Category Archives: mystery / detective games

Competition, good or bad?

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I’ll start this post with a quote from Jeff Vogel’s blog (he is the man behind Spiderweb software):

“One of the worst things about what I do for a living is that hardly anyone else does it. You might think that not having competitors is a good thing. It is not. In the game industry, competitors help as well as hurt you. When EA spends millions of dollars advertising Dragon Age and Mass Effect, they aren’t just pushing their games. They are also advertising the whole idea of playing RPGs. Dragon Age makes as many potential customers for me as it takes.”

I really can’t agree more with this – but under the “niche games” perspective. We all know what happened to the casual market. First, Bejeweled and Zuma. Then in a few years, 150.000 clones of those games: then the rise of Hidden Object games, and lastly, the pricewars. That had several DANGEROUS side effect (for us game developers):

  1. market flood. What if there were 3 RPG games out every day? Pretty cool (for us RPG fans), but a bit less cool for people like Spiderweb. It’s easy to say “other games also advertise the same kind of games I make, so is good because buyers might eventually find out about me”. Sure, but what if there were 3 new RPG games out every day? Seems impossible right now and probably will never happen (that’s why I overall agree with him) but this changes everything. It surely changed the casual market for the worse, because such a market flood caused…
  2. pricewars. Pricewars is when two big companies compete lowering the prices of their products (in this case the games) to gain market share. It’s a very common tecnique, used in many fields. It’s surely good for the end user, you would think. Well – yes and no. Yes, in the beginning for sure: imagine getting those great games you were paying $20 for $5 instead. Sounds great! The problem is, that doing simple maths, unless the sales also multiply by x4, devs are going to make MUCH LESS money. If they make less money, they have also less money to invest. Less money spent in game assets usually mean lower quality of games, or shorter games. So, in the end, you’ll have also worse games as consumer 🙁
  3. clones / lack of cretivity. The last consequence I can think of, related to  “minimizing business risks” is to have games that look and play identical (or almost). No need to say that this is quite evident in the casual market. You will rarely see an original game in the casual market. It’s inevitable: they know which model works, and they make game using that “template”. Why risk losing money, when you know what works? But once in a while, some more brave developer comes out with something original and in almost all cases is a hit (which I find quite ironic): Azada, Plant vs Zombies, Virtual Villagers, Build a Lot. Those are all games that innovated in the casual market and all of them were TOP HITs.

What is my take about competition? It’s good, I like it, as long as I can sell as affiliate 😀

Jokes apart, as long as are product made with heart, passion, and not simple clones made quickly to make some fast money, they’re all welcome. For example, I recently played a great game by Sakevisual called Jisei. Is really very well done, and beside the fact that I know the author and the artist well, I honestly think is a good product. It was fun when was released because I was still working on my game Vera Blanc since December 2009: so seeing such a quality game that was started just a few months (I think May) already out BEFORE mine, obviously made me thinking “What, how is possible!?” 😀

But like Jeff says, it’s good, and also I think that we indie devs should help each other (that’s why I often promote games as affiliate to my huge mailing list and other devs to the same with my games). Maybe people playing Jisei will find out about my other detective/supernatural game Vera Blanc (when it will be out, hopefully soon!!), and vice versa, maybe people playing Vera Blanc will also find out about Jisei and love it.

Yes, I’m making a horror game too

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But not the kind of game you might think 🙂 Even if to be honest Vera Blanc games could be considered horror as well, not splatter, but if you check the video below:

I’m sure you’ll agree that isn’t definitely a romance game! The final description of Vera’s death is particularly gruesome (poor Vera, you wouldn’t really bite her neck that way). So, actually, with the Vera Blanc series (which should be out next month for sure!) I am already doing a normal offline mystery/detective/horror game. What I want to do instead is something different: a multiplayer horror webgame.

The idea isn’t particularly new of course, I know well there are many zombie-MMO like Urban Dead for example (which I play from time to time after discovering it last month). It would be a free to play game, and not completely text-based, though I’m thinking to use simple php/AJAX stuff and not Flash, so even people using iPhone/iPad will be able to play it 😉 The setting would be sci-fi, involving humans, mutants and robots. Three different factions eternally fighting each other for survival. It would use an action point system, and I have really LOTs of ideas (a body-targeting system like Fallout during the fights for example) but of course, first I’ll release a basic version 1.0 and then will keep updating it, since it’s how most webgame work (and this way I can also see if the public response is good enough for me to pursue this idea further!).

So right now I’m doing some php/mySQL tests, which will be also useful for some other online only/online enabled game I plan to make in the next months. Of course, I’ll still release the normal offline games as I’m doing now, but I want also to test the waters and expand my horizons. I had this idea already long time ago, when I wrote in a blog post:

“I have what I think to be a pretty cool idea that all Magic Stones fans will surely like, a sort of online rpg card game. The advantages of a online-only game are lots, for example multiplayer possibility, no need to store the data on your pc, possibility to play the game anywhere (even at work! eheh) and also the micropayment thing, so that you can pay only for how much you play the game (have still to decide the details, but this would allow much more flexibility on payment methods).”

