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A Case of Distrust is a narrative mystery from 1924 San Francisco. Play as private investigator Phyllis Cadence Malone in this historical 2D adventure game. Explore underground speakeasies, smoke-filled billiard halls, classic barber shops, and more. Catch suspects in lies by using evidence, statements, and your wits. Intrinsic challenges face our heroine, as she struggles against a pushback on emancipation, leading to many doubts, both internal and external. Uncover the truth in a mystery full of deception!

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DETAILS

The game requires careful attention to clue details and character statements. Interaction is with objects and text on each screen -- think something between Phoenix Wright and 80 Days.

The art style borrows heavily from the ideas of Saul Bass, Dieter Rams, Olly Moss, and other visual designers. I wanted to go with something that didn't distract from the world, but stayed within the style I wanted.

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GAME CREATORS

Ben Wander - Game Design, Code, Visuals, Writing
@TheWanderingBen (https://www.twitter.com/TheWanderingBen)
Website (http://www.thewanderingben.com)

Mark "Marowi" Wilson - Audio Design
@MarowiTweets (https://www.twitter.com/MarowiTweets)
Website (http://marowi.me)

Virginia Woodall - Talent Producer, Editor
@Ginniffer (https://twitter.com/Ginniffer)
Website (http://dv8prods.com/)

Taylor Pereira - Roadie, Additional Art
Doesn't have Twitter
Doesn't have a website
Such a hermit!

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AWARDS
(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Awards/GameInformerAward_Yellow.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Awards/PasteMagazineAward_Yellow.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Awards/IndieMEGABOOTHAward_Yellow.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Awards/IndieCadeAward_Yellow.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Awards/DreamHackAward_Yellow.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Awards/AkibaPressAward_Yellow.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Awards/InnovationAndTechAward_Yellow.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Awards/TwinfiniteAward_Yellow.png)

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PRESS

• "Stunning two-dimensional noir silhouettes... perfectly mirror the vintage cloak-and-dagger tone of the narrative" - Luke Winkie, PC Gamer (http://pcgamer.com/a-case-of-distrust-is-an-adventure-game-made-of-silhouettes-set-in-1920s-san-francisco)
• "Impressed me with its nuanced, careful construction of its milieu and characters, and the resonant comparisons it draws with the world of today" - Jen Glennon, Newsweek's Player.One (http://player.one/case-distrust-indie-narrative-mystery-e3-demo-94250)
• "It evokes its setting of 1924 San Francisco perfectly" - Holly Green, Paste Magazine (http://pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/e3-2017-nintendo-indiecade-and.html)
• "It’s a beautiful game with an intriguing premise, setting, time period and gameplay loop" - Tyler Robertson, Hardcore Gamer (http://hardcoregamer.com/2017/09/06/pax-west-2017-a-case-of-distrust-nails-its-1920s-setting/270596)
• "A stylish noir detective story [with a] distinctive graphical style" - Pascal Tekaia, Adventure Gamers (http://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/33004/page2)
• "The game's writing [is] downright phenomenal" - Taylor Danielle, Twinfinite (http://twinfinite.net/2017/06/games-e3-2017-indiecade-showcase/3)

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MEDIA

Travel animation (with the old name!):
(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/devlog/20161216/NewTravelFullNew.gif) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/devlog/20161216/NewTravelFullNew.gif)

Promo:
(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_0.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_0.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_1.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_1.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_2.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_2.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_3.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_3.png)

Screenshots:
(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot1.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot1.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot2.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot2.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot3.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot3.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot4.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot4.jpg)

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Old Stuff:

GIF from the ancient demo (https://benwander.itch.io/ben-wander-murder-collection):
(https://media.giphy.com/media/26BRFVzJabe1fy9BC/giphy.gif)

I really like the very illustrative looks of it!
I'm curious about how it will evolve

I really like the little transitions you have - the screen melt, the magnifying glass, and the door opening. How are you pulling those off? Full-screen masks?

Just replying so I can follow your dev blog, your tweet the other day made me intrigued. :)

Thanks for the interest, gents! I hope to update this thing pretty frequently, so stayed tuned for more info to come.


Yes, they're all full-screen masks using Unity's GUI system. Most of the animations are generated by creating 3D objects with blender, then rendering an animation to PNGs that run at 30fps. In the demo, those PNGs are fairly large, but since they're just masks, I've played around with their size/quality to significantly bring down their overhead. I'm also just letting Unity dynamically load the mask images when needed, which works (at least so far!), and means I don't need any fancy resource loading.

You could probably get a very similar effect, for a fraction of the cost, by using a a texture with a perlin noise (or hand-drawn) mask for the alpha channel, and fading the material with a script that changes the alpha cutoff value over time. If you used multiple layers, with the alpha cutoff offset slightly on each one, you could get the 'burnt edges' effect.

Anyway, very nice work so far. I look forward to seeing more.

Good call, I hadn't thought of that solution! Definitely if the images get too expensive/unwieldy, I'll have to change techniques. Thanks for the input, I'm glad you're liking it so far!

This looks interesting! I love the setting and am excited to see how it progresses.

Troy

tracking. Looks very interesting.

The real writing begins. What exactly am I going for? Here's a very quick breakdown of the overarching plot, the individual mysteries, the world's style, and the historical elements:

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Overarching Plot
The game will feature many mysteries that tie into one another. I've yet to decide if the stories will be linear (you solve one, then you solve the next, etc) or parallel (you can solve all the mysteries whenever) but there will be a tie throughout all of them -- probably something about the main character's past that she's trying to discover. It's something I still need to think about, but I have some ideas already.

Individual Story Structure
The Golden Age Mystery structure is perfect for a game, with the suspects known at an early stage -- important for gameplay, so the mystery itself doesn't seem unfair. With this structure, all the clues, red-herrings, and lies are vital -- everybody has something to hide, but what is it? Murder? The player must break down each suspect to find the truth! Agatha Christie is my main inspiration here.

Style
While I like the Golden Age's structure, its classic settings -- a country town, a secluded mansion, an enclosed train -- feel contrived by modern standards, and far too innocent to explore some themes I want. I need grit in my sandpaper. Jazz singers, mobsters, shady cops, and drug addicts. In that sense, the style will lean hard-boiled -- Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. But I don't want it as bleak as a classic noir film. Instead, think more neo-noir -- films like Chinatown and The Long Goodbye. A cutting humor in a corrupt backdrop.

History
The 1920s were both the pinnacle of glamour and the nadir of crime, contrasting the parties of Jay Gatsby with the shotguns of Al Capone. It was the first automobile age, featured the rise of women (though they'd hit many hard ceilings!), and kick-started consumerism. Jazz took hold (though black artists were still maligned), flappers became the first youthful rebells, and radio and film revolutionized media. Of course, the Volstead Act -- the American prohibition of alcohol -- played maybe the most well-known role of the decade. This was, quite literally, the first electrifying age. While main characters will be my own creations, their backdrops will be absolutely real. It gives me many themes to pull from; themes that I can tie to contemporary discussions -- about race, about drugs, about corruption, about industry, about almost everything. I'm eager to explore it!

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I'll break down each element further as I get to it, but that's the basics of everything. Writing is maybe the hardest part of this entire undertaking. But I want to share as much of it as I can (without spoilers!). Wish me luck!

Also, holy crap, thanks for the support! I wasn't sure how much traction this game would generate, but I'm really happy to see others liking the idea. This is my first indie project that I plan to sell, so it makes me feel warm inside seeing your encouragement. From the most honest place in my heart, a warm THANK YOU to everyone!

The "Golden Age Mystery structure" is fascinating stuff, had a small Wikipedia crawl and read more about it, following such rule structures or tropes is a great way to start off with a game I think. Jesper Juul said in his book Half-Real that board games and digital games are condensed play that over times solidifies into "strict" rules. I think it's similar to storytelling in general as well.

As long as you break some of the structure rules I think you'll be fine, shouldn't be too predictable I mean, if you're not parodying the genre of course.

I noticed you mentioned 80 Day's travel as how you maneuver around the city. Will there also be interactive fiction bits and being able to explore different locations like in that game too? (I guess scaled down to different districts/buildings/etc. instead of cities)

Also do you have any plans for mobile versions?

That's the hope! The idea is to make the main story first, then pepper the world with different story-arcs at various locations throughout San Francisco. I swear there's a Gamasutra post somewhere (and I hate myself for not finding it, because lately I've been good about bookmarking articles I like!) where Meg Jayanth talks about writing a node-based narrative in 80 Days; how they had a baseline story but continued to add to it organically -- at any point they could have called it "done", but even in subsequent versions, they added new nodes and storylines. An important influence that I didn't mention is Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, a very cool board game that features a similar story mechanic.

But, I should temper expectations a bit. I'm doing a major rework of the story that I currently have  -- some of the characters might stay, and the world is historical, but everything else is being rewritten with a new style in mind. Super early, so anything could change at this point. It's very possible the first version of this game releases without a ton of side-content.


Not impossible, but definitely not simultaneous release. I think this type of game could work really well on mobile, but targeting too many platforms too early will cause headaches, especially as a mostly one-man team. I think PC has a more fertile indie scene -- maybe less huge hits, but many smaller success stories. It's also where I play my games, so I think I'm more aware of what players might want.

Thanks for the questions! Gave me a good break from writing backstories :)

Oh definitely, nothing matches PC in terms of indies, but I kind of prefer interactive fiction on mobile. Suits the platform perfectly.

There are so many cool projects going on in that genre. This, 1935, Sorcery 4, etc.

Even as a person who is 99% on desktop rather than mobile I must agree that interactive fiction suits mobile. Last year when I got myself a more powerful Android phone I started buying a few premium games and 80 Days was one of them. Oddly enough I enjoyed playing it the most when I was travelling in meatspace, for example sitting long hours on boat. Since the input is minimal, and you get that kind of book feeling with a phone I agree with Christian that it's a good idea with mobile for that kind of game.

Since 80 Days recently had a desktop launch (which you're probably well aware of) you might want to contact the inkle team and Meg yourself? See if it's a good idea as indie to start on mobile and then go desktop. I've been thinking about this a lot myself for a future project and my own conclusions so far is to start on desktop and then go to mobile, examples being FTL and This War of Mine. But maybe in this instance you should go the other way around?

So much mobile passion! Of course, with another platform also come many UX changes (especially some of the travel stuff I've been tinkering with) and definitely some pipeline changes too. I personally enjoy adventure games on desktop (I think in the end this'll skew closer to an adventure game than IF, but now we're just talking semantics ;)), so I'd like to get this on PC first, and then see where to go with future content.

But wow, I'm happy anyone wants to play my game anywhere! Being in the dark with this game for so long, I still smile at every devlog comment :)

Mobile is now a strong contender as a stretch goal. Thanks for the input guys!

More updates soon!

Oh man, that's a whole nother can of worms. As someone who's firmly entrenched in both PC and mobile gaming, the subject of ports comes up a lot. You have the people who just dislike mobile ports in general, or that the PC versions are more expensive. And devs are certainly aware of this. Games like Death Road To Canada and The Deer God, which had been confirmed for mobile well before their Kickstarters, rarely mention iOS and Android at all on their Kickstarter pages and put the focus on their PC versions

As an indie dev you will probably face a hard time to market your game anyway, so you might as well be comfortable with how you make it. :) At ECS we also focus on desktop, regardless if it's the ultimate business decision or not.



Very true, I think exploitative skinner box free to play games are part of the cause. I'm not saying that all of the f2p variety are like that, but I think us developers are to blame for creating a lot of skepticism in literate gamers (I prefer Chris Bateman's dichotomy (http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2008/09/redefining-hardcore-casual.html) rather than hardcore/casual). The other part is probably consolitis, that cross-platform games are percieved to get dumbed down when they have a console launch apart from desktop, at least in the interface, which is inescapable.

And the general expectations on price is also different, as you say. Though, I think we see a trend of premium games cost more. At least when they have an already established following on desktop. The aforementioned games FTL and This War of Mine are pretty pricey for mobile, the first cost 10 dollar and the latter 15 dollars. They seem to be doing alright, I think this is a case of finding a core audience on desktop and bringing those expectations over to the mobile side. That's my speculations at least. :)

Actually ironically, I've seen comments going the other way. Annoyed that PC games on mobile are priced differently/cheaper than on PC. Basically, because it's unfair that the PC market had to pay more. (You know, regardless of market differences or that a $20 indie game isn't going to sell on mobile)

But either way, don't want to derail you devlog too much. The resurgence of detective games, from Her Story to The Trace, is pretty exciting. Can't wait to see more of this

Sometimes, an idea is so vivid, I just go ahead and create whatever's in my head -- right in the game, the first time, with no preamble. The map screen was not one of those times. I had no clue what to do with it. In these cases, what happens next? Seems like a topic for a devlog! I'll go through the entire process as I make the map, but for today, let's start with getting a clue: making the concept art. I'll keep the text short, and images a-plenty!

