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[Jad]

This game has some of the best stair walking I've seen in a game

[flwns]

Excellent, I played it in a dark room with loud headphones, and I felt really immersed.

One bug I encountered was in the frozen death scene levels, the narrow patio outside of the captains quarters isn't solid and you fall through to the bottom of the world.

Thanks for making this. I really want to play more..

[dukope]

The most frequent piece of feedback that I've gotten so far is that the death moments are too long on second viewing. So even though my original plan was to keep it like that, this is something worth changing. I'll figure out some way to manually speed up the watch if you've already seen the moment before.

The sky, the water around the boat, and the top deck are all completely unfinished. One of the reasons I wanted to get this build out is so I can stop being secret about the core mechanic and start posting more progress posts about how I fill these things out.

Some other feedback:

• Needs a mouse-invert option (will do)
• Needs adjustable mouse sensitivity (will do)
• Hard on the eyes - add less contrasting color options (will do)
• Make a Linux version (will do eventually)
• A way to take pictures or remember faces would be nice (probably not, but thinking...)

Response dump:

[...] It's kinda like ordering someone to remember their own death [...]

I think that may be close to the sense I want. It's funny that Latin is so strict about this kind of thing. Really though, as a phrase, "MEMINI MORTES" may be correct but it doesn't look cool at all. So my inclination would be to change what I want in order to get a cool-looking phrase. Can you give me more descriptions about what "Memento Mors", "Memento Mortis", "Memento Mori", etc mean when translated? Through PM is fine if you'd rather not post it here. In any case, thanks for the help!

[...]I felt myself longing for the player character to cast a shadow[...]

I experimented with a player-cast shadow. It has the same problem as the hand-held lamp did: too much changing stuff as you move around. There's a lot of careful tuning to make this 1-bit low res thing work and I've found that leaving the world view mostly static helps a lot.

The default controls are nice but I found myself wanting to use the mouse buttons to interact with things.  RMB for right hand, left click to pull up stop watch seems intuitive to me but maybe you have other plans moving forward.

I'm not locking the mouse right now (Unity issue), so mouse clicks risk losing focus. I'll get it sorted and you'll be able to hit space or and mouse button to use. There'll be just one use function though, no LMB/RMB separation.

[...]The interface for filling in the crew muster is cumbersome[...]

I think the only thing I'll do here is let you page through the book with the left/right arrow keys. Thanks for the detailed comments!

[...]Even if I was a bit disappointed that so far I can't interact with anything but doors on the Obra Dinn. I constantly tried to open cupboards and drawers and stuff but to no avail. Would be great I we could interact more with the ship.[...]

This is intentional (same with the clearly door-breaking axe just lying there at the start). Little bit more about that below.

So far the gameplay feels a bit like 6 degrees of sabotage (great game btw) but with a time travel twist.
Question is, I am (the player) just a agent that has to find the truth of what happened and who has to deduce who killed whom and how? Or will I have any influence of how the story unfolds? I am in any danger?

That's pretty much spot on. I really liked the simple identification mechanics in 6 Degrees of Sabotage. My original plan for Obra Dinn was a lot more involved but would've been impossible production-wise. When I stepped back and considered the situation of boarding a ship full of dead people, the idea that your task would be based strictly on identification made sense. So to answer the question, yes, your tasks is only to deduce the identities and fates of everyone on board. I'm going to try to be very explicit that this is not a horror game, so you're never in any danger. You'll also have no control over the past and no way to affect past events. That limits a lot of what I can do with the game, but the simplicity of it really intrigues me.

I also wondered how my time travel opened the locked door, I have not interacted with the door in any way. So why is it open when I come back? Would have been more logical if I went back in time, walked through the open door and waited for the clock to run out. Kind of Silent Hill style.

Currently, the doors open because I'm gating the player. I've considered an in-world explanation for this. My original vision was to find keys in the past and transfer them to the current time (say, by putting them in the dying guy's pocket). But at some point I realized that's a cure worse than the disease and decided to just open the door in the present if it was open in the past. I have some ideas about how to make this work more naturally though so stay tuned.

Could you make a dedicated animated GIF recorder that ships along with the game? Since you literally only have 1-bit visuals it might be pretty efficient?

