There seems to be a bug during Case 2, when you meet Bianco for the first time, the sprites all move down and go into the bottom of the screen a bit. When I went back into the Weigh room, Oscar's sprite had moved down too when it was previously fine, though reloading the save seemed to fix it
Edit: Upon finishing case 2 I've found that this happens every time after Bentley shows up as a sprite
Some of the clues were wacky but I loved it and it reminded me a lot of Danganronpa- the mystery, the interrogation, the heartbreak is chef's kiss...I like the Chives but I also love the side characters Shalot and Oscar as well. Shalot and Oscar are two characters I'd love to learn more about!
I really hope to see more! I love love love love the game so far!
Thank you so much, I'm really glad you like it! I'm extremely sorry about the softlock- I just finished uploading a new build which should fix the issue (and is fully compatible with your current save file(s)). Again, I'm so sorry for the issue and I'm very thankful you let me know! ^^'
I actually did not consciously reference Conan >_> but I'm very interested to hear what connection you found if you'd want to share!
Found this game by pure chance and I'm in love! While the first case was a bit 'hand-holdy' I found myself stumped in the second case multiple times. All the characters are so likeable in their own ways too. All in all a very fun game. Can't wait for case three!
i just played this on a call with a couple of friends and it was such an incredibly fun time. as fans of ace attorney and danganronpa ourselves, the similarities were clear, but i feel like this game does plenty to establish its own personality in a way that i really appreciate. we were all massively impressed that one single person has been doing the music, backgrounds, writing, *and* character art all on their own!
i want to give some credit to the broader concepts that it tackles, as well - i can tell a lot of thought went into how to present plot threads, and the first case has already done some very interesting meditation on criminal justice and community. can't overstate how excited i am to get to the second case.
I'm really sorry about that- I forgot to make it so the link doesn't expire so I had to generate a new one just now. Also, I put a space in the middle of the invite URL, right after the forward flash (I was advised to do that since there are supposedly a lot of discord bots that scrape webpages for invite links,) but if you copy/paste the link and remove that space, it'll work
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 ;)
Hi! Thank you so much for your well-written and thoughtful reply. I absolutely lved reading your thoughts, and it was especially great that you have some background with the other murder-mystery VNs that inspired mine. You might be interested to know that my VN was actually originally slated to be a Danganronpa fangame, before I decided I’d rather do something that stands on its own a bit better. This case is actually very close to the first case I drafted out in that fangame stage of development, with just some minor tweaks.
I’m very pleased you enjoyed the characters and their poses- I was worried it might be a bit overkill giving them all between eight and ten full-body pictures, so I’m happy to hear you enjoyed that variety and motion in the characters’ “vocabulary” of poses.
I’m glad that the plot pleasantly surprised you! It was not easy coming up with a mystery that was both complex but could also be presented in such a way where I’m not throwing new players immediately into the deep end. I also tend to agree with you on the hints from Chive- I did want to make sure that none of the gameplay stuff was missed (like presenting profiles, for instance,) but I did definitely go overboard in some places.
The point you make about the supplies testimony makes a lot of sense, I think that even though the direct wording makes the supplies fit more with RJ’s statement, I 100% agree that the framing as a whole makes it seem like either statement would be valid to present the evidence to. There are a few moments in this case where multiple statements are potential answers for advancinng, but this particular section does not function like that, so I’ll have to go ahead and change that to better fit with the direction the writing implies you’re supposed to take. Thank you very much for the feedback on that part, by the way!
I’m sorry to say that in terms of the pauses, I’m totally stumped as to why that’d be happening. I tested out the build today after reading that, to see if I unwittingly messed up something with the game’s pauses when I was reworking the UI, but it ran as expected for me on both my Mac and my roommate’s Windows. If you don’t mind, would you be able to tell me if there were any other times when timings felt off? For instance, each “interjection” is supposed to last precisely three seconds before auto-advancing, which means there’s no downtime between the end of the shouting animation and the start of the next message- was this behaving as it was supposed to for you? I definitely want to get that fixed, at any rate- that issue sounds very awkward and frustrating, and could really take someone out of the moment.
As for the Patreon/Discord stuff, I didn’t realize exactly how it worked until now- I thought there’d be a link to join it on my page, which obviously ended up not being the case. I put a link up on this page, if you’re still interested. Sorry about that!
I do subscribe to a lot of scambaiters, I watch Kitboga religiously, in particular! So yes, you are exactly write when you say it seems like he was written by someone who’s listened to hours of actual scam calls. (His theme music actually contains a car insurance robo call, if you listen closely, too.)
Thanks again for your thoughts! Hearing what people think about my VN, especially in such detail, is easily the most rewarding part of this whole venture. I’m very excited to keep working on it, and I’m looking forward to sharing more progress!