My Concept Process

Step 1: Outline Requirements
Sounds like a no-brainer, but without actually listing the gameplay needs, I'll surely miss a subtle detail, leading to fugly clutter later in production. So what is the map screen, then? It allows players to answer two important questions: where can I go? and where have I been?. Pretty simple! Which leads to the following small list of requirements:

• A scrollable directory with many names that players can look up
• Items in the directory should be clickable
• A visual map of San Francisco
• Buildings on the map -- at the very least, previously visited ones -- should be clickable as a shortcut to looking them up again
• It all fits with the style of the rest of the game

Step 2: Inspiration
Gathering resources for concept art can be a blast. Quick Google Image searches lead to some great map ideas, including some seriously awesome stylized ones:
(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/stylizedmaps.png)

But remember, my map needs to show previous locations, and those locations gotta be clickable. Hard to incorporate all that with my minimalist silhouette style! A lot of searching later, the following thumbnails were the most inspiring. Note there are a few era-appropriate maps in the mix -- especially useful since they're both historical and public domain! Also note the directory inspirations -- a mix of era-appropriate for style with contemporary usability. Finally, there are some images from the board game Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, my original inspiration for this whole travel mechanic:
(http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~npmelton/sfmap96.jpg) (http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/sf1849.jpg) (https://img1.etsystatic.com/015/0/6228198/il_570xN.441627453_rqr6.jpg) (http://www.gioconauta.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/shr_detmap.jpg) (http://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/images/stories/2011/12/Contacts.png) (https://archive.org/services/img/crockerlangleysa1914sanfrich) (https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic102046_md.jpg)

Step 3: Concepts and Iterations
At first I toyed with the idea of a 3D map, where I rendered previously-visited buildings as silhouetted 3D objects. This was heavily inspired by the first thumbnail above. So, just for the mock-up, I decided to paint right over it:
(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/mapconcept_0_700.png)
Notice that I added a simple directory here too -- showing the names as a scrollable list on a side panel.

There's a good style here, but I don't think it's quite grunge-y enough to match the rest of my art. Let's take away some color and add a few masks for roughness:
(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/mapconcept_1_700.png)
This looks better! But there's still something not quite right. The map looks... empty! I mean, there are dozens of buildings rendered, but it still looks like there could be so many more. In fact, I bet I could render a hundred buildings and it would still look barren. And if I took the time to render an entire city (not a small task!) the map would be cluttered and confusing from almost any angle except the top. And would it really add that much to the game for the heaps of dev time required? I don't think so. I'm not liking this 3D idea anymore.

This is where the blueprint inspiration comes in. Let's go back to 2D like the rest of the game!
(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/mapconcept_2_700.png)
Much better! I think this style really compliments my other artwork. And I don't need thousands of buildings! Maybe not every one of those city blocks is a location the player can get to, but perhaps they're all clickable, and I can at least write some text for each. Now that's a more efficient way to make the world feel large!

Still, the style got a bit too dark. And that side panel needs some love. Okay, one final mock-up! (Click the image for full size)


Now this I like! A bit lighter on the blacks, a full blue ocean, and a directory that has some style (and an important Search function, that will make the long list manageable). This is a concept I can work with!

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Future of the Map

Next up is actually creating this map in the game. I'll probably make the directory panel first, since that's most important for early gameplay, then I'll move onto the map itself. I'll keep you up to speed, and we can see it evolve together!

Dude, this game looks stunning! I love the style. Any influence from Papers Please?

Thanks for the love! No direct influence from Papers Please, but it's one fine game, and who knows how my subconscious works?!

The map screen will continue to evolve throughout its development. I took three days to implement the map's directory in Unity, so here are some gifs, where you can already see that transformation beginning:

Day 1 - Basic Screen and The List
At the end of the first day, I had the "map" implemented as a static screen. I populated the map screen's directory with names from a mock address book generator (https://www.mockaroo.com/), and I made the list scroll:
(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/BWMC_Directory__1.gif)
You can see the implemented directory is on the opposite side of the screen from the mock-up. I made this switch because of the Notes button in the bottom right corner -- I thought it might be confusing if you wanted to click on a name but accidentally clicked on the Notes, or vice versa.

Day 2 - In-Game Functionality
The second day was all about getting it to work. I had already created a "travel" concept in my Twine story, so I just had to represent it with the Map screen. I created a temporary starting location, then used a basic link to open the map. From there, clicking the name "C.S. Stable" takes you to Stable's apartment:
(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/BWMC_Directory_2.gif)
I again strayed from the mock-up by making the directory's headings in-line with the names. This allowed the names to be larger (easier to read at a proper resolution -- don't worry that you can't read them in these compressed GIFs).

Day 3 - Search Implementation
Scrolling through that list sucked! So on the final day of implementing the directory, I created a search feature for easier navigation. This required almost an entire rework of how I had set up the heading/list generation, and exposed a bug with Unity's button hierarchy, but I still managed it all in a single day, and I was pretty proud of that!
(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/BWMC_Directory_3.gif)

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Future of the Map

The Directory is now fully functional! But the whole thing looks ugly as sin! Next week, the directory will get its proper assets imported, and I'll even make the map of San Francisco to stick in the background!

Whoa! This looks amazing! I would have been interested only having read the description, but those screen caps look gorgeous!! Keep it up  :handthumbsupR:

I played the demo and must say your level of detail and attention to quality is inspiring.

You are doing a good job in taking a fresh look in a genre that needs love and attention. I do not play this genre much but your game has made me want to look more closely at it.

revolutionizing quality.

Cheers! Thanks for the motivation!  :beer:

I was thinking about writing a post about my schedule -- how I organize my tasks and where I plan to be by the end of the month. I know I like to see other devs' planning strategies, but I wonder if it's too dull for a devlog? Would anyone be interested in something like that?

This is looking lovely. A game that takes inspiration from Phoenix Wright, 80 Days and SH:CD? Yes, please! And I really enjoyed reading about your process creating the map and directory. Thanks. :)

This week, I made a part of the San Francisco map and its navigation controls. I had to deal with modeling, shaders, and performance trouble -- things I have little experience with, but learned while working. Here's a quick rundown of the events:

Milestone 1 - Shapes and Shaders
Each building on the map had to be selectable, and the map needed to pan and zoom. The style also prescribed an outline for each building. With those constraints, I thought the most obvious choice was making basic shape models in Blender and writing a shader to outline them. If I had to redo it, it'd be a breeze, but making the correct shapes, normals, and shaders took longer than anticipated. In the end, though, the results were good! Here are some screens of the progress (Click for full size):

(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_1_200.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_1.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_2_200.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_2.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_3_200.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_3.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_4_200.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_4.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_5_200.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/Milestone1_5.png)

Milestone 2 - Navigation
A static map is okay, but for the world to feel large, panning and zooming the map are necessary. I also needed to make each shape a selectable button -- and, once selected, I needed to center the camera on it. It was a lot of work, but here are the final Zoom and Focus animations:


Milestone 3 - Interface Integration
Up until the map, the rest of my game exclusively ran in Unity's GUI system. The map, though, is 3D models. This led to a few problems with masks:


Thankfully, most of these problems were easy to solve, so this was the quickest milestone. Unfortunately, the next milestone was less merciful:

Milestone 4 - Optimizing the Map Directory(!)
The most unexpected milestone of all! Since I'd only ever run the map's directory on its own, I hadn't noticed how inefficient it was. But, by panning and zooming the map, I could see that this screen chugged like a college freshman. Through the Unity Profiler, I saw that most of that time was spent dealing with the EventSystem -- i.e.: updates to the buttons themselves! It took a while to solve, but apparently, this is only a problem when the buttons are in a hierarchy! I still have no idea why that's the case, but it meant I had to rewrite the search functionality. Between that, making my shaders more efficient the more I learned about them, and batching or removing unnecessary updates, I managed to move the screen from a crawling 1-2FPS to ~25FPS on my two year old Macbook, with over a thousand directory buttons and map tiles. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve (compressing the images better, pre-loading assets, and loading/unloading the buttons in a clever way) so I'm confident I can get it running 30+ FPS on most hardware with however many locations I'll eventually want to use. Here's a static image of the map, in game, right now!

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Future of the Map

Now the directory is done (and efficient!) and the map moves. Next, I'm going to take a long and deserved break from the map screen and focus on story writing. Once I get back to it, there are two things left to do: tie the story/directory to the map buttons themselves, and actually create the entire map of San Francisco. Wish me luck!

I missed this post! Thanks for the support :)

AHHHH my gosh this is SO cool looking! Absolutely love the concept too! :D :D keep up the energy!!!  :screamy:  :beer:

CRAIGZ :D :D  :handclap:

Wow, I'm super into the style you have going here. Concept seems cool too. Posting to stay updated, keep up the good work

Thanks for the love! Coming here and seeing more support for the game is wonderful -- every single time! You guys are awesome :)

I've been writing the story the past couple weeks, so there hasn't been much to post about. I'm mulling ideas about how to update my story progress without spoiling the plot -- and if anyone has any more thoughts, I'd love to hear em!

For now, here's a work-in-progress of the first location in the game: the detective's apartment. I made it over yesterday and today, and was hoping to get it done by the end of the day, but, alas, life finds a way. Almost complete, though -- I just want to add a couple more items to the scene and then texture and colour it.

(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/apartmentprogress1920.png)
EDIT: I should mention the text in this image is just taken from the demo as a placeholder -- no story here yet!

The next few days I'll be taking a "long weekend" trip to Singapore (advantage of working for yourself: weekends happen whenever! woohoo!). I won't properly get back to anything until Thursday or Friday. Hopefully this scene can be finished and implemented for the next #screenshotsaturday!

Nice! It would be cool if you could share a few lines if writing here and there without spoiling the story. Like a teaser, to show some of the style and ambience!

Just getting back into the swing of things after a weekend trip. Played around with a lot of colours and masks for the apartment scene. Here are my top five, with the large one my current favourite:

That's a good point! A lot of the writing will be about things you can click -- most of which is just flavour. I'll share a few tidbits from those once I get into it. Great advice man!

Replying to follow. Gonna go back and catch up on the log when I get the chance!  :coffee:

Same here, just played the demo, got hyped, and now I want to play Phoenix Wright or Aviary Attorney because I can't play this :D

Really interesting art style!
I haven't played in the demo yet so I can't write about gameplay but from I see here it looks interesting too ;)

Looks amazing!
I've been waiting for a good detective game since the beginning of time, even worked on one 8 years ago, and this one looks so promising, I hope you will pull through and finish it!

The style reminds me of DEVICE 6, certainly the colours give off a similar vibe.

Keep going! :)

Thanks for the support all! Really, it means a lot  :beer:

I was going to wait a bit to post this, but figured I'd show it off early since you made me feel good:

(http://www.thewanderingben.com/img/green_800.png)

It's a screenshot of the first character you meet in the game. As you can see, I've moved him above the horizontal black bars. I'm still not sure if I like this -- and it actually breaks my camera movement on my map right now -- but it's an idea I've been toying with, so I thought I'd share.

I'll write a post soon about how I decide the colours for each character and scene -- what they mean and how they fit with the story arc.

I actually really like the character on top of the letterbox! Very striking. I think it will work especially well if you keep rolling with the two-tone color scheme and keep his features (outlines, eyebrows) the same color as the letterbox. He does seem to take up a lot of the frame though - have you considered trying full-body character silhouettes rather than just character busts? I feel like doing that would give you a ton of extra visual opportunities for characterization

I think it would actually look worse if you put the portrait inside of the letterbox. This way is good. And I agree it would be cool to have full-body silhouettes, although in this case the text "the regrettably familiar face" does, along with the portrait, cleverly characterize the player's fixation with his face and its annoyingness. If later characters are shown in full-body mode, it would be an interesting contrast.

EDIT: Just read the rest of the log, and I found all of it quite interesting. I think it would be cool if you wrote about how you do scheduling, especially because you're also traveling during development.

And, I've never read any Raymond Chandler but he partly inspired one of my favorite books. It's a religion-inspired sci-fi noir mystery called Something More than Night. If you haven't read it, I think it'd make great inspiration for this. :)

Thanks for the feedback guys! Interesting that both of you favor full-body shots in these conversations. I've been using full body silhouettes inside the room screen, but close-ups when talking -- similar to how you would set up a newscaster interview. He does take up a lot of the frame, though, you're both very right. Maybe that's an argument for scaling him back down between the letterbox, like it was in the demo. I'll give it some thought. Thanks gents!

I was actually saying I like it just the way it is, particularly because of how the dialogue mentions his face so centrally. I think, for this character and that dialogue, it's a better characterization than a full body would be. But for other characters, full-body might be the way to go. But if they already have a full-body portrait elsewhere like the Butler's in the demo, than a large face here really seems fine, and I like the visual immediacy of having that face extend past the letter box. Hope that makes sense.

Ah, yep, totally makes sense now. Thanks for the feedback man!

I really like this game so far.  Just finished the demo.  My only criticism is that I was able to pretty mindlessly click my way to the solution - although that might not be the case in the finished product.

The art style is amazing and the overall concept is fresh and fun.  I'll definitely be following.  :beer:

Wow, this looks really interesting! The aesthetics are powerfull as hell!

Commenting to follow, looks interesting and I look forward to seeing more developments and some wonderfully branching dialogue trees :D

TheWanderingBen, have you seen this thread? (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=57119.0) I think it's very relevant given your game's focus on UI, and I realized the video in the first post also uses Saul Bass as an example.

