One Thousand Acts of Decency

Discord link isn't pointing me anywhere and it's not a hyperlink

After reading your announcement on r/furry_irl, and being an Ace Attorney and a HUGE Danganronpa fan myself, I finally got to check this out, and so far, I really REALLY enjoyed it!

Below is a dump of few of my thoughts, so warning: spoilers for the first case ahead!

Your art style and the way in which everything is presented is very unique! In many other FVNs, even my favorites, I've come to expect that all sprites for a character are often just one pose with several expressions pasted on top, but every character having multiple complete poses makes your game look really lively!

I also thought that your first case was really good! The characters are really well developed, and while I expected a typical tutorial case where the murderer is all but revealed during the first 10 seconds of the investigation, I was positively surprised by the complexity of the case. Regarding the difficulty, for the most part, I think it was handled well, everything was fair and reasonable, and if you didn't get something the first time, Chive's thoughts would usually point you in the right direction. I'd say these thoughts were a little too much at times (maybe wait with stronger hints until the player went through all testimonies for the first time without finding the right one), but for a first case that's fine.

A thing that I often don't like this genre is when I have figured out the idea behind something but fail to progress the case because it requires an exact match between a piece of evidence and one specific line of text in the testimony, when it would make sense in multiple spots. Luckily most of the time that was no problem at all, only at one point did I struggle with that. That was when the supplies were supposed to prove that the murderer neither planned to kill both victims nor have one as "backup" in case the other didn't show. Especially since it's hinted at that both Shallot and RJ are wrong, I thought it wouldn't matter which one of their testimonies I'd refute, since the evidence discredits both of their theories. After what would later turn out to be the right piece of evidence with RJ didn't work with Shallot's line, I thought I made a mistake, and was then dumbfounded when I tried my way through all pieces of evidence and probably like 3 game overs until I finally got it by chance and was left thinking "wasn't that literally the first thing I tried?" Maybe that's just me being not very smart but I'd say either allowing both statements to be refuted or phrasing the hint differently would work better in that instance.

One (maybe technical) issue I have right now is with the pacing of some of the automatically advancing dialogue. I'm not sure if the way it was for me is what you intended, if you know about this but haven't had the time to fix yet, or if it's just a problem with my computer, but in several scenes where the dialogue automatically advances, the unskippable pauses in between feel unnaturally long. For example, in the scene where Herb rejects the accusation that he's the murderer, and it cycles through all character's surprised faces, it stopped on each character for a good 8-10 seconds. Another time, I think it was right before the telephones started ringing, it paused for what felt like 20 seconds, to the point where I thought the game froze.

Also, two questions: Your Patreon says it comes with Discord benefits, so do you have a Discord server for this community? I couldn't find one.

And are you by any chance watching any scambaiters? Because the execution of Herb is so on point, it feels like he was written by someone who's listened to several hours of actual scammers before. Every time when he did his thing it had me on the floor, especially the use of scammerisms like "oversmart" was hilarious! ᴵ ᵏᶦⁿᵈᵃ ʰᵒᵖᵉ ʷᵉ ˢᵉᵉ ʰᶦᵐ ᵃᵍᵃᶦⁿ ʰᵉ ʷᵃˢ ᵐʸ ᶠᵃᵛᵒʳᶦᵗᵉ

Anyway, thanks for reading my wall of text. I'm really glad I found your game, and I'm excited for more ;)

Interesting premise and really nice art. Unfortunately I couldn't continue playing due to all the flashing lights. Counted an average of 3-5 times the effect is used in each interaction, and a total of 13 times in the conversation with Herb.

Gonna try the game today. Is there a way to put it on fullscreen? I don't see an option for it.

Thanks!

A lot of content, very solid and loved the character writing.
The characters react to almost any piece of evidence, which is pretty cool! Usually in ace attorney stuff they mostly only react to the exact right piece of evidence during investigation (and generic shame you for the wrong ones), while here we get an extra glimpse of their backgrounds/personalities.

Aside from the already pointed setting menu, I would suggest giving the player the decision to stop the investigation after all clues are gathered, instead of pushing the discussion scene. It is a silly thing, but sometimes I wished to present something irrelevant or asked a non-obligatory question to get more flavor text.

Good luck with the development!

Really liking this game so far...your character writing is really well done. 

Only thing I would ask for after the demo is an options menu to adjust audio in the game and the text speed. I was having to tweak the audio a lot during the game so that it was comfortable, and the text speed was a little slow.

Spent a few hours yesterday reading, this game is pretty damn good! I think you should post a devlog/post thing so it shows up in the updates btw. I followed you on my phone and when i got to my PC, i couldnt find the game in my updates section because of no devlog. Also the links to your websites are pretty hidden in the more info itch button, they can be icons or links in the main page instead