That's a cool idea but without YouTube's social ecosystem I'm hesitant to put effort into a custom solution like this. The screenshot key was a last minute addition to the dev build and ended being a great move though so maybe a little 5 second giffer could be worth it.

[...]interesting game play, it took me 3 tries wandering around trying to pick up the bloody ax to fine the case and get with the program ...

It's painful, but this was exactly my plan. I want the player to get the whole "interact with everything!" impulse out of the way right at the start so the rest of the game goes much more smoothly. That first skeleton could've had a knife and you probably wouldn't have expected to use it to open the door. But I thought putting door-breaking axe is the perfect way to get this pill down quickly. All the drawers and cupboards in those two side rooms are for a similar purpose. The basic idea is that literally everything could be picked up or opened but you should pay attention to the hand when looking for actual interactive stuff. This isn't an "open all the drawers to find the items" or "improvise with this weapon lying here" kind of game and I wanted to establish that quickly since I think it could hang over the player for a long time otherwise.

[...]I'm not sure how close the human models are to your final intent or how much you still plan to experiment with them[...]

I played around with lower poly, more stylized characters a while ago but the visceral connection to the violence just wasn't there. I think I'll probably stick with the current style for the rest of the game.

Two things about the potential crew fates: I'm not a native speaker so maybe that's the reason, but "killed by gravity" comes across as an oddly stilted phrasing to me. And the presence of Europe on the "Alive in..." list seems a bit weird when five separate European countries are also on it.

The fate sentence construction is pretty strict, which results in stuff like this. I may or may not try to fix that up. I'm also considering the possibility of specificity in the fates. So, for example, you can determine that he made it to Europe fairly easily - and fill that in - or you can dig much deeper and find some small clue to see that he actually went to Spain. So while "Europe" is correct, "Spain" is correcter. Just an early idea though. The rest of the story, including the fates, is completely up in the air right now.

And at the risk of being "that guy" - will there be some type of in-universe explanation for what the watch actually does (or what the character does that's represented by the watch), or will it be a suspension-of-disbelief thing? As it stands the emotional disconnect between being just some officially appointed investigator and being able to "see" past events involving dead people feels a bit strong to me.

There is an in-world explanation for why you have the watch, but lemme just say that you won't find out for a while.

This game has some of the best stair walking I've seen in a game

Thanks :D. I lucked out on this. There's no special handling of the stairs beyond "speed up the headbob when moving up/down on y". The collision is a big ramp with sliding disabled and it plays different footstep sounds.

[...]One bug I encountered was in the frozen death scene levels, the narrow patio outside of the captains quarters isn't solid and you fall through to the bottom of the world.[...]

Whoa I've never seen this. Which part of the balcony was it?

[santarcade]

Hi dukope,
just played through this build. Congrats. More feedbacks will come later on.
About "Memento Mortis": the right form is "Memento Mortem".

Memento is the imperative form of the verb memini (to remember), being Death the object of your sentence (it answers to the question "Remember what?"), the correct form is "Memento Mortem".

Memento mori is a latin construct to express "Remember that you have to die".
Mortis, is the genitive form which answers to the question "of who/what?", so "Memento Mortis" translates as "Remember of the death" which is sometimes used as another form of Memento Mori.

Keep up the great work!

[dukope]

[...]About "Memento Mortis": the right form is "Memento Mortem".[...]

I'm gonna lock 10 Latin scholars in a room and ask them to settle this with hand-to-hand combat. Last one standing decides the translation and gets a free copy of the game.

(I'll probably use "Memento Mortem" unless someone really objects)

[Lim-Dul]

[...]About "Memento Mortis": the right form is "Memento Mortem".[...]

I'm gonna lock 10 Latin scholars in a room and ask them to settle this with hand-to-hand combat. Last one standing decides the translation and gets a free copy of the game.

(I'll probably use "Memento Mortem" unless someone really objects)

"Memento mortem" is OK as most people pointed out. However, like I wrote in my previous post, "Memento mortis" is also correct contrary to what some people claimed and a similar construction is used for the phrase in German (Gedenke DES TODES [genitive]).

Anyways, another more burning question: Since you added quite a bit of immersion by rendering the arm reaching out to various things, are you considering to render the legs of the protagonist as well? For even deeper immersion.
Although I guess it might be difficult to code and animate them while moving and the effort might not be worth the end result...