Thanks again for the support guys! More posts incoming. I've been debating new topics, but if there's something you'd want to read about, let me know!


I'm sure every adventure game developer ever has said this, but that's a big thing I want to avoid. I'm thinking about mechanics to get around it, but that's a stage-2 problem. Let's see if just having enough clues discourages that by itself in the final game :)


That's a fantastic thread! There's some gold to be mined from there (lessons that maybe I won't have to learn the hard way ;) ). Thanks for sharing!

Great concept and graphics so far! I'm curious for further updates and information. :)

Unfortunetly, I am not able to play the Mac demo. I run the game with admin permissions, it starts and its icon is shown in the dock, but the game itself doesn't show up. Only thing I can do is is close it from its icon in the dock.

Anyways, keep up the great work and I will try to test on PC next time ;)

Oh no bueno! That's the first I've heard about something like that. I just tried the download myself and it still works on my Macbook. I'll ask some friends with Macs to see if they can reproduce it (haven't gotten to proper unit-testing just yet). Did it open in a separate full-screen window maybe? If you Ctrl+RightArrow you still don't see it?

Thanks for the love on the graphics -- I hope you can get the demo working soon!

I'm a management nerd. I love posts of organization strategies - maybe I can learn something new! At least one other person who replied to this devlog feels the same way (:)) so let's quickly run through it:


Google Calendar is great for task planning! I've explored other options, both paid and free, but I come back to Google Calendar for a few reasons:

• Google Calendar is free! Maybe this is an obvious point, but paid software has to offer a lot of incentives to compete. So far, nothing's seemed worth it
• Calendar is simple. I can create events, set timelines, drag and drop - all with an easy user interface
• I use Calendar for my non-work events, which makes it easy to plan things around my life
• Related to the last point, Calendar automagically pulls events from my email onto my calendar (especially useful for flights if you wander as much as I do, but also works well for things like conventions -- Steam Dev Days is added as soon as I book the ticket)
• Calendars are easy to share. Do I want my audio designer to see my writing schedule? Or maybe my girlfriend wants to know my convention schedule? Easy peasy!
• The month view clearly displays what I'm working on that month, so it's easy to spot if I'm not working on a particular part of the game for a stretch of time, and then decide if I'm okay with that. This coloured display is usually the missing element of other free planning software

Google Calendar lets you to make separate calendars with different colours. I create a new calendar for each "department" of my game. On top of my personal calendar, I have: Audio, Marketing, Programming, Visual Art, and Writing for the game. Here was my plan for July (you can see this screenshot was taken on the 1st of July):


The colour legend is on the side, so even if I forget the colours (which I do :)) I can see them easily. All-day events create those colour blocks -- I use them to show what department I'm currently working in, and broadly what it is I'm doing. Check out the 8th to the 12th, and you'll see I'm spending those five days Writing -- more specifically Defining Main Characters.

Do I need even more detail? Then I create an event on the day itself that only lasts an hour. Calendar displays these events in small text on the specific day. From the 8th to the 12th, I'm using each day to define a new character (cleverly named Character 1, 2, 3, and 4).

Recurring tasks? Calendar does that too -- check out the Travel Blog Post that I write every Wednesday (from now until eternity, apparently) or my weekend meetings with Marowi.

I'm mostly a solo developer, so Calendar is very easy. I can imagine Calendar working well for small teams too. But for large projects, Calendar probably gets messy. And the biggest complaint for a manager might be lack of reporting -- how did each team member do relative to their targets, are we still on track for hitting Alpha/Beta/Gold, what is each task's priority, what is each task's difficulty, what would be good to cut, etc. Most of that information isn't required for a solo project (I don't need to make reports to myself to understand what parts of the project are useful -- I know that already! :)). But there is one important element that's missing even for me: estimate accuracy.

How can I know if my estimates are good? This is extremely important to understand when my game will release, and what it will look like when it does. I don't have a fantastic solution for this problem, but I do have one that's good enough for my situation:

I take a screenshot at the start of the month with my plan, then update my calendar with how long the tasks are actually taking. At the end of the month, I compare the the original screenshot with the actual numbers. Here's the end of July, as an example:


Some of the tasks change because of updated plans (I'd originally planned to launch Steam Greenlight at the end of July, but for a variety of reasons -- none related to my estimates -- I've pushed that back until (probably) November). But the Map took much longer to implement than I had previously thought (see the last devlog to understand why ;)). And, more importantly for future planning, I needed to take the 8th to context-switch from art and programming back to writing, which I hadn't done in a month -- I had bad writer's block that day. I sprinkled my remaining writing throughout the month to make sure I didn't run into that again -- which seemed to work!

I'm certain this isn't the best system. I can always grab pointers to improve my planning - and I love talking shop to other managers (even though I only manage myself, I still consider myself a manager :)).

Care to share your own strategies? I would love to read about them!

EDIT: Even though this post is a bit long, I ran through this system pretty quickly. If you want any clarifications, please feel free to ask!

Playing through what I have now, I realize that the travel mechanic isn't as engaging as it should be. That whole Map Screen? Not working just yet. I had another idea for travel that I sketched out in a few minutes. Thought I'd share the raw details -- this is how every screen starts:


If I go further down this road, I'll explain the why behind it. Might make an interesting addition to the Map Screen series (titled "Killing Your Babies"). For now, back to work! :)

I thought I made this post before when I first read your time management write-up, but I found it really interesting and the kind of thing I try to put in my own log, and it's cool to hear other people's techniques.

Thanks man, I'd love to hear it. Your devlog's formatting actually inspired a lot of the posts on here :)

You're still in school right? Balancing that with gamedev must be challenging -- and your solutions are probably helpful to others in the same boat (or for me, who might want to start freelancing at some point!). You're also working with an artist and a translator? How do you set their tasks -- is it rigid, or more whenever they can get whatever done?

No proper update in a while! Been head-down on creating the first half of my first mystery (for those who know Three Act Story Structure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure), you'll understand that the halfway point is a good place to stop for a demo).

With that section almost done, I spent the last couple of days playing through it and absolutely picking it apart. Several pages of notes. I then lumped those notes into broad categories for what I thought was wrong with the game in its current state, and came up with actionable tasks that fix my complaints. I even generally rated the costs and impact of each task:


Electronic tasks are easier to organize. And I divided each task into specific hours required from each discipline:


I have two milestones I'd like to hit. The first ("Playtest") is what I'd like to have done by the time I leave Bali on 22 September; a demo that I can show to friends and fellow devs. The second ("SXSW") is the deadline for submitting to the SXSW Gaming Awards (https://www.sxsw.com/apply-to-participate/gaming-awards/) and the associate festival. It's not critical, but it's a good show to attend for my game -- which can be targeted to both gamers and non-gamers. The demo for them, however, needs to be basically shippable -- which is why it'll take much longer.

But there's a problem with those self-imposed deadlines:


I've honed my estimates over years of pro work. Though individually they could be off, on aggregate they're pretty accurate. I don't want to touch those numbers. But, I can prioritize and de-prioritize certain elements.

Everyone hates scoping. But after a morning of squinting, I came up with a good plan that seems doable -- including a couple days buffer time, where I might get to some Nice-To-Haves:


And finally, adding these lovelies to my trusty Calendar:


Now you're fully up to date! As always, any questions, feedback, or general love is welcome and encouraged :)

Thanks for following -- be back soon with more!

It's great to see you still working hard on this! No problem with a delay in an update.

I agree in that electronic tasks are much easier to document/make note of. Keep it up! Playtesting is so important :)

I spotted this game for the first time today.

Must say that I really like the visual style! The art direction seem to be both good and very consistent. In addition the time period and setting are of course about as cool as you can find. I have not tried the demo yet, but after seeing all the nice screenshots here I think I will have to!  :)

Yes I am! Just starting college now. I've been meaning to get to your other questions--I'll try and do a dev log during the first half of this week!

On another note, I just listened to this podcast episode and it immediately made me think of your game. You should give it a listen. An unbelievably bizarre/grotesque real-life mystery: Futility Closet (https://soundcloud.com/futilitycloset/118-the-restless-corpse-of)

Futility Closet is generally awesome for weird historical stories like that. Since you're making a historical game, maybe it would be worth subscribing, for random inspiration. :) I also loved "The Road to En-dor" which might not be as relevant to your work, but still fantastic.

TheWanderingBen has stopped wandering! Well, for now anyway. I took the long route home, so I've been quiet the last month, but I'm back in the frozen Canadian tundra and ready to update you on game progress (What? I was traveling? Yep! Read about it on my website's blog (http://www.thewanderingben.com/blog/)!). Throughout this year’s travels, I’ve had a few people ask how I research historical fiction. My San Franciscan Detour was the perfect time to chronicle the process. I mean, the internet can get you far, but it’s still hard to beat the old methods:


SF’s Public Library has an unscalable mountain of archives — everything from daily newspapers to fashion magazines to local advertisements. Some of those they’ve scanned for online use (http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=2000028601&tab=subject&cid=3), while others line the shelves of their large History Center on the sixth floor. But my favourite publications are on microform (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microform) — which means using an old machine that clicks-and-clacks with the satisfying feedback of bulky 80s technology. Still, the best resources are the Reference Librarians themselves. Ask about any topic and they're instantly darting through the archives, plucking the ideal sources from the shelves, as you scurry alongside, catching the books in an ever more cumbersome pile. They’re like Siri, only with a better search algorithm, and less personality. I love them!

For this particular trip, I wanted to explore the architecture of my setting. The internet is filled with San Francisco landmarks, but even staples like the Golden Gate Bridge and Coit Tower hadn’t been built by the 20s. What was there before? What survived the 1906 earthquake? What would a stroll through SF in March 1924 look like? I set to work to find out. Old maps and chronology books got me started, but the best reference was a book on the history of San Francisco architecture, with photos and locations of buildings that still exist today. I knew my next move:


I created a Google Map with all of the buildings listed, including their names and a broad categorization. I then spent my Tuesday hiking through the city and snapping as many photos as I could. No, I didn’t get to all the pins on the map, but I ensured I had at least a few pictures from every category. Now, with hundreds of photos of my own reference, I have a much better idea of SF’s 1920s flavour:


What will I do with this reference? I’d be lying if I said I was certain — I might make game assets with them, I might not. But the important part of the exercise was to better understand my game’s world. I’m happy to just extended my knowledge. The hard part will be communicating it to my players. Wish me luck!

Awesome post. I love that I'm not the only dev with a nerdy propensity for background research—in fact, you seem to have taken it further than me, even. :)

The Ben Wander Murder Collection (yes, still a tentative title) has a lot of text. Though the game has visuals — locations, characters, travel screens — the majority of a player’s time involves staring at words. My text-system was okay, but had some issues. Alleviating those issues was paramount! Here’s a breakdown of how I did that — any questions welcome!

NEXT BUTTON
Pacing text in games is important — an entire screen of words can be daunting! I want to make sure my players never feel overwhelmed. Sometimes I had large amounts of text without any choice for the player to make — I could tell I needed to divide those. But if the player doesn’t have an action, how does she continue her journey? I give you my glorious “Next Button”:


UNDERSTANDABLE LINKS
Beyond the “Next Button”, players have two ways of interacting with text. Main Links are text-buttons representing choices or actions that the player can take — e.g.: TALK, CONTRADICT, etc; if a player clicks these links, she progresses the story. Descriptive Links are text-buttons that only display more detail of the game’s world — historical facts, character backstory, etc.; those links don’t move the story forward. In the old text system, the two links were hard to differentiate. I believe the new system more clearly distinguishes between link types:


CLEAR FONTS
Unity’s UI text system uses bitmap fonts — which, glossing over some details, display letters clearly at a target resolution, but the letters become more blocky and blurry the further your screen deviates from that target. Enter Text Mesh Pro (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/17662), a solution Dino Ignacio (http://dinoignacio.com/) recommended while I crashed at his place last month. TMP uses signed distance functions (a technique first pioneered by Valve (http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2007/SIGGRAPH2007_AlphaTestedMagnification.pdf)). You can nerd out on the implementation details (I may have O_o) but the basic result is that, at all resolutions, the font looks perfect. Good news — no extra draw calls or memory!


ANIMATION
The old text animations were slow — grating my players’ patience when displaying large blocks of text. And, for a game claiming inspiration from Saul Bass, the animations seemed pretty tame. But a consequence of Text Mesh Pro’s font implementation is that I now have a rectangular mesh object per letter — i.e.: I can manipulate each letter’s position, rotation, scale, and how skewed it is. That’s powerful! As an example, I created a “roll out” animation of my text, where I rotate each line into view one at a time. Here’s that visual, with animated examples of the rest of the added features as well — and a sneak-peak at a(n in-progress) part of the story:

---

THE FUTURE
Now my text, and my players’ actions around that text, are more intelligible. Next up, making it fun. TMP gives me the ability to animate text in a variety of ways, and I plan to use that power to create entertaining transitions appropriate to the mood of every scene. But that’s just the text. Much more polish is required for every part of this game.

Wish me luck!

Thanks for the love guys! Development is still going strong (if a bit slowly)!

Can you link any good places to read about this? :)

I love the system for controlling the display/animation of each letter individually. I played around a bit with revealing text in unconventional patterns for my game.