There were actually a lot of instances where unskippable pauses happened that were definitely longer than three seconds. I recorded the scene I was talking about in my earlier comment. The interjection is actually immediately followed by Chive's surprised face, but then it pauses on every character for about 10 seconds:
During the entire video (including the part at the beginning) I was pressing the 'continue' button, and as you can see, it takes a really long time to advance. But it also happened in a lot of other scenes, for example, the two-sprite animation of RJ holding out the Amongus plushie and then hugging it would take like 10-15 seconds in total, every time it was used.
If nobody else complained so far, it's probably just a problem with my PC, although I never had a similar issue with other games. If you still want to try debugging this, I could help if you want me to test a new build or something, I'll join your Discord.
Also glad to have found another Kitboga fan in the wild ;) funny how instantly recognizable that is!
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.
I'm very sorry to hear you had such a negative experience with my VN. I have just now uploaded a new build which allows the accent flashing to be toggled off in the Settings menu (which can be accessed at the title screen as well as during gameplay.) Hopefully that will help if you choose to re-attempt it.
I'm so glad you're gonna try it out! Unfortunately, although the window is resizable, there's no fullscreen option yet. I can try to have a build with fullscreen enabled posted within an hour- I'll just need some time to test it on both Mac and Windows. I hope you enjoy the game ^^
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.
Hi! Sorry for the late response, I really appreciate your feedback- it makes me so happy to hear that you liked the character writing! I actually went ahead and added the feature you suggested after reading this (it'll be in the next update,) letting the player choose to end the investigation once all the critical scenes have been viewed.
Thanks again for the suggestion and for the comment I'm really glad you enjoyed it ^^
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.
Thank you so much for the feedback- I'm so glad you're liking it so far!
As for the audio and text speed settings, I'll make sure that gets added very soon. I'll also take a look at the songs and make sure they're all roughly the same in terms of volume range- that should also help with the audio side of things being more user-friendly. Thanks again ^^
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
Thank you so so so much- that means a ton to me! I’m so glad you like it! I hope the rest of the case continues go well for you if you decide to play more :D
I’ll make sure to post a Devlog in a little bit, I actually didn’t realize it wouldn’t show up in Updates without that, so thanks a ton for letting me know ^^
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Also, the ending of case 2 almost made me cry that shit was so sad
There seems to be a bug during Case 2, when you meet Bianco for the first time, the sprites all move down and go into the bottom of the screen a bit. When I went back into the Weigh room, Oscar's sprite had moved down too when it was previously fine, though reloading the save seemed to fix it
Edit: Upon finishing case 2 I've found that this happens every time after Bentley shows up as a sprite
Is there a playthrough or guide of some sort?
Not yet, I'm really sorry- I haven't decided how and where I'd want to post it.
In the meantime I'd be more than happy to answer any questions here or on the OTAOD discord server
Some of the clues were wacky but I loved it and it reminded me a lot of Danganronpa- the mystery, the interrogation, the heartbreak is chef's kiss...I like the Chives but I also love the side characters Shalot and Oscar as well. Shalot and Oscar are two characters I'd love to learn more about!
I really hope to see more! I love love love love the game so far!
Hello! I've found this game recently and I've been loving it! Loved seeing a Conan reference too :)
There's a problem tho, I got softlocked in case 2, while examining the evidence, it doesn't change as it's should, so i can't properly examine it.
Thank you so much, I'm really glad you like it! I'm extremely sorry about the softlock- I just finished uploading a new build which should fix the issue (and is fully compatible with your current save file(s)). Again, I'm so sorry for the issue and I'm very thankful you let me know! ^^'
I actually did not consciously reference Conan >_> but I'm very interested to hear what connection you found if you'd want to share!
Hello! It's working now, thanks for the fast response!
Also, turns out I'm just a bit uncultured, I thought the quote about "eliminating the impossible" was a Conan reference, it's actually Sherlock lol
Found this game by pure chance and I'm in love! While the first case was a bit 'hand-holdy' I found myself stumped in the second case multiple times. All the characters are so likeable in their own ways too. All in all a very fun game. Can't wait for case three!
i just played this on a call with a couple of friends and it was such an incredibly fun time. as fans of ace attorney and danganronpa ourselves, the similarities were clear, but i feel like this game does plenty to establish its own personality in a way that i really appreciate. we were all massively impressed that one single person has been doing the music, backgrounds, writing, *and* character art all on their own!
i want to give some credit to the broader concepts that it tackles, as well - i can tell a lot of thought went into how to present plot threads, and the first case has already done some very interesting meditation on criminal justice and community. can't overstate how excited i am to get to the second case.
Cant wait to start reading! Big love DomeDev!! <3
Discord link isn't pointing me anywhere and it's not a hyperlink
I'm really sorry about that- I forgot to make it so the link doesn't expire so I had to generate a new one just now. Also, I put a space in the middle of the invite URL, right after the forward flash (I was advised to do that since there are supposedly a lot of discord bots that scrape webpages for invite links,) but if you copy/paste the link and remove that space, it'll work
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 ;)
Hi! Thank you so much for your well-written and thoughtful reply. I absolutely lved reading your thoughts, and it was especially great that you have some background with the other murder-mystery VNs that inspired mine. You might be interested to know that my VN was actually originally slated to be a Danganronpa fangame, before I decided I’d rather do something that stands on its own a bit better. This case is actually very close to the first case I drafted out in that fangame stage of development, with just some minor tweaks.