[Columbus007]

Really great start, dukope!

Just to echo a few comments already mentioned:

Art style is fantastic, it works, and it's original. I played on my 15" MacBook and I liked having it full screen, no blur.

I was pretty confused the first time about the book... it felt like since it was first instruction, it should be the first thing accomplished. I totally missed it when I got to the cabin on my first play through, and felt pretty lost as to the point. My second playthrough (after reading TigSource forums) I  found the book. I'm sure you've a way to make it work in the fiction, but it may be clearer to new players if they already started with the book?

I also felt stuck waiting for the timer to end. It would be nice to skip out. However, I could see it being a really interesting gameplay feature if you had to travel from one part of the ship to another while still in death time - then you'd have to race the clock to find a clue you needed.

It might also be nice to be able to make a note on the bodies, even just who they might be, so that when you look at a skeleton later, you can read the note and remember that it's so-and-so that died there.

Loved the feeling of the hand. I get that you don't want this to be a "pick up everything" type game, but it was sort of incongruent to have such an awesome hand grabbing mechanic, but only get to use it to open doors.

One other thing is that it didn't "feel" to me like I was on a boat - unless I looked at the horizon. This might be because I couldn't play it with the sound very loud (which was great by the way). Maybe just a little extra rocking to the view would sell the effect?

[flwns]

[...]One bug I encountered was in the frozen death scene levels, the narrow patio outside of the captains quarters isn't solid and you fall through to the bottom of the world.[...]

Whoa I've never seen this. Which part of the balcony was it?

I think it was right when you walk out to the right side of the captains quarters, just try to walk out there and you should probably run into it.

Edit:

I made a video showing what I mean, and actually during the recording I made it to the lower decks of the ship! I hadn't done that before.  Sorry for the painfully low quality, I screwed up some settings, but I think the video shows what I'm talking about clear enough.

[elfeck]

I enjoyed the concept and the style. I _really_ like the music/sounds/voices.

I would love to see a less-contrast-y version.
I did not get that you can use the book or the axe. I got the watch first and just listened to the flashbacks.

Great work so far though!

[StephenM3]

Currently, the doors open because I'm gating the player. I've considered an in-world explanation for this. My original vision was to find keys in the past and transfer them to the current time (say, by putting them in the dying guy's pocket). But at some point I realized that's a cure worse than the disease and decided to just open the door in the present if it was open in the past. I have some ideas about how to make this work more naturally though so stay tuned.

Ooh! Here's my guess / suggestion: You walk through a door when it's open in a memory, then you can open it from the other side!

I kind of had that instinct the first time I saw that open door in a flashback, but when I came back to the present I was a bit surprised to find the door already open, and myself back where I started.

[rj]

yeah, i agree with the above^

plus the keys thing sounds actually pretty nice in some cases, i think. mostly what it helps is the sense that when you're in the past you're supposed to do something or change something and the growing disappointment/realization that there isn't anything to do besides observe. of course once the actual goal of the game is established that observation becomes exciting, but it takes a bit (the length of the demo, in my case) for that to set in.

nintendo 64

[dgggt]

Super interesting idea! When I first read the setup, I was uninterested. However upon playing and seeing the way you are telling this story, it is definitely very compelling. Definitely looking forward to this!

[Deerborne]

I created an account JUST to tell you how blown away I am.
Also, in addition, if you put up a kickstarter, I'd fund the heck out of this.

Also I feel dumb but in the end the last names of a couple of the crewmembers messed up my solution. Maybe I'm just tired but I feel like there's a mistake. If someone could PM me about the solution, I'd appreciate it... Because, like I said, the last name of a certain crew member threw me off :I

[Kyle Preston]

Congrats on getting some press in Gamasutra. Am loving the current playable build!

[metamorphosis]

First of all, quite a fan of the style, being an 80's mac kid with Dark Castle, ShadowGate and a few others.
So props for doing that!