Whoops! Copy/pasted from my own blog and forgot to re-link the hyperlinks!

• Valve wrote a white-paper (http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2007/SIGGRAPH2007_AlphaTestedMagnification.pdf) on using signed-distance functions for text in games.
• Text Mesh Pro (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/17662) is an implementation of that for Unity.
• Dino Ignacio (http://dinoignacio.com/) is too short to be a storm trooper (http://www.rickey.org/amazing-star-wars-cosplay-18-years-apart-stuns-internet-photos/293670/) damnit!

Thanks for the heads-up, man. Added the links to the post, too.

Been a couple weeks since my last update, but, as always, that doesn't mean I'm not working!

Here's a screenshot of Twine, showing about a tenth of my first story. As you can see, Twine quickly transforms into a giant spaghetti monster, with all the options I have to consider for players:


More story writing coming up! Wish me luck!

Here's an in-progress version of one of the new travel screens:


That whole map view? Gone :) I'll write more about why next week.

I'd designed, implemented, and blogged about creating the map screen and its directory panel. But, the more I played with it, the more I realized: it needed the axe.

WHY IT DIDN'T FIT
Look I'd spent significant time on this thing already. And part of me liked it too! But I knew it had issues. I laid out my pros and cons:


For ages I'd tried to fix its problems -- including adding random animations on the map, and random buildings for the player to click. But I started to realize that the feature was beginning to shape the game, rather than the game shaping the feature, and I didn't like where either was going.

I needed a better travel solution. It was time to chop!

A BETTER TRAVEL SOLUTION
I grabbed scrap paper and hurriedly sketched a solution that would fix my problems:


After some rework, I realized the new system needed two screens:

• A "city overview", to keep the sense of place
• A taxicab screen, to keep the sense of travel

The new travel mechanic solved my issues with the map, while keeping its positive qualities. Further, it gave me another place to bring up the themes I want to address: taxicab drivers are talkative, and they'll give you their opinion on social issues if you ask it.

ALL OF IT TOGETHER

---

THE FUTURE
Now that I'm done the travel mechanic, the first half of the first mystery (what I hope to demo at shows and to press) is almost complete. I still have some polish before I can call it complete -- including a new title card, an actual name, and some more animations -- but I'm ready for small amounts playtesting and story feedback while I do that. The next couple months are gonna be big!

Wish me luck!

---

EDIT: I kinda rushed through a very hard decision to redo an entire feature. If anyone has questions (or hell, wants to make me feel better by sharing their own experiences from the chopping block!) please do so :)

Just found this and it looks really good! The research you did into 1920s San Francisco is really impressive. Keep up the good work!

I actually spent a lot of time researching -- in libraries, taking online courses, reading fiction from the era, reading newspapers from the era, etc. It was a lot of work, but it's great to have the ideas in my head, and I can go back to the reference to make sure I get things correct.

I'm glad it shows! Thanks for the love :beer:

I think you made the right call with the map screen. Thanks for writing about the decision.

I like the taxi screen. Conversations with cab drivers and the animation of the car bouncing up and down remind me of 80 Days--is that an inspiration? :)

I haven't been keeping up with the devlog for some time but I was wondering if you're just prototyping in Twine or will you use it as a backbone later on? I spent a few nights once writing my own Twine adventure and it quickly became unwieldy, as you yourself seem to experience. Will you change tool later or do you have some master plan to combat the spaghetti?

Thanks man! 80 Days is a fantastic game and unquestionably an inspiration! I can see what you mean about the travel screen similarities, but actually my original travel solution was more inspired by 80 Days -- that game's world map is a good connective tissue that I feel games like Phoenix Wright lack, which got me to try creating the San Francisco map. I'm glad I could still keep some of their flavour in the game, though! Thanks for the love!


Twine, especially Twine 1.4 that I'm using, can get to be a mess. But when I started building my conversation system (October 2015?) it seemed like the most robust, customizable, and Unity-friendly solution. And, if you're careful about keeping your logic consistent and separating your files reasonably (via a barely documented Twine 1.4 feature called story includes (http://eturnerx.blogspot.ca/2013/08/twine-storyincludes-overview-video.html)), it can be manageable. I've written most of the first story, and so far the spaghetti hasn't gotten too bad (which maybe I can attribute to years of Blueprint experience?).

However, were I to start again, I'd take a long look at a new solution: ink (http://www.inklestudios.com/ink/). The folks at inkle (the guys who made that 80 Days game Nathy mentioned) have released their internal tool for free, and made it open-source. It has many features that I could only dream of in Twine (local variables, logic, functions (with reference and value parameters!), tunnels, threads, etc). And Twine's visual tree-view isn't quite as useful as I'd maybe thought initially. ink also integrates with Unity, so it'd be a no-brainer to at least test for whatever I make next.

I wrote a blog post on Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BenWander/20170112/289074/The_Future_of_Games_in_the_Past.php) on why using history in games could create thoughtful experiences.

It's not a game update, so I didn't think posting the full text here was worth it. But it does describe a lot of the reasons I chose to create a historical fiction. So if you're interested, enjoy! :)

Just wanted to say that the project looks more than amazing!

I had a hard time believing that it was being developed in twine!

Also, congratulations on your publication on gamasutra, it's a different perspective on something that we often disregard when writing a game script.

I'm down. Will the player be able to visit one of Warren G. Harding's ragers in the White House? :eyebrows:

Hahaha! Well, the game's in the Coolidge years, but there are plenty of ragers to go around :beer:

Hey I just checked out the demo, very cool! Here's my feedback, I hope hidden within it is a gem.  :wizard:

* Very beginning black screened before the title screen for a long time, I was about to close it thinking it was broken, maybe add a small animation throbber there or static text that says "Loading...".
* I found the text continuation a little jarring as instead of going to the next word it looks like you show the beginning of the sentence of the last word you used. Maybe just always end a page on the same sentence.
* I wish the text when hovering over spatial objects in the apartment appeared somewhat relative to the objects position. This would keep my eye close to the object I'm inspecting and keep me 'in' the world a bit. The text statically in the top left corner made me feel like I was reading more than finding clues.
* Grammar & spelling problem? I read this in the demo. "What has you convinced sombody gave him the big one"
* I was confused a bit about the HOME category in the notes/evidence. I thought for a bit maybe it was the home of the butler or Stable, I eventually got it. I just needed a little more clarity, one way would be if I had discovered these clues myself at home before going to Stables house, but this might be overkill. Maybe just change the text from "HOME" to "MY HOME".

I was unsettled for a bit not knowing the mechanic of the game early. Once I realized the 'game' was to contradict the butlers statement with evidence it became fun, before I just started clicking and reading things and my interest started to wane. HOWEVER, it was super satisfying once I organically figured that out. Also, it might be nice to not always know exactly what the mechanic is per level, as you could decide to design levels to be solved multiple ways. So what I'm trying to say is the difficulty of this level may be to high for a first play session, or it may be just right. It will be important to test the game out and see if people get too frustrated or just frustrated enough to not quit and figure it out. Once they figure out the first level I imagine there confidence will be high enough to take on the next.

Thanks for the demo! Good luck have fun!  :beer:

Thanks for playing and for the feedback! I'm in the process of moving homes, so I'm sorry I didn't reply to this sooner!

The text animation system was especially problematic for me, as well. So I've changed completely for the current game :) Your suggestion for the text hovering over every object is interesting! I might have to play around and see if there's a simple way to integrate that into my current system.

I agree with the spelling and "MY HOME" problems -- luckily, that story was only for the demo, so the final game has nothing to do with it at all.

Thanks again for the time you spent! I'm excited to show you more progress and the final release!

Awesome! You're welcome.

I hope your move is going okay!

Games can wait, especially when your home is at stake :)

Ho boy, Comcast can go suck an egg! At least the move is mostly complete, but I'm working from coffee shops until tomorrow since they're not feeding that sweet sweet internet juice to my home until tomorrow afternoon.

Ah well, I worked from cafes all of last year, another couple days won't hurt either. Thanks for the love!

I enjoyed the Crafting the Map Screen (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=56305.msg1255935#msg1255935) feature because it gave a thorough look at making the game: a combination of art, design, and code required for even a simple feature. Similarly, my game’s intro sequence needs art, design, and code. But it also has one more element: writing. I’ll break down each of these aspects in their own posts.

For this first part, I want to share the core idea behind my intro scene, and thus its writing. I’ll outline the purpose of an introduction, tell you where I got my inspiration, and detail my own sequence. Fair warning: the third section of this post contains minor story spoilers! (but, it’s only for the first couple minutes of the game, so I think we’re okay!)

A Proper Introduction

Before writing an introduction, we need to know our aim. If we start any story with its climax, we haven’t yet created enough weight to justify any emotional attachment. But if the intro is slow-paced, players might quickly lose interest. The introduction must present themes and foreshadow the rest of the story, while hooking an audience to want to know more. It’s the boulder chase scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the the menacing dolly shot in A Clockwork Orange.

Many mysteries show the crime itself in the introduction (Columbo, Phoenix Wright, etc.) — this captivates their audience, foreshadows future conflict, and (usually) doesn’t involve the detectives themselves (so it follows that the detectives are still unaware of the crime).

(http://www.thewanderingben.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/columbo.png)

It’s a great approach, but it doesn’t work for my game. I don’t want my player knowing the culprit before the detective does. It would create dissonance in the player's relationship with the detective, when instead I want my player to get lost in the world and think of the detective as an avatar for themselves. I need another type of introduction to achieve this goal.

Feline Inspired

I took a page from Robert Altman’s 1973 rendition of Raymond Chandler’s book The Long Goodbye. At the start of the film, we see Philip Marlowe argue with his cat. Marlowe complains about the cat aloud, to himself, and talks to it as though it were human. It’s a comic scene, displaying the eccentric side of Marlowe. But it also starts a theme that’s carried throughout the film: there are few people with such an intimate relationship to Marlowe as that cat. He can’t connect with anybody. It’s as if he’s completely out of his time — a hardboiled character, with car and suit to match, more at ease in a 1920s novel than in a sunny LA film.

Altman juxtaposes this light-hearted cat sequence by splicing shots of a mysterious figure. This second character has blood on his face and looks tense (with music to match) — implying perhaps a murder? Again, foreshadowing, and engaging the audience from the beginning.

(http://www.thewanderingben.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/marlowe.png)

Do It Yourself (Spoilers Ahead!)

My main character is a similar detective out of her element (a woman private eye in the 1920s), and few of her relationships have meaningful depth. I love the cat metaphor, so I’m stealing it whole cloth! I show a stray cat in her apartment, looking for food, with whom she talks aloud.

Unlike a film, however, I want my players to interact with the intro. Using drastic cuts would only complicate the scene for my players, who have to learn their interactions while still understanding the story. Instead, I decided to add tension to the cat conversation itself.

My players talk with the cat in the introduction, selecting conversation options like they will in the rest of the game. But I don't show the cat right away -- thus my players don't immediately know they're talking with a cat! The conversation is tense and dramatic — I even imply that a knife fight might break out! Until, the talk ends abruptly and I reveal the cat for what it is. The scene creates tension, adds comic relief, establishes themes for the rest of the game, and foreshadows later altercations.

Most importantly, it hooks my players for the longer journey ahead!

---

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown! As always, I feel I raced through these explanations — but I’m already at several hundred words, so I think I should stop. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

---

First image from Murder by the Book (1971)
Second image from The Long Goodbye (1973)

That intro sounds phenomenal. :handmoneyL:

Woah, it's been a month two months since my last update here! I'm still lurking around, posting on only a few of the games that I'm tracking. And, of course, work's still progressing. I actually posted Part 2 - The Design in my Making an Entrance series a couple of weeks ago on my website, but its content was geared to non-developers, going over basics of tutorialization and the importance of flow.

For posterity, I'll post it now, and then I'll post Part 3 - The Visuals, which I just wrote.

This week's going to be big for my game's promotion. Expect more updates soon, and more frequent posting moving forward!

---

Creating an intro sequence needs writing, design, art, and code. A few weeks ago I outlined the importance of setting mood, foreshadowing themes, and hooking players with the writing. I brushed over the game design, but that’s equally vital to a good player experience.

Teach Me!

There are similarities between introductions in books, plays, films, and games — but games have an additional hurdle: interaction. Other media requires simple, everyday skills: a level of reading literacy, or basic sight and sound senses. There are exceptions to this, of course, and many advances have been made in accessibility across the media spectrum, but for an independent playwright, thinking about audience cognizance isn’t her first priority.

I want players to get lost in my game — to think of actions and choices rather than controls. This eventually leads to players conflating the main character’s actions with their own — i.e.: “I need to jump here!”, rather than “I need to press A to have Mario jump here!” This mental shift is what makes games unique. It’s that responsibility placed on your own actions — timing a jump in Super Mario Bros., or choosing which character to save in The Walking Dead. It’s never a permanent state (no player walks away from the game thinking they’re actually Mario) but even that temporary projection can lead to heightened emotions, like anger or joy, and even emotional states impossible for other media, like guilt or remorse.

If I want my players in that state as soon as possible, I need to teach the controls quickly — in the introduction.

But Get Out of My Way!