The necromancer card of the amazon setand I have already a bunch of beautiful hand-drawn card images, like the one you see on the right, ready to be used! But I never had the time so far to work on anything else except my VN/dating sims, but I want to take a break to release this card rpg game, since it’s about time!

Games as comic books

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That would be my goal with the Vera Blanc game series. Even if, as I’m not totally clueless, I “only” planned 2 episodes/games for now. But of course if the game gets some decent sales/becomes popular enough, I would plan/add more episodes. Just like in the comic books, is very common to have different artists working on each episode. That’s what will happen with Vera as well, even if I really like the new artist, so in case of a possible 3rd episode I probably would stick with him 🙂
(n.b. the 2nd artist is the one on the left in the gallery)
Take a look at the gallery below. For each image there are two versions, one from each artist. It’s the “introduction” to the character of Vera and his background, so had to be the same scene. It’s interesting to notice how each artists drew the same scene, using the same description:

It’s true though that using that kind of comic-style art, the lines are more thick, this is due on the method by which they were digitized/draw (they’re not digital art, but traditional pencil/ink art!). The only solution would be to make them at bigger size but as you can imagine then the costs would increase exponentially… if you compare that kind of art vs my first games (artist was the super-skilled Rebecca Gunter) you can notice the difference in the lineart and in the colors.
However, I’m planning to do more of those comic style games because I like the way in which I can tell my story with them: more scenes means more power to the images, and less to the words. While my VNs are comparable to books or illustrated books, Vera Blanc is really comparable to a comic book.

Breaking the rules

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I had what I think a great game idea last week. It does break the common rules of narrative / games, so that’s why I think it’s cool 🙂

Basically, it’s a story told from three different perspectives. Three women, three friends, living the same story but each one from her own point of view and with different path / succession of events. The game will play quite differently from the other ones. I’m still deciding if to make it as normal visual novel or a dating sim. In practice, you would play the first character, until you arrive at what I would call “switch point”. It means you made your choices for this first one, and now you move on to the next one. You’ll be taken back to the beginning of the story (the beginning is common to all the three characters) and play it through a new perspective. You’ll share some common events, and you’ll see your previous character “executing” the choices you made before, but you’ll be able to change the plot again making new choices with the new character.  Also you’ll see new, different events that will keep the plot going. Then, with the final character, you’ll see what is the mystery, why those events are happening, who is the mastermind behind all. Yes, because the game will be a mystery one, not detective, but still a mystery style of game.

In practice, this is what you could define as a triple-otome-multiple-POV-mystery-dating-sim game! It’s just an idea for now but I’m prototyping it in Ren’Py to see if there are potential pitfall to its implementation. I really hope to make this because the story has a final plot twist which I consider quite cool, and the few people (non-gamers) I talked with all agree, saying that would be a good plot for a mystery book.

I have also in mind to experiment again with the visuals for this game, trying to raise the bar once again. I have in mind a sort of mix with manga (like my previous games) and comics (like Vera Blanc game which is coming out soon).

Realism or not

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This is a question that has been spinning in my head since I started writing Vera Blanc’s game.

You might say that the answer is obvious since is a detective game: it MUST be realistic. However, you also know that is a mystery / detective game, with a solid mythology background which picks the most common myths from occultism, paganism, and so on. In other words, werewolves, zombies and vampires won’t be unusual guests! 🙂

So, you could say that the answer is “unrealistic” then. Well, I don’t claim the game will be impeccable but I’m trying to, with the help of many researches, friends and Amy who’s proofreading the game. The goal is to have the game be as realistic as possible, and not use the paranormal as an excuse to change completely the clues from a chapter to the next one. I don’t want the player to think that the assassin might be XYZ, and then find out that was ABC because XYZ was a ghost so all the clues about him were wrong!

You might ask: So how would you describe the game?

The game will provide you solid clues, but also many red-herrings. The clues, even if will regard the supernatural world, will be consistent. For example, if you took a blood sample, and you suspect it’s werewolf blood, you could use a certain metal who is well-known to be the werewolf-bane and see if there’s any unusual reaction (I’m talking about silver, for those who don’t know!). This is just an example how I tried to merge the normal investigation practices with the paranormal.

This is my first attempt in writing a mystery game and trust me, is ten times as difficult as writing just a regular story. I *think* I made a decent job but ultimately will be the pubilc to judge for it!

About the game, I am now writing the final chapters, and it will be finished at end of the month: however will need to be proofreaded completely, and since there are 25.000 words in the game (despite not being a VN) will take some time. I hope to have it finished by mid-April!