Masques and Murder!
Update: the game is finished! Get it
here.
Your family is dead, slain by the prince and his three ungodly
sons. Greedy and manipulative, they plan to marry you off to seize your
family's fortunes. But you will not sit idly by: your mind is fixed upon
vengeance. When these brothers least suspect it, you will make them pay.
Set in the late 16th century, "Masques and Murder!" is a Renaissance vengeance simulator featuring music, debates, theological discussions, sex and murder. Lots and lots of murder.
GameplayThe focus is on improving your skills. The more skilful you are, the more impressed the three brothers will be. Impress them enough and they will drop their guard.
This is the main screen:
Each day consists of three periods: morning, afternoon and evening. Choose what you want to do for each period. You'll also need to manage your mood and attend public events: dances, recitals, debates and so on.
When you visit another character, the game shows the conversation sort of like a visual novel:
Art and musicPretty much all the art is from Renaissance or Baroque paintings. There's some really lovely stuff in here thanks to long-dead 16th-century painters.
Likewise, all the music is public domain stuff from the same period.
Progress so farThe game is pretty far along. Most assets are finished, and most systems are implemented. You can play the game start to finish.
These are the things I still have to work on:
- A bit more writing. Most skills have unique text for each level of training; most of these are done but there's a bit left.
- A "trigger-warning" system - I want people to be able to tick a box and play the game without being triggered by potential abuse/rape scenes.
- A final pass of all the text.
- I also want to change the mechanics for one sub-plot - at the moment it's very simple and I'd like to make it more complex.
- Debugging the savegame system
- General balancing
No idea when it'll be done but it's getting quite close now! I'll sporadically post here as the project continues.