Some games have complex interactions — evolving an empire across centuries, or creating and maintaining a city and its infrastructure. These games require more explanation of their controls, and usually those explanations are large pop-ups full of text. While I understand the necessity of this approach, I don’t like it. Taking players away from the experience breaks any sense of flow. It reminds them they’re playing a game. It pulls them further from the state we want them in.

There have been many analyses of the introduction to Super Mario Bros. — how it teaches players to jump, attack, collect coins, and use power-ups, without any direct communication from the designer to the player. Similarly, the original Halo is praised for actually changing its controls based on how players interact with its introduction. These games succeed because they start the immersion immediately and don’t break it. Players learn while in the world.

My game has fairly simple interactions. I bet I can do the same.

How Are You Doing It?

Players in my game read a passage of story, then click options to progress. These options have three types:

• Continue, where players have no choice, but must click a button to see a new passage
• Descriptive, which simply add detail but don’t continue the story
• Choice, where players need to make a decision that might branch the story

Players quickly understand the Continue option, but the difference between Descriptive and Choice options has been more difficult to communicate. Players had always recognized the visual distinction, but they remained unsure of the gameplay difference (“Oh I didn’t pick [the Descriptive Option] because I thought it would advance the story”). I was worried I might need a pop-up to explain the difference, but, with testing, a more elegant solution emerged: if players first encounter options in a certain order, they understand the difference for the remainder of the game.

I needed to tweak the script for my introduction, but not by much. Now, the first three passages of my game progress like so:

• A passage with only a Continue option
• A passage with two Descriptive options and a Continue option
• A passage with two Choice options

The first passage is simple. It has only a Continue option that players find and click without difficulty.

On the second passage, players recognize the Continue button, but are intrigued by the Descriptive options. They select one of them, which shows them a bit more text. But then they see that the second Descriptive option is still available, and they select that as well. They understand that choosing the first option still allowed them to select the second option. Then they click the Continue option to progress the story.

Upon seeing the third passage, they don’t see a Continue option, but two new options that look different and are at odds with one another (“Do Action” or “Don’t Do Action”). They select one option and the other option disappears. Players understand that they’ve just made a choice.

Though the lesson was subtle, it sticks around for the rest of the game: Descriptive options have no consequence, but Choice options are permanent decisions. It perfectly captures my interactions without explicit communication through pop-ups. It took some iteration, but it works well now, teaching the players while immersing them inside the world.

---

Much like the other elements of the introduction, the visual style has to grab players. Sure, they’re coming to the game after being exposed to screenshots or trailers, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stick around if they don’t get hooked. The art needs to have a spark that previews the best parts of rest of the game.

Inspiration

For The Ben Wander Murder Collection, that starts with Saul Bass. When researching my introduction, his Art of the Title page (http://www.artofthetitle.com/designer/saul-bass/) is a fantastic resource, giving me insights to the kinematics of his work. But I’m drawing as much from his static pieces as I am from his credit sequences — posters, logos, etc. And I think its important to get inside his head — what was he thinking, and can I recreate that in my own work?


Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design is an invaluable asset — a special gift from two generous and supportive people. The book not only collects his well-known work, but also dissects his process, showing in-progress pieces — how he thought of them, and why he eventually chose another direction. It even has rejected concepts — perhaps marketers or directors couldn’t see value, but he did. Poring over his life’s story has been a worthwhile exercise, and has undoubtedly improved the art in the whole game.

Bass is a huge inspiration for my style, but not the only one. Olly Moss’ silhouettes (http://ollymoss.com/#/star-wars-trilogy/) are also important, as are Paul Rand’s colours (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bvphq7rCAAAfLZi.jpg). I’d love all three to make an appearance in the introduction.

Requirements

All of this has to be tied back to the story and the design. I don’t want to change my script, and the gameplay is finally understandable without an obvious tutorial. I have to play within the constraints those bring: the sequence must be interactive; it needs to build suspense and mystery before alleviating those feelings; and it must end with a cat.

The best way to surprise my players is to start abstract. If I only draw a simple shape, players can’t understand its meaning until I explain it. The story can imply one representation, only to change its stance and pull the rug from under the player.

Thankfully, Saul Bass loved mischievous, abstract animations. They fit perfectly with my overall art style, and with the writing and the design of the introduction.

Implementation

A lot of the transitions in my game are actually rendered polygonally in Blender. I’m certain I could achieve similar goals using a purely 2D solution, but I’m familiar with the animation workflow in 3D programs (thanks to messing with bootleg versions of Maya in my teenage years — who knew that would pay off now?!). This implementation also allows for easy changes to basic animation elements (length, frame rate, etc).

As an example, take the Roll Down Dots animation that starts my intro. Keeping with the abstract theme, I wanted the dots to graciously slide into place. I make them “roll down” by attaching a simple subdivided rectangular model to a spiral curve, carefully texturing the model with small dots, key-framing an animation of the model rolling over the spiral, rendering that animation as a series of images, and then adding those images on my GUI layer in Unity. That was a jargon-heavy sentence, so please ask if you have any detailed implementation questions, but here are some key steps of the process to help you understand:


I just drew simple circles for the cat’s eyes — still in the Bass style — which keeps them mysterious: they could be human eyes, you won’t know. A knife also makes an appearance, and showing just the knife makes the situation more tense while giving room to wiggle a playful ending to the exchange.

And, of course, the final shot is the cat silhouette fading in.

When Can I See It?

There are still a few edits I want to make to the visuals in the introduction, so I’d rather not show it to you right now. Instead, I’ll let you play it upon release, and you can refer back to this post and see if it hits all of my goals!

Ben, I am utterly impressed!

You're putting so much thought into this, and it's really showing.

There's plenty of success ahead for you :)

Unlike other elements of my introduction (http://www.thewanderingben.com/making-an-entrance-full-series/), the implementation doesn’t care about hooking players into the game, or layering future themes, or even being pretty. It just needs to work. When I say “implementation”, I’m referring to what drives how players interact with the game — what runs the game in the background? I could use the word “code” instead of “implementation”, but that would be over-simplifying. Writing the story in Twine has as much to do with how everything comes together as my C# code does.

As much as this post is part of my Making an Entrance series, its content isn’t specific to the introduction. Instead what I’m about to detail is entirely how my game works, from start to finish. Be warned, this gets a bit technical. But feel free to ask any lingering questions you may have after reading this!

A Tale in Twine

Twine (https://twinery.org/) is a computer program used to write branching narratives. It uses chunks of text (“Passages”) linked together by player choices. For example, if I have one Passage that asks the player “Do you want to kill him?”, I can give the player a “Yes” choice and a “No” choice. The “Yes” choice leads to a new Passage, and the “No” choice leads to another, completely different, new Passage. It’s a visual, graph-based system, so it might be easier to understand if you look at the first image below.


I’ve written the whole of my game’s story in Twine. That means you can play the game, in its entirety, with Twine’s “Test Play” feature. (For you engineers out there, this amounts to Twine being the Model in Model-View-Controller lingo.) I then export that Twine story to an easy-to-read format (called “Twee”) and use a plugin called UnityTwine to finally get it into Unity — which is where my C# code controls all the images, animations, and music that add to the overall experience.

Since Twine is just a graph of Passage nodes, my C# code simply looks at which Passage of the graph the player should be seeing, then displays its associated text. I use Twine’s Tags feature to determine what images (characters, locations, etc) my game should be showing. For example, if we’re in a Passage that is marked with the “Butler” Tag, my code will show the butler image. If we’re in a Passage that’s marked with the “Malone’s Apartment” Tag, my code will show Malone’s apartment. Collecting evidence, opening the notebook, and contradicting suspects are a bit more complicated — but essentially they use the same idea: everything is controlled in Twine, and my code in Unity just decides what to display.

Lovely Things

This comes with implicit rewards. As with any properly-divided MVC system, it means my story is entirely independent of my visuals and my interface. I can change the art style, the type of interaction (touch screen?), or even change from Unity to Unreal to any other engine, and the story still works — I wouldn’t have to alter a thing in Twine.

It also means I can test the story while writing it in Twine. I can iterate much more quickly since I don’t need to export everything into Unity and run the game. Does this passage sound awkward when coming from this other passage? I don’t know, let’s try it! This makes any Save/Load system easier to write, as I can just save what passages my player has seen, and run through them one-by-one when they load a game.

It also means I can write tests that look only at the Twine output. I don’t have to rely on Unity, just run though the Twine story and let me know if there are errors. Wonderful!

Terrifying Messes

Of course there are downsides. And in this case, unfortunately many. They’re all related to the fact that Twine was created for web-based choose-your-own-adventure narratives.

Thus, Twine knows nothing about important game state — i.e.: where is the player? which character is talking? etc. Essentially, I’ve had to create my own scripting language inside Twine — (ab)using its Tags, Links, and Display systems — for my code to understand what screen to show or what music should be playing. But this is bad, because Twine then can’t check for errors — if I misspell a Tag, or try to Display a Passage that doesn’t exist, Twine has no idea that I’m doing anything wrong. I have to write a lot of unit tests to cover these cases or else find many bugs inside the story.


Twine also doesn’t understand complex concepts like “always show the notebook button when the player is engaged in conversation”. In order to get the benefits of playing the entire game in Twine, I need to manually check that there is a “notebook” link inside every Passage where the player is conversing. Of course, this is dangerous for the same reason mentioned above: if I miss one notebook link inside a conversation passage, Twine gives me no warning — the game is just quietly broken.

And while Twine does offer support for returning to passages multiple times (including conditional statements and times-visited counters), it’s really not meant for a game where a player searches for evidence in a room. Or, even worse, where a player tries to contradict a suspect with the evidence she’s collected in that room. This all leads to an insane amount of graph spaghetti, as demonstrated above. Again, annoying, and easy to make mistakes with.

A Review

With these downsides (and more) would I use Twine again for this type of story? First I’d take a closer look at renpy (https://www.renpy.org/) and see if I could port that into Unity. And inkle has made ink (http://www.inklestudios.com/ink/), their internal writing tool, completely open source — so I’d give that a go too. But, in the end, my game is fairly specific. With the amount of evidence, the number of contradictions, the variety of locations and characters, it quickly gets complicated for any system to handle. Twine isn’t ideal, but I’m sure I’d find challenges with every piece of software. While Twine can be dangerous, it’s also flexible enough for me to implement this entire game, so I’m still happy with it!

---

This marks the end of my Making an Entrance series. I’ve compiled all the posts onto this page (http://www.thewanderingben.com/making-an-entrance-full-series/). It’s been fun for me to write the series and I’m sure it will be useful in a post-mortem capacity. I hope you’ve enjoyed it too! If you have any questions, about this post or any of the others, please don’t hesitate to ask.

The game is coming together quickly now. I’m excited to share much more with you in the coming weeks!

Hey I missed this earlier! Thanks for reading, Tony :)

Big updates soon™!

I love the technical info!  :-* Anything you can share about the Twine/Unity integration and MVC stuff is great. I'm interested in being able to quickly write and release more little visual novels at this point, so I should probably be exploring all the options aside from sticking with my custom engine from the last one.

I also really appreciate the technical information! You do a great job highlighting the pros and cons of using Twine. In my spare time I've been working on making some sort of visual novel engine, mostly just for personal use, and hearing about what Twine does well and what it struggles with definitely helps!

Actually reading your post made me realize a difference between how I'm doing it and how you're using Twine. With Twine, it seems to some sort of state based approach. Each state encodes the text to show, what images to show, what music to play, etc. Then you just jump from one state to anothe when necessary. In contrast, I've been using an approach where commands are executed sequentially and previous commands apply until explicitly undone. For example, you have a Butler tag on every state that shows a butler, but I would just use a command to show a Butler once and then remove the Butler when he shouldn't be shown any more. I think RenPy does a similar approach if I'm not mistaken.

The approach you're using seems a little more tedious because you have to repeat tags every state that has them, but it also makes it much easier to reason about the state of the game! With my way, it can be hard to reason at any given point if the Butler is being shown, because it depends on which commands were executed before, which could be any if the game jumps from one part to another!

I would love to hear if you have any thoughts on which way is better! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the development and I would love to read more about your implementation!

Cool! What did you use for writing your script (was it imported from something, or syntax completely written from scratch)? I'd love to know more solutions -- as I said, mine isn't perfect, but works for what I'm doing now.


Great job summarizing the approach I described! I actually simplified it a little bit in the post. In reality, I use multiple tags per passage in certain scenarios. For example, I'll have the first tag be "Conversation" so Unity knows to load the Conversation screen, and the second tag be "Butler" so Unity knows to load the Butler images/sounds.

You nailed the problem with it -- it's tedious and can be prone to error. The good news is that I can catch those errors with tests in Unity -- for any node with a Conversation tag, check that it also has a second tag, and that the second tag matches the name of a character in the game.

Although I've created a specific syntax, it's still useful in Twine itself. Twine assigns a random colour to a passage for each tag combination (e.g.: all my "Conversation Butler" passages look green and all my "Conversation Mobster" passages tags look red). So I can easily see where conversations start, change to a new character (interruptions), or transition to something completely different. I can also see if I've misspelled any tags, or if I accidentally missed tagging a passage (though I do run a check to see that all my passages have a valid tag, which takes care of most problems).