I’m very pleased you enjoyed the characters and their poses- I was worried it might be a bit overkill giving them all between eight and ten full-body pictures, so I’m happy to hear you enjoyed that variety and motion in the characters’ “vocabulary” of poses.
I’m glad that the plot pleasantly surprised you! It was not easy coming up with a mystery that was both complex but could also be presented in such a way where I’m not throwing new players immediately into the deep end. I also tend to agree with you on the hints from Chive- I did want to make sure that none of the gameplay stuff was missed (like presenting profiles, for instance,) but I did definitely go overboard in some places.
The point you make about the supplies testimony makes a lot of sense, I think that even though the direct wording makes the supplies fit more with RJ’s statement, I 100% agree that the framing as a whole makes it seem like either statement would be valid to present the evidence to. There are a few moments in this case where multiple statements are potential answers for advancinng, but this particular section does not function like that, so I’ll have to go ahead and change that to better fit with the direction the writing implies you’re supposed to take. Thank you very much for the feedback on that part, by the way!
I’m sorry to say that in terms of the pauses, I’m totally stumped as to why that’d be happening. I tested out the build today after reading that, to see if I unwittingly messed up something with the game’s pauses when I was reworking the UI, but it ran as expected for me on both my Mac and my roommate’s Windows. If you don’t mind, would you be able to tell me if there were any other times when timings felt off? For instance, each “interjection” is supposed to last precisely three seconds before auto-advancing, which means there’s no downtime between the end of the shouting animation and the start of the next message- was this behaving as it was supposed to for you? I definitely want to get that fixed, at any rate- that issue sounds very awkward and frustrating, and could really take someone out of the moment.
As for the Patreon/Discord stuff, I didn’t realize exactly how it worked until now- I thought there’d be a link to join it on my page, which obviously ended up not being the case. I put a link up on this page, if you’re still interested. Sorry about that!
I do subscribe to a lot of scambaiters, I watch Kitboga religiously, in particular! So yes, you are exactly write when you say it seems like he was written by someone who’s listened to hours of actual scam calls. (His theme music actually contains a car insurance robo call, if you listen closely, too.)
Thanks again for your thoughts! Hearing what people think about my VN, especially in such detail, is easily the most rewarding part of this whole venture. I’m very excited to keep working on it, and I’m looking forward to sharing more progress!
There were actually a lot of instances where unskippable pauses happened that were definitely longer than three seconds. I recorded the scene I was talking about in my earlier comment. The interjection is actually immediately followed by Chive's surprised face, but then it pauses on every character for about 10 seconds:
During the entire video (including the part at the beginning) I was pressing the 'continue' button, and as you can see, it takes a really long time to advance. But it also happened in a lot of other scenes, for example, the two-sprite animation of RJ holding out the Amongus plushie and then hugging it would take like 10-15 seconds in total, every time it was used.
If nobody else complained so far, it's probably just a problem with my PC, although I never had a similar issue with other games. If you still want to try debugging this, I could help if you want me to test a new build or something, I'll join your Discord.
Also glad to have found another Kitboga fan in the wild ;) funny how instantly recognizable that is!
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.
I'm very sorry to hear you had such a negative experience with my VN. I have just now uploaded a new build which allows the accent flashing to be toggled off in the Settings menu (which can be accessed at the title screen as well as during gameplay.) Hopefully that will help if you choose to re-attempt it.
Thank you so much, I'll definitely give it a go!
Furry Danganronpa? I fucking love this.
Gonna try the game today. Is there a way to put it on fullscreen? I don't see an option for it.
Thanks!
I'm so glad you're gonna try it out! Unfortunately, although the window is resizable, there's no fullscreen option yet. I can try to have a build with fullscreen enabled posted within an hour- I'll just need some time to test it on both Mac and Windows. I hope you enjoy the game ^^
edit: it's posted
Thanks! That was fast ^^
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!
Hi! Sorry for the late response, I really appreciate your feedback- it makes me so happy to hear that you liked the character writing! I actually went ahead and added the feature you suggested after reading this (it'll be in the next update,) letting the player choose to end the investigation once all the critical scenes have been viewed.
Thanks again for the suggestion and for the comment I'm really glad you enjoyed it ^^
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.
Thank you so much for the feedback- I'm so glad you're liking it so far!
As for the audio and text speed settings, I'll make sure that gets added very soon. I'll also take a look at the songs and make sure they're all roughly the same in terms of volume range- that should also help with the audio side of things being more user-friendly. Thanks again ^^
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
Thank you so so so much- that means a ton to me! I’m so glad you like it! I hope the rest of the case continues go well for you if you decide to play more :D
I’ll make sure to post a Devlog in a little bit, I actually didn’t realize it wouldn’t show up in Updates without that, so thanks a ton for letting me know ^^