaha
And thank you so much for valid feedback! We were planning to add a feature so a player knows how his choices influence the attitude of the characters but didn't get to it yet T_T
We'd be happy if you gave us another chance
Absolutely phenomenal work from the whole team! Played through the game two times, and still can't say I didn't miss anything, but at least now I'm satisfied.
Would be very cool to do some more complex hand gestures sometimes (as part of "saw them, learned them, can use them"), but I imagine that would blow the scope immensely.
In any case, this is a very strong 5/5 for me!
Your comment means a lot to me personally. I’ve been following your gamedev journey from afar for quite some time already and love your stuff.
*Somebody mentioned the mechanics😖-I’m crying game designer tears.*
Our entry was greatly overscoped, so we had to limit replies to just one symbol.
Didn't know your team also participated, will definetely check out your entry tomorrow!
I feel like some additional cues to draw your attention to which hand-signals each cultists would be really helpful (audio cues, a visual highlight, etc.), but also am very aware that those sorts of features are beyond scope of the jam workflow. 😅
Regardless, this project is still super impressive! Would love to see what a refined version of this setting/style/mechanics would look like with more time and iteration! Thank you for sharing! 😺
Resolution scaling in the web version is now fixed. We’d really appreciate it if you gave our game another go!
Good thing there is a pause button because I needed it. A lot.
My main critique is that I didn't get to do a lot of that deduction. Characters are constantly making signals, but because the dialogue proceeds automatically, I have no time to decipher most of them. While I can enter signals into the bottom to figure out what they mean, doing that makes me miss parts of the scene - and replaying the scene to deal with that takes forever. That meant I missed a lot of the depth you put into the character writing. I know I could've paused more, but doing that every half-second gets tedious. The ability to rewind line-by-line (and maybe advance dialogue with a button-press) would allow me to dive into the hidden signals more.
I also didn't get a chance to use much of the language, because I could only reply with one symbol. That's a shame, because it looked like there was some real complexity to it! (I know this is probably because writing a dozen versions of each exchange isn't feasible for a jam, but I still wish I could've experimented more.) The game didn't let me try to solve the mystery, either - I was suspecting Stultus Frivolus because he kept disagreeing with defeatist statements about the emperor (or at least "begrudgingly agreeing"), but at the end my character accused Capricious without my input. I guess I was wrong, but I would've liked the chance to choose who to execute myself!
Overall, the game looks and sounds great, and the narrative & writing are really, really well done. I got really into the mystery and the social/language deduction aspect. I think the main point of improvement would be giving the player more time to think during scenes, and giving them agency in the puzzle/mystery aspects. Awesome work, guys!
It’s actually a bit challenging to play. I have to keep an eye on both their gestures and the dialogue text. Since English isn’t my native language, I constantly need to pause to understand what’s going on.
Still, that doesn’t take away from how much I adore this game!I would love it even more if Chinese language support could be added!
It's amazing, I wish I could make something similar.
the gesture system is also impressive — it is not too easy nor too difficult to get a grasp of. i would only probably wish that the signs would be a bit slower, maybe in the beginning of the game. i sometimes got a bit lost cause i tried to follow the dialogues and then missed the hand signals, so then i tried to look at hands and missed pieces of dialogue haha.
maybe there could be a tutorial that leads you through at the very beginning so that you got a good understanding of the system at once. i was at first not sure why i could read signals composed of two or three gestures but when it comes to me i showed only one gesture. thought maybe i did something wrong :) and i also wasn't sure about the ways to get differet endings. i've read in the description that it depends on your reputation with each cultist, but maybe i would prefer to have some possibility to act on my own in the ending as well.
a cool game and a great interpretation of the theme!
i'm not sure i fully understood the gameplay. as someone mentioned in the comments, that i wanted to answer all questions with one gesture: "yes, I agree.", but i'm not sure with whom I agree with, because as I understood it, cultists might disagree with each other? which of them do i then agree with? a bit confusing x)
anyways, impressive entry!
The gameplay turned out to be quite challenging, as it’s hard to keep up with reading the dialogue and watching the gestures at the same time, even with a pause feature.
Nevertheless, it’s a very good job.
The art, music and overall vibe also matched with the gameplay beautifully well.
I really dont have that much feedback, other than that I accidentally pressed the replay button once. I was also expecting to choose the culprit at the end (I suspected the lady on the right :p), so I was a little sad the game just pushed me into an ending with one of them. Those are really minor nitpicks though.
Incredibly well done! This was amazing.
I liked the premise and intrigue of the game. Though early on, it was unclear on when you are able to interact. Maybe an audio or visual queue on when to take action would be helpful. Great entry though!
The writing is incredibly good for a game jam I was intrigued the whole way through and i seeked all 3 endings.I think the hand signals are such a brilliant choice that really complements dialogue and adds so much personality to each character. it me to stay focused on the dialogue so i don't miss any important clue and they also fit perfectly within the overall aesthetic of the game. I loved the variety, the game makes use affectively of all the gestures which is great!