EDIT: Note that I'm using Twine 1.4. When I started this project, Twine 1.4 still had many features not yet present in Twine 2. I haven't looked into Twine 2 since, so maybe it's caught up. For sure the new UI is much nicer!

My response got too big so I posted it in my own log so as not to confuse people.  :coffee:

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=49046.msg1328034#msg1328034

Nice man! Great details. I reread some of your older posts and realized you'd outlined the key-to-language system earlier as well. A good separation of writing, script, and code.

Your set up is fairly ideal for visual novelas, like The Whisperer in Darkness. If you stick with that style of game, you're probably best served by continuing to use the engine you have now. I'd only change if you wanted to do something with more obtuse logic, like decisions in the game that percolate (Twine is great at this!), or inventories of items with various uses (Twine is terrible at this!).

Big updates! Sorry if this post gets too many exclamation points, but in all my years making games, I’ve never been this excited to announce one!

The game is now called A Case of Distrust. It has its own website (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/). And, in order for it to be successful, I need to get it onto Steam, so please, if you have a valid Steam account, GO VOTE FOR IT! (here (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=889863952) if you want it in browser, or here (http://bit.ly/2mA7cXM) if you want to open the Steam client)

What’s changed since I last updated you? Quite a lot! I’ll get to most of that in future posts. But the biggest change: you’re no longer solving multiple mysteries — it is A (single) Case of Distrust. That sounds like content has been cut, but that’s not true. The game is still the same length, and very similar, but with various characters and plot points shifted around. I just realized the story itself was lacking any significant punch because no characters took long enough to develop — you’d solve a case, then mostly move on. Instead, all the characters and writing have been woven into the same mystery, giving more time for intrigue, a heightened climax, and greater satisfaction. The story is more tightly tied to my main character and the themes surrounding her. I can’t wait for you to play it!

I’ll post future, more lengthy updates soon. But for now, please vote on Greenlight (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=889863952) if you’d like to see this game!

---

Also, some new media:

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd4K6BTOG28

Promo:
(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_0.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_0.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_1.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_1.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_2.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_2.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_3.png) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/CharactersWithLogo_3.png)

Screenshots:
(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot1.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot1.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot2.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot2.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot3.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot3.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot4.jpg) (http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/Screenshot4.jpg)

---

The trailer looks great and I'm definitely a fan of making it one big mystery! Voted yes on greenlight! Good luck and keep us posted!

Nice style - I just voted yes. Good luck!  :gomez:

All aboard the hype train! :coffee:

Thanks for the love everyone! It's been a little over a day since I posted on Greenlight (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=889863952), so I thought I'd share my current metrics:

(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/GreenlightDay1.png)

Overall the percentage looks good, but the vote totals aren't great. I'm hoping to generate more traffic through sites like Reddit and IndieDB, but I'm worried about quickly flatlining. Such are the adventures of a black box! I'm not sure what more there is to do other than keep promoting and wait it out.

Here's hoping :beer:

I promise to make other posts about more than just the Greenlight campaign (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/stats/889863952), but I can provide some insight into these day 3 numbers for anybody interested:

(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/GreenlightDay3.png)

You can see that there was a spike in the second day. Early in the day, the trend was actually moving the opposite direction, with less votes coming in by the hour. But then Kotaku ran a story (http://steamed.kotaku.com/1794513836) covering the game, and traffic erupted! There's also an article on Adventure Gamers (http://www.adventuregamers.com/news/view/32633?utm_source=home&utm_campaign=newslinks&utm_medium=text) about the game. That was just posted, but I don't know if should expect the same Kotaku bounce.

Overall traffic slowed on Day 3, but I hope the votes continue to slowly tick up in the days to come. I'm not sure if I'll hit the top 100 any time soon, but I've got a good ratio and positive comments, which sometimes means even more. It's fun watching this black box, but I'll go back to full time development next week.

So, I know I promised future posts will be about more than Greenlight -- and from now on, they all will be, because:

A CASE OF DISTRUST HAS BEEN GREENLIT!

Thank you so very much to everyone who voted and who got others to vote! Your help has meant the world for this game. I'm thrilled that it will be on Steam!

Now it's time to buckle down and make sure it's actually a success on Steam! I've got some new stuff cooking that I think will be fun to devlog about. And some new announcements for where and when you can play the game yourselves. Stay tuned!

Before applying to Greenlight, details from other Greenlit games helped me, so let me break down the stats for the A Case of Distrust Greenlight campaign in hopes it helps other devs:

---

It took fifteen days total, and the game was bouncing between 30% and 32% of the Top 100 games. That number might not sound high, but I'll reiterate what I've seen on other blogs: as long as you have "enough" votes, the total doesn't seem to matter as much as percentage of Yes to No votes. I've heard anything above a 50/50 split is good with at least 500 votes, so A Case of Distrust's 65/31 worked in its favour. Again, Greenlight is a blackbox, so I'm only saying that my stats confirm previous suppositions on how Steam chooses games. But we could all be wrong, so take it with a grain of salt!

Here are the final numbers:

(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/greenlight/FinalGreenlightStats.png)

You'll note that that numbers haven't increased greatly over the past week. In fact, the majority of votes were in the first three days, with almost 90% of the votes in the first five days:

(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/greenlight/FinalVotesOverTime.png)

I'm guessing Kotaku's article was the spike on the third day, and I'm sure the Adventure Gamers article helped a bit with the tail. But for the last week of the Greenlight, the game, like many others, was getting handfuls of votes per day -- not enough to significantly impact its trajectory to the Top 100.

Overall, I think fan enthusiasm (based on vote percentage) and media attention (Kotaku, AG, and previous articles from RockPaperShotgun and Kill Screen) helped propel A Case of Distrust into the sights of the Greenlight gate keepers. Thankfully, they liked what they saw, and chose to let it pass.

One more thanks to everybody who supports this game.

I can't wait to share more with you. The beat goes on!

Curious when you can play the game yourself? You might get a chance soon…



The game will be in the IndieCade Showcase section alongside other fantastic indies. There will be a playable demo on the show floor this June!

A small personal aside: I first saw pictures of E3 in the gaming magazine EGM when I was 11 years old — those images inspired me to become a game developer! Getting to show there as an independent dev is very much a dream come true.

I designed a banner that will stand 2.5’x6′ beside the E3 booth (click for a larger size):


I’ll update you with more info as the E3 dates approach, including when the physical banner arrives. This is my first big show as an independent developer, and the first time I’ll be showing A Case of Distrust to people I don’t know. Saying I’m excited, and terrified, for this event is a woeful understatement!

Holy cow, Ben! That's INCREDIBLE! Congratulations!

It reminds me of the story upon Breath of the Wild's release, that one of the developers asked forums about 10 years ago how to "work for Nintendo." Needless to say, folks like you and he inspire the rest of the world. If you set your mind on E3, it's amazing how you've gotten to where you are now.

Congratulations, Ben. You're a super hero in the indie game scene!

Congratulations on getting Greenlit and selected for IndieCade! I haven't been to the E3 Showcase before, but I know IndieCade's an awesome festival! :) Have fun!  :)

(I'm almost to 50% positive on my votes, but probably still need a few hundred more votes to have a chance... (at 49% and 217 yes votes right now).)

Haha, you know how to make a gal blush! :-[ To be honest, I thought I'd "made it" when I first attended E3 with Visceral Games. Showing my own game there sounds kinda... crazy. This eventually feels normal right? I don't know how other devs react, but I sometimes get paranoid working on my own -- the only people playing my demos are the ones I love, and it's hard to gauge whether I've done anything worthwhile or if they just like me. Doubts double when I realize I haven't made a commercial game on my own, only part of a large team. What was it called -- imposter syndrome?

Don't get me wrong, I love my game! But IndieCade's validation helps my sanity. And it's definitely motivation to keep making this game great!


It sounds like you're on the right track, foofter. I noticed a spike in my Greenlight numbers after the game was covered by a couple media outlets. Monster Garden has a very unique style, and you've got a demo too. I'd try sending a few warm emails to websites you like, including some screengrabs and a link to the demo. Maybe one writes about it and that puts your game over the top! Good luck! :toastR:

I've gotten a few questions about the trailer, all from people who haven't seen the game in action (have you heard you'll be able to play it at E3?!). Let me clarify: none of it is video-editing magic, it's all recorded in Unity -- that is, I used the technology in the game to make the trailer itself!


I knew I wanted to create an in-engine trailer. Fans appreciate seeing the actual game in trailers, the visuals are inspired by film anyway, and the process would be much easier and cheaper than doing any real video editing.

My only pre-production was a quick idea sketch in my notebook. After that, I went straight to the game assets themselves!


I duplicated my Unity scene and called the new one AnnounceTrailer. Honestly I changed very little, because again, most of the functionality was already embedded in the game. The only minor tweaks were simplifying the text elements -- the trailer text isn't populated by any Twine story file; instead I just define colours and strings in the scene itself.

Otherwise, I wrote a very basic TrailerController script to manage the timing of transitions (wait X seconds, then transition to the next scene). Engineers will correctly chastise the hard-coded strings -- normally no bueno, let your designers fill that in! -- but since I was the only one creating this trailer, and the code wouldn't be reused, I allowed myself a few cheeky shortcuts.


The audio in the trailer is a tweaked version the travel music in the game. Mark extended the song so it didn't have to loop, and he created a more definite ending. I added that file to an AudioSource in the scene and told it to play automatically, then I adjusted the animation timing to match the music.

To get it into video form, I created an AnnounceTrailer game file and ran the game at full screen -- exactly the way I create my regular game files! I recorded my screen with Quicktime, and voila, trailer finished!

Well, not quite. For some reason the audio didn't sound great that way -- its volume was either far too low, or it had strange artifacts. So I muted the screen recording and used iMovie to combine the visuals with the music.

A simple export to MP4 later, and it's uploaded to YouTube!


The whole process, from planning to final trailer, took less than two days. And I'm very happy with the results!

We'll see if I use the same strategy for future media, but at this point, I can't think of a reason not to!

---

Okay wait, that's a nice story, but it's not quite complete. You see, I actually made another trailer before this one. It had similar music and generally the same vibe, but one glaring problem: it didn't hook viewers quickly! It would be good in a movie theatre, but online audiences scroll their Twitter feeds faster than a jet at takeoff! If my video doesn't grab you in the first five seconds, I might as well not create it at all.

Want to see the trailer that didn't make the cut? I'm terrified to show you this. Fair warning, it was just a first draft, with that low-volume audio problem I mentioned earlier, and a horrible recording frame rate. I even forgot to remove the Notes button -- d'oh! But this is what development looks like. Here's a day of effort for a bad trailer:

---

Thanks for reading! More posts soon!

Want to get notified when A Case of Distrust has a new devlog? Sign up for the newsletter now (http://thewanderingben.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=fbbc1bd6eb5d2595bc15a92a4&id=db7145cff9)!

Until now, character images in A Case of Distrust have been static. A player would choose to talk to someone, then the screen would transition to a still of the character’s face:


To keep with the Saul Bass poster art style, most of the game features stationary images, or only subtle animations. The static character art worked very well with this style! But, something felt off. Since much of the game involves conversation, players would see these images for extended periods. I realized that the longer a player spent in a conversation, the less appealing the art became.

But I didn’t want to shorten the conversations, either. In-depth characters are the crux of any good mystery, and conversations are the player’s window into a character. That was when I remembered: Hotel Dusk!


Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is a mystery game for the Nintendo DS, released almost 12 years ago. Its art-style is inspired by graphic novels — more static than your typical game art. But rather than keep their images completely still, the developers give every character a few canned emotions, each with a some choppy frames. Hotel Dusk keeps its physical aesthetic while adding flavour to the conversations.

Exactly what I want! But my characters, while simple silhouettes, still look more realistic than the ones in Hotel Dusk. Each of my characters is either directly referenced from a photo of a real human, or an amalgamation of photos. In order to keep that aesthetic, I had to change from using photos to using video:


Above is the first video I used for a test. It’s my beautiful girlfriend! I asked her to perform a basic action as reference. From there, I selected a few frames and used a similar technique as I did for the static images: solid blocks of colour with paper masks overtop and underneath. Voilà:


That’s exactly what I wanted! It still fits the art style, yet adds movement so the image doesn’t become boring.

But would I be able to do that for every character? I’m in Denver, I don’t know that many people around here. Thankfully, I have a great friend back home who owns her own production company and runs an improv group! What a break! She agreed to film her actor friends performing the various roles.

Say hello to Virginia Woodall, officially the third person working on A Case of Distrust:


She’s our Talent Coordinator, gathering actors to play many of the game’s characters. I shared the first fruits of her labour on Twitter earlier this week — a GIF of the new Connor Green, played by Toronto stage actor Colin Roberts:


I’m excited for this new art style! I’m sure A Case of Distrust will be leagues better because of it! Thanks for reading, more updates soon!

---

(Also, working with silhouettes is fun, because costume colours don’t matter at all)

Wow, you did a great job of keeping the style with the animations! It's hard to say but I feel like the animations might look a little too choppy? That could also just be a side effect of the GIFs, maybe it looks better in game. Looking forward to seeing more! :)

I love that you used your connection to an improv group to get reference material! I'm working on a new game that's very creatively ambitious, and one of the ways we're managing scope is very similar, leveraging any and every connection to our local community and saving work whenever possible using reference photos of local locations, etc.