A few problems:
1. occlusion culling isn't quite working with some areas- go to the main four doors to the inside(s) of the ship, go to the door on the right or left (with the small cabins with nothing in them), turn 180 degrees, walk up to the pipe and look to the left of the pipe to see the opposite door - the door will disappear and you'll see the inside of the cabin.
2. specular highlights need work, along with the sky (the vaguely square-ish diffusion isn't looking good).
3. Technically-speaking, an issue on my machine (driver-related I assume) with the default fullscreen res - basically my card doesn't do it. So it creates a 1280x1024 fullscreen with your res in the middle, which isn't very encapsulating. If I alt-enter I can get it to work properly as a window.

But for a dev build, it's pretty good really. Great soundwork.

Gameplay-wise, I found the long repetitive cutscene/etc to jump into the past tedious after the first two times, and also wondered what was the point of it, asides from just seeing a bit of the past. Was I meant to be figuring something out?
The core gameplay , at the moment, doesn't seem to be more than 'find the next skeleton'.

I look forward to the result, and don't take this criticism harshly, I mean well.
Thank you-
M

[Gnaff]

Hi Lucas, I discovered your game on Gamemag. Is a very interesting game. I don't speak english very well (I'm italian), my hobby is compose orchestral music. I'm not a professional composer, just an hobbyist. If you want can we talk togheter to help you about soundtrack (I don't want to spam my soundcloud).

[Skygoblin]

Tried out the demo, really liked it. Unfortunately I didn't get very far because my crummy ass laptop kept overheating. (It does that with pretty much everything except my daily work routine so don't worry about that).

Good to see you're trying something completely different. That's the way to go. Onward forward!

Best of luck with this. 

theo

[azdak]

Wow- a little blown away by this. From the devlog I was pretty excited about the art style, and in motion it's fantastic. Maybe more importantly, I lovelovelove this game mechanic- there's so few proper "detective-ing" games, I think because it's a tough thing to turn into a proper game mechanic - but dukope, man, this really seems to nail it. There's just so, so much potential here. A few notes-

+ I don't really see the problem with the unskippable/fixed-length time warps- I can see it could get a little frustrating, but there's enough variation to investigate outside of the direct death scene itself (like the guy clambering over the balcony), and I assume those sorts of things will play a bigger role later on

+ The voice acting is actually quite good, but I agree with some of the other posts about its need to match the card timing leaving it a little stilted sometimes-just out of curiosity, do you think the subtitles are even really necessary? I found myself wishing there wasn't any written dialogue, at all- forcing the player to listen carefully isn't done very often, but I think can really increase the immersion, as you're straining to hear anything that could be relevant in a particular flashback (though I suppose they should probably be an enablable option, for accessibility)

Can't wait to see where this goes.

[tyroney]

I was a little more impressed than I thought I'd be walking around and opening doors. Then I tried the watch, and proceeded to giggle and freak out for about a minute.

Bravo!

About the scene skip and details - some kind of automatic notes would be really nice. Having to keep paper on my desk is like pulling me out of the game repeatedly. Needing players to correctly hear every line of dialog could be annoying for players or restraining directorially. (I want you to sound like you're insane, angry, and straining yourself greatly, but make sure you enunciate that T and lengthen your vowel sounds more)

Perhaps a click while in a scene could note down/fill in clues from the last experienced second of the past? Probably need a cooldown and limit (a few seconds per click, a few clicks per scene play) so that people don't just spam the button the whole time. Also certain details might not be clickable until other scenes have been played. And while watching a scene, if you've already seen it and you've used up your clicks, the watch could appear/speed up and the transition back could start, and now everyone's a little happier.

My personal concern with auto notes and scene skipping is I just won't be able to play through myself if it's completely manual. I'd need at the very least a log/transcription I could refer to, otherwise I'm going to leave it all to someone else. I really want to play this personally, but I'll only make it at my own pace/level of involvement. (I never could get past the first few paychecks of Papers Please even in easiest mode, and it had just started getting interesting...)

This game has some of the best stair walking I've seen in a game

Thanks :D. I lucked out on this. There's no special handling of the stairs beyond "speed up the headbob when moving up/down on y". The collision is a big ramp with sliding disabled and it plays different footstep sounds.

No! The magic! What have you done?!

[tuglaw]

Great demo.

I don't think I have anything else to add besides that I found myself pressing the left mouse button instead of space to interact.

Ended up with 3 correct fates.

Loved every second.

Congrats!