Thanks for the love, guys!

@wizered67: It might be the GIFs, they seem to be playing at awkward speeds. With the fade transitions in the game, I think it looks good! But art is always just a matter of opinion ;)

@Nathy: Haha, yeah, I lucked into a childhood friend being kind of a big deal in the Toronto drama scene. Happy to be working with her! Good luck with your new project, please share it when you're ready -- loved your last devlog!

---

Right now I'm excitedly finishing the last of my E3 prep. Check out this sweet banner! Next time it unfurls, A Case of Distrust will be at the IndieCade booth -- come say hi if you're around!

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DB5QHcUUwAEZE98.jpg)

The new project is called Ballad of the Space Bard (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=61162.msg1336557#msg1336557). :)

Just skimmed through and the visuals are looking great!  Looking at the wikipedia page, I've seen some of his works but didn't know that it was by Saul Bass.  Thanks for the mention! :)  Overall, this is what I call the "max result with min effort" ;D   

Maybe you've seen the following, but sometimes there might be a few ideas here and there that you find useful:


ColourOnly85     http://colouronly85.tumblr.com/
(http://68.media.tumblr.com/b98d66f4db9eefbd4f2c277aae17c112/tumblr_mwik14f1F81rmfc3eo1_1280.jpg)

Early iTunes + iPod commercials:  https://www.youtube.com/user/appleTVCnet/search?query=itunes+ipod
Some are "clean":
(http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/e53OM3pSEr0/hqdefault.jpg)
while others added more detail:
(http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/wKvSjLRp2sE/hqdefault.jpg)

There's also an interesting animation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKMxtfMSPTM
While, the puzzles are probably more hardcore than what you are going for, some visuals might be inspirational along the lines of "max result with min effort".  :)

Subscribed!


Thanks for the great inspiration! Yeah the Bass style really has a pop to it, and it works well with silhouettes. It's definitely less effort than building a whole world in 3D, but working on my own this is still taking a long time!! :)

Yes, some things still need to be done. ;)   Unless, of course if you can find someone who does it cheaper than you're time's worth*. ;D
*(plus NDA, etc considerations)

I'm assuming the "paper masks" were done digitally and not physically, right?  Otherwise, that would certainly take a lot of time! ;D


Another thanks goes for mentioning Text Mesh Pro!  I saw it a year ago, but wasn't really worth to get it for the :handmoneyL:.   But now that it's free, it's great! ;D

Oh snap, on the subject of paying people to do game art, Ben, if you're interested I'd love to have you contribute art for an episode of my side-project Tales of the Necronomicade (https://nathanielnelson.com/necronomicade.html). :)

Woah, I just saw this. PM me and let me know what's involved!

E3 is over a week old, and I’m just starting to regain normalcy. Three days of standing at the IndieCade booth and pitching my game to fans and media, intermingled with publisher meetings, and topped with networking parties. I collapsed on the couch on Friday and was still in a haze for most of the weekend.

But it was fantastic! Prior to the expo, my knees were quivering. After all, it was my first time showing the game publicly. Maybe people would hate it? It turns out, quite the opposite happened:


Those awards mean quite a lot. They’re nice to put on the game’s page, but more than that, they serve as motivation. This game has the potential to be fantastic. These prizes strengthen my resolve to not stop working until it is. All the stories written about the game work the same way. Here are some choice quotes:

• Impressed me with its nuanced, careful construction of its milieu and characters, and the resonant comparisons it draws with the world of today –Jen Glennon, Newsweek’s Player.One
• It evokes its setting of 1924 San Francisco perfectly –Holly Green, Paste Magazine
• The game’s writing [is] downright phenomenal –Taylor Danielle, Twinfinite
• The art style and the manner in which this text unfolds…is totally evocative of the era –Amanda Pillon, Sweety High
• Super gumshoe… really cool animation and art style –The Optional
• Adventurous point-and-click gameplay –Anthony Elio, Innovation & Tech Today

Though some of the best motivation came from the fans themselves. Allowed into E3 for the first time, they were the most excited bunch. We got every fan who played to leave sticky notes about what they liked in the game. Those soon took over the booth!


And, of course, a massive thank you to Taylor Pereira, the guy in the last picture, who flew from Toronto to Los Angeles to help me set up and run the booth. He was at once my organizer, my back-up, my sanity check, and my good friend. Thanks buddy!

IndieCade @ E3 was a resounding success. If the reception there is any indication, you’ll like the game when it releases! I’m excited to do more conventions in the future!

I'm so happy for you ! I loved the demo and I am excited to play the full game.
I wish you all the best for the hard part of the journey (making the game fantastic) :p

I've been (mostly) off the interwebs the past week, but thanks so much for the love!

I'll get back to updating soon, and I hope I can make something you'll really enjoy at the end of this!

Kind of a bummer that you went to all the work of Greenlight and they've just barely opened Steam Direct. Have you seen the details of the new system?

I just noticed your log has never had a game completion progress bar on it! I found mine so cathartic when I was working on Whisperer. If you had to estimate, how close are you to finishing? (Hit me up if you need playtesting, too.)

While I was in New York I played a game (it was on an arcade machine in an awesome exhibit at Babycastles) whose visual style totally made me think of Distrust. It was quite awesome, you should play it if it's available anywhere: This is My Memory of First Heartbreak, which I can't quite piece back together (http://thisismymemory.jennygoldstick.com/)

Aye, but it got the game some press -- featured on Kotaku and Adventure Gamers. And it helped me solidify my marketing before showing at any conferences. And, through some form of black wizardry that I had no part in, the game got through Greenlight in just 15 days! So it wasn't too bad all things considered.

(EDIT: Steam Direct is apparently just a $100 fee per game that Valve will reimburse once you hit a certain number of sales, but I haven't looked any further into it)


Really? On my side I see the progress bar:

(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/devlogstatus.png)

Right now I've just finished the first draft of the story. I have a month of rewrites in my schedule, along with a ton of art still left to do. If everything goes okay, the game should be done later this year. But exactly when depends on how many logical rewrites I'll have to do (i.e.: this person didn't understand that -- crap!). Mysteries can be difficult to write when your players have to solve them ;)


That looks fantastic! I can't seem to find anywhere to download it, but I'll keep an eye out for it!

Right you are about the progress bar... and yeah, that game might have been a local-only arcade cabinet. Hopefully they release somewhere else eventually.

(http://www.thewanderingben.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/bookbar-denver-wine-bar.jpg)

In a tiny café, as a soft trumpet frolicks with delicate française, I sip a refreshing afternoon cider. This could be San Francisco, or Toronto, or Penang. But it’s still Denver. I told you I’d be sticking around a while (http://www.thewanderingben.com/2017/02/08/words-for-denver/).

Another long drag of drink, followed by a breath with more exhaustion than I’d realized. I’d taken some days after E3 to myself, including one to ask someone for the rest of their life (she said yes!), but the last nine days my head’s been buried.

But don’t misunderstand. I’m a overtired, sure, but I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. Let me show you what I’ve been working on!

Let us begin, dear love, where we left off

Adventure Gamers (https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/33004/page2), TechRaptor (https://techraptor.net/content/e3-2017-a-case-of-distrust-hands-on-impressions), RPGFan (http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2017/6390.html), and NewGameNetwork (http://www.newgamenetwork.com/article/1723/indiecade-booth-tour-e3-2017/) wrote about A Case of Distrust. There has yet to be a negative article, which is exciting! I’ve also had a few interview requests, so expect more from your favourite game sites in future.

I also recorded episode 59 of Gamer Weekly (https://soundcloud.com/gamerweekly/episode-59-the-wandering-ben-developer-of-a-case-of-distrust) with Justin Bannister. I had a blast, so have a listen if you want a laugh.

Imposter syndrome, even these days, factors into my work. Doing interviews and podcasts reminds me that my project is everything I’d want in a game. Whenever I hear myself make the game’s pitch, I get excited, too. They’re fantastic motivation, and I can’t wait to share more!

Tie up the broken threads of that old dream

The game progresses smoothly. Before E3, I’d finished the first draft of my story. After a few edits, I traded my pen for a brush, and I created a few more portraits and the final searchable locations in the game. There are many more visuals to still make, but I finally have all the red herrings I need. After writing some more flavour, I’ll have sufficient content to begin proper testing of the game, from start to finish.

But just talking about it is a tease. So let me share: the new portrait of Franklin Earnest Conway, played by Andrew Hobson (my future uncle-in-law!).

(http://www.thewanderingben.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/FrankieConway_New.png) (http://www.thewanderingben.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/FrankieConway_New.png)

And go on happy as before; and seem

I’ve finished the cider, my neck less sore than when I’d started. It’s been a while since a blog post, and this one is especially long. I promise I won’t leave as large a gap again.

Thanks for sticking with me, and with the game. I’m working hard to make this something we’ll all enjoy.

That I’m having so much fun along the way is gravy!

Lovers again, though all the world may scoff.

---

Quotes from Reunited by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Top image of Bookbar where I'm writing this post.

And then I came to Three ways,
And each was mine to choose;
For all of them were free ways,
To take or to refuse.

Major choices in narrative games are often expected. Of course your decisions will have an impact! That’s why you play games after all: to see an immediate and lasting consequence to your actions; to shape the world in the mould of your heroes; to decide who lives and who dies!

Giving my players choices was always my intention, but my game’s themes aren’t so grandiose.

A Case of Distrust is not an epic. You won’t find mythical creatures or magical spells between its covers. It’s not about transforming the world, or saving it from the grasp of evil. It’s about a society, its charm, and its blemishes. It’s about understanding the impact of an average person, and how little that can actually be. It’s about a mystery with a culprit — one character has to be guilty, and, whatever a detective’s choices, that fact won’t change.

So what do players decide then?

They choose how to navigate this society. They dictate their main character’s reactions. They build the Phyllis Malone they want to see.

Of course, a personality has personal consequences. The world won’t be different tomorrow if you’re more friendly to your neighbour — but your neighbour might be nicer to you! Depending on Malone’s actions, characters will start to see her in different ways. Sometimes that will mean an easier time solving a mystery, while other times it might add to her difficulties.

That’s what I’m working on now. The reactions of characters based on my players’ decisions. The subtle changes in the mystery based on who you think Malone should be.

Choices that won’t redefine your world. But choices that are intimate.

---

Quote from The Choice by Robert William Service (http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_william_service/poems/12416)

Top image by I. Melenchon (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pasitos.jpg)

PAX West. Ow. My exhaustion is only now waning, two weeks after the final day of that massive show. The wall of humans chronically surrounding the Indie MEGABOOTH (http://indiemegabooth.com/) transcended any other convention I've seen, as an attendee or presenter. If you came around the booth, you may have found my voice rough and strident, or my words slurred, or that I was nearly unconscious. And my feet still hurt.

But my complaints are trivial compared to the rewards. Hundreds of showgoers once again reminded me that, hey, A Case of Distrust is damned cool. Many players groaned when the demo ended, eager to continue Malone's story. The diverse crowd dug the style and wanted more. And, of course, the cat got much love.

If exhaustion is the only price for that pleasure, sign me up every time!

A very heartfelt thank you every single person who played the game; to the Indie MEGABOOTH (http://indiemegabooth.com/) team for selecting A Case of Distrust; to Christopher Wulf (https://twitter.com/chriswulf_) who coordinated the booths expertly; to Yaprak and David DeCarmine for showcasing the game at the Game Jolt (https://gamejolt.com/) party; to Luke Icenhower (https://twitter.com/antipode51) who gave me a place to stay; to Dino Ignacio (https://twitter.com/DinoIgnacio), Evan Champlin, and Rex (https://twitter.com/matthewrex) for reminding me that Seattle friends are awesome; and to Kyle Seeley (https://twitter.com/kyleseeley23) and Robin Ras (https://twitter.com/rustylakecom) for watching the booth and finding food and getting wasted together.

Until next year!

Awesome!! I love that mass of sticky notes with player comments  :-* it gives me a warm feeling.

Yeah, me too! All the work feels justified when I read those comments and talk with excited players. Here's how they left the notes on the booth on each of the two days:

---

small Update 1 - IndieCade

(https://image.ibb.co/mZaWkm/indiecade.jpg)

A Case of Distrust was selected for IndieCade 2017 in the Documents section. The festival was hosted by the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, LA. My experience was incredible! Each creator showed an innovative or evocative piece, and most attendees were developers themselves who asked thought-provoking questions. The lunch conversations, the drinking exchanges, the informal meetings — every interaction was filled with passion and veracity.

And the game showed in a quiet setting, with seating for devs, which was nice.

---

small Update 2 - Taylor

(http://www.thewanderingben.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Fans3-1024x768.jpg)

Taylor Pereira, one of my childhood friends, will be doing additional character art for the game! I recruited him as a roadie for E3, and that experience inspired him to get into the art of video games. I'm excited to have him on board to help finally finish this game.

---

small Update 3 - Steam

(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/acaseofdistruststeam.png) (http://store.steampowered.com/app/717610/A_Case_of_Distrust/)

The game is on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/717610/A_Case_of_Distrust/)! You can now add it to your wishlist and track the game's progress over there. One step closer to launch! Expect pre-orders soon!

Seems like a Serenity Forge intern died during setup...

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMiyGCBW0AM-y5Y.jpg)

And then others joined in the fun!

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMnJWVLVoAEbv1r.jpg) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMnOlBQWsAEyKoC.jpg) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMsMNjYVoAAuTKp.jpg) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMsK66mUEAApI6y.jpg) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMwjiVSVwAAEnQL.jpg) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMxBa9yU8AAhzxv.jpg) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMxgW0UUQAAee68.jpg) (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMx3wW1XkAE54dv.jpg)

Thanks for coming out!

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMm_TZQXcAAEf8R.jpg)

This was the last show of the calendar year! Now time to focus on development of this damned thing!

That "interactive" outline is a great idea! :)

On Friday, I finished the epilogue. The final thing I'll ever write on A Case of Distrust. Over two years of work. It's almost done. Feeling pretty good. Here's a character you haven't seen before, looking rather proud of me:

(http://www.acaseofdistrust.com/img/RayCarter_Grin.gif)

Just played A Case of Distrust fully, taking detailed notes (that I'll show you upside down so you don't get spoiled):

(https://i.gjcdn.net/data/fireside/posts/5/24/313524/media/coffeeandnotes-zpbtnkmv.jpg)

These nine pages of fixes, mostly minor text edits, are all that stand between me and Content Lock!

Wish me luck this weekend!

UPDATE: Of those nine pages, only 20 items remain! Some of them will take a little longer, but Content Lock is in sight!

And just like that, the content in the game is LOCKED. There will be a few minor features (windowed mode anyone?!), and likely some small tweaks to the story to improve clarity. But otherwise, we’re locking this bad boy down. It’s mostly bugs from here on out!

It’s coming together real soon!

I know there’s still some work to do, but, like our good friend Sam Shipman, I can’t quite stifle my smile:

(https://n3b6p5n5.ssl.hwcdn.net/data/fireside/posts/5/175/313675/media/samshipman_stifledlaugh-3y6bfxba.gif)

Happy Screenshot Saturday everyone!

(https://i.gjcdn.net/data/fireside/posts/5/248/315748/media/shoetie_gamejolt-uehdr28z.jpg)

It’s been a week since A Case of Distrust entered “Content Lock”. For me, that means my game is shippable. I’ve given it enough love to release tomorrow — and if it did, I’d be proud of it.

Yes, it also means you’re close to playing it. (Excuse my massive exhale.) More on the release date in the near future.

So what’s happening now? Fixing minor bugs takes a lot of time. Issues like “the music doesn’t fade nicely here”, or “a saved game takes too long to load”. These things wouldn’t sink a game, but they would fracture a player’s experience. An old friend once told me to make every interaction magical. Anything that breaks the spell must be polished away.

There are also quality-of-life features, which includes accessibility features for disabled games. Able Gamers (http://www.ablegamers.org/) has great articles on issues around accessibility, and Game Accessibility Guidelines (http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/) offers a good checklist to consider when building a game. I likely won’t be able to implement some of the items on that list, but each item I add improves the game for a largely ignored group of players. That’s worth it for me.

Finally, you’ll be hearing a lot more from me lately. I took pains to update a weekly devlog (http://www.thewanderingben.com/devlog/) during my first year of game development. The second year, which involved a lot of writing, was more difficult to share without knowing my final script.

(Maybe that’s true. But maybe it’s also an excuse. Having spent a year abroad without being close to finishing my game, I think I dove too deep into development. Sure, being a solo-developer means that any time I’m not working on the game there’s zero progress. But I ignored the fantastic people that got me here — the ones who lifted me up when I wanted to throw this all away (http://www.thewanderingben.com/2016/03/23/this-too-shall-pass/). Thank you.)

Now that the story’s complete, I have more room to breathe. I’ll give you a peek into certain sections, and explain how and why I made my decisions. Expect many more posts in the coming while.

Thanks for following!

I'm v excited. It's been a pleasure!

I’m proud of A Case of Distrust. In world where I didn’t make this game, but instead stumbled upon it by chance, it would instantly rank among my favorites. I love this thing.

It wasn’t always clear that I would.

March 2016, in the melting Penang heat, I was dejected. Four months of development, and I realized: my game sucked (http://www.thewanderingben.com/2016/03/23/this-too-shall-pass/). Four months of scrupulous research, exhaustive plot creation and writing tests (http://www.thewanderingben.com/2015/11/25/breaking-down-the-style/), extensive visual art trials (http://www.thewanderingben.com/2015/12/09/groove-swagger/), and meticulous code structuring (http://www.thewanderingben.com/2015/12/31/framework/). None of it mattered. The game sucked. The game suuuuuuuuucked. Why did I ever leave Visceral Games, or BioWare, or even EA Mobile? (God damn I had some good times at ol’ EA Mobile.) What made me think I could create my own thing? What hubris possessed me to give up my fantastic life? To do what — to make it better? Augh. I will never make a good game.

And then I did.

Slowly, I did.

So fucking slowly. It’s been almost two years since that Penang sweat. Both the tortoise and the hare have retired, but I’m still going.

In the interim I discovered something rarely shared: Every good game you have ever played has sucked. Go to GDC, E3, PAX,  or IndieCade — find a developer, hand her a drink, and ask about the worst moment. It’s unlikely she’ll tell you about the hard crunch. She’ll share that point where the game was far along, and then, she realized, it sucked. The game suuuuuuuuucked.

And then, it didn’t.

Slowly, it didn’t.

So fucking slowly. But with careful analysis — a deep breath and critical questions (why does this suck, how can it be better?) — the game improved.

If you are at that low moment now, or if you ever get there, I encourage you to keep going. (Hell, if this is future Ben Wander, once again struggling to find the fun: keep going!) Be honest with yourself, but be hopeful. You’ll get there.

Slowly, you will.

---

Image by William Warby

Love this last post, Ben. I'm so proud of you. I can't wait to see it finally come out! It'll be on my Steam page for sure :)

Big news today! A Case of Distrust will release on FEBRUARY 8TH!

(https://i.gjcdn.net/data/fireside/posts/5/115/318115/media/frankiereleaseannounce-nsqrx75p.png)

Haven’t played A Case of Distrust at game conventions? Or, maybe you have, but you’d love a bit more? Now, through the magic of the internet, you can try the Extended Showcase Demo (https://gamejolt.com/games/acaseofdistrust/263919)!

(!!!)

Okay, real moment, I’m terrified and exhilarated. This is the first time my game — the thing I spent almost two and a half years making — will be played worldwide. I’m shaking while typing this post.

So what is this build?

I’m calling it the Extended Showcase Demo. Basically, it’s what I’ve brought to events, plus a little bit more. (For those who have played the shorter demo, you’ll actually get to go inside Southern Coffee.) I’m sharing this now so we can chat about it — so that I can dissect elements of the game (like the travel conversations) in future blog posts. It will let me lift the curtain to more clearly show you the inner workings of the game’s development.

At shows, the demo typically took 10 minutes to get through, so I’m guessing this should take 20 minutes — maybe a bit longer if you linger.

The entire game takes about 3-4 hours, so this is just a taster. Remember, you’ll be able to get the full game on February 8th! But for now, please enjoy this demo.

I hope you like the flavor!

In preparation for A Case of Distrust, I plunged myself into the 1920s. I read histories — about police departments, about cities, about prohibition, and about gangsters. I studied modern art, I searched for magazines, I listened to music, and I took courses. And still, I made mistakes. I left one in the demo — did you see it? Look at the conversation above. "He looked quizzically at me through the rear-view". The rear-view mirror? Sorry, Ben, those weren’t standard issue until the 30s — most people in 1924 would never have seen one.

Writing any historical fiction can be a minefield. Oh, I love reading it! I can learn about a time period while enjoying a story. And writing it can be fun — all the lore has been established, you just have to write the characters. But mistakes are easy to make if you aren’t careful. Did you know that AmTrak was only established in the ’70s?

Beyond just a historical story, I’m writing a mystery. And I’m wrapping it with an adventure video game. Those genres are already niche — I don’t want to require love of the Roaring ’20s to the enjoy the game. So how do I incorporate history while maintaining fun?

Put it in the game, but let players seek it out.

The taxi conversations are a perfect vehicle for this type of content. Nothing is integral to the plot, and yet, for those interested in the history (like me!), those details can be magical.

Go to a well-known location. Ask characters about a newspaper. There are many small, subtle avenues to add historical touches to the game, without turning this into a textbook.

I love that my players can learn a little bit about a time period while enjoying themselves.

I just need to be careful. Writing any historical fiction can be a minefield.

After spending two and a half years making it, A Case of Distrust launches in two and a half weeks. I'm still kind of numb to it right now - we'll see how long that lasts.

For now, let me share the launch trailer with you!

I’m honored to share that A Case of Distrust has been nominated for the SXSW Gamer’s Voice Award (https://gaming.sxsw.com/news/2018/2018-sxsw-gaming-gamers-voice-nominees/)! If you’re around Austin in March, swing on by to see the game and cast your vote for it!

Can't wait to see the finished game, good luck on launch in two weeks & congrats for the SXSW nomination!

The art in A Case of Distrust is created with a technique called rotoscope. This involves selectively painting over frames of a filmed sequence, creating a style that mixes incredibly realistic animation with fantastical lines and colors.

A Case of Distrust isn’t the first game to do this (Prince of Persia is the most famous example, and the upcoming Desert Child (https://gamejolt.com/games/desertchild/264191/) by akuparagames (https://gamejolt.com/@akuparagames) also uses rotoscope) but, for the past few decades, the technique has mostly stayed within film. This helps give my game a unique flavor when compared to other contemporary titles.

So how do you rotoscope? Everyone’s approach is different, and depends on subject matter and desired style. For me, I had actors — mostly volunteers from the Toronto stage scene — perform various emotions (angry, sad, smile, shock, etc.) while reading from the game’s script. As you can see from Fanny Green’s actor, costume shapes were more important than colors.

From that footage, my next step was to define each character’s look. I grabbed one still-frame that I thought embodied that character’s personality, and then I painted over that frame until I found the appropriate lines. You’ll notice the silhouettes are quite stylized, so this step took a while.

After that, I selected individual frames to create a complete emotion (around 5-7 per animation). Rinse and repeat for every emotion, and then for every character, and I had an array of emotions that I could drop in wherever I wanted in my game.

Because of the massive number of frames required, I eventually enlisted the help of my friend Taylor Pereira to create some of the art. And Virginia Woodall, owner of Toronto-based production company DV8 Productions, was invaluable in coordinating the actors and filming a lot of their scenes.

Of course, the filming itself led to some hilarity — stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes soon!

Don't know how I missed this -- thanks much! Loving all the updates on Crest!!

The game is now one week away from release! Eep! I can't contain my excitement!

(https://n3b6p5n5.ssl.hwcdn.net/data/fireside/posts/5/224/326724/media/raycarter_smile-ungp9wmm.gif)

This is it! A Case of Distrust is officially out! (I've been shaking all morning.) You can get it on Game Jolt (https://gamejolt.com/games/acaseofdistrust/263919), Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/717610/A_Case_of_Distrust/), or itch (https://benwander.itch.io/a-case-of-distrust) for 15% off this week! Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible!

And a very special thank you to the folks who follow on this forum. Many of you have reached out personally to tell me that, while you don't reply, you love the updates. TIGSource was the first devlog I started, over a year and a half ago, and it's been a wonderful ride!

---

Edit: Feels good to finally do this:

(https://i.imgur.com/GorUn0F.png)

Ohmigosh I've been hiding my head from posting congratulations because I bought it but I've only played for like 30 minutes so far and I feel bad about that :tearsofjoy:

I really really liked what I played. So congratulations! I'm excited to finish it, maybe this weekend?

Thanks much! Glad you're having a good time :beer:

Also I'm so happy you followed this whole time. I'll have a few more updates thanking the dev team in the coming weeks.

Huge congrats on releasing the game!  My wife and I played it together and had a great time.  Loved the style, the hard-boiled writing, the music, everything. Well done!

A nerdy technical question:  how’d you keep your graphics so sharp? SDF, SVG, just lots of copies for different resolutions, black magic?  I’m super interested.

Hope you’ve had a chance to relax a bit now.

Congratulations, again.

Congratulations!!

You have developed a great game!

Hey fam,

I saw Distrust pop up under Upcoming Releases on the Switch store! Damn, that's exciting.

That's actually one of the recent factors that got me thinking I could do another port/rewrite of The Whisperer in Darkness, this time in Unity so I could hit more consoles and actually keep up cross-platform support long-term. I wanted to see if you might have thoughts!

(devlog post) (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=49046.msg1390876#msg1390876)

Just now I became aware of the game and saw all the hard work done by the dev. A Case of Distrust is also coming to Nintendo Switch on September, 20? Wow, great!

original idea!

It's been a while since I've sailed these TigSource waters! Thanks for all the love, folks! Yep, the game's out now on Switch as well :)

It's been a wild ride. Real fun releasing this old dream of mine. I'm really happy with how this all went. Thanks for the support again! <3