Really happy to see that you're still working on this and updated so many things! I'm really liking the graphics by the way! I do have a little feedback on what you posted.

I'm really glad to see you took into account what I mentioned and changed the animations during dialogue to move back and forth. In my opinion it's a big improvement, but to be honest I think there might be a little too much motion. When you're going through dialogue quickly the characters are moving back and forth quite a bit (like at the beginning of the gif you posted where she accuses Virgil). Just my opinion though so take it with a grain of salt.

It might look that way because I'm shuffling through the dialogue quickly to save on file size, but I'll definitely keep an eye out on this and see if at the very least I can find an way to cut down on that when you're flipping through text quickly.

On the screen where it asks if you're sure you want to accuse someone, I found the white text a little hard to read over the light blue background.

I always appreciate feedback on readability and color choices. I've got a great (and by that I mean terrible) one-two punch of being colorblind and having a not quite accurate color display on my laptop, so sometimes I never know when something is completely unidentifiable until I look at it on another computer screen. I'll look into either adding a drop shadow to the text or darkening the window to improve legibility here.

A very minor thing but it bugs me a little when text starts appearing on one line and then wraps over to the next one in the middle of a word. (eg the word "there" at the end of the last gif you posted. I think it looks like the "the" starts at the end of one line and then once the "r" appears the entire thing moves to the next line.) I think it looks much cleaner if the entire word is moved to the next line.

I've actually been aware of this problem for a while but have been struggling to quite get it to wrap correctly. I can insert manual linebreaks to resolve this issue in post no problem at the very least, but automating it almost always seems to end in disaster. I'm going to try and take another crack at it though because words skipping line mid-typing annoys me quite a bit and I'd prefer not to meticulously add linebreaks to every line of dialogue in game.

The idea you mentioned about being able to have multiple "correct" solutions is very interesting. Does that mean that it would be possible for the player to "succeed" yet have the wrong culprit? Would there be consequences down the line for choosing the wrong one?

The idea I had was generally that, because of the way the investigation is set up to have a turn limit, you could theoretically enter the interrogation sections without enough evidence to absolve someone of guilt / pinpoint the real culprit. In scenarios like this, leading to a game over sort of negates the point of having a turn limit and just makes it a bit of an exercise in frustration. Instead I thought of it as, if you fail the trail, the game should keep continuing, albeit, the plot will have diverged because someone else has been pinned for the crime.

This in turn lead me to the idea that theoretically, because there's enough evidence in any case to point to at bare minimum two suspects, it would be neat if the player could choose to pursue either one as the true suspect and, assuming they have enough evidence to make a reasonable case against them, you should very much be able to persuade others even the incorrect person is the correct suspect, with all the consequences that may entail.

This would essentially tie in choice and decision making with player performance. And of course because of the nature of the game relying on using information from previous playthroughs to aid you in your investigation, you may find that some culprits can't be quite pinned down until you discover a vital piece of evidence from pinning the wrong person, reinforcing the "success through failure" nature of the game's narrative.

It's an idea I'm very interested in approaching from a narrative perspective, but it's important to me that it gels from a gameplay perspective too, which is why I haven't quite locked the idea in as a go ahead until I'm confident I can work out the kinks.

Also if possible I'd love to hear about some of the programming details. Is this all being made in a custom engine? I'm mostly curious about your dialogue system since I've been (on and off) working on one myself. How do you write dialogue? Do you have a custom visual editor or do you use text files of some kind?

I've been programming Passengers in Game Maker Studio and I work pretty much entirely within their default editor when it comes to writing and programming. It's important to note I'm not really much of a programmer, I know basically just enough to get by.

As for how I set the system up, that gets more complicated the more layers of functionality you want to get into. Basically the way I have it set up, for every line of dialogue I have the system read four arguments: Whose speaking, What emote are they using, what type of dialogue it is (ie. choice, timed, etc) and then the actual dialogue. And I do that line by line until I'm satisfied with the exchange, at which point I call a script that tells the dialogue box its all set.

So it'd look something like this:

scr_dialogue("Nora",icon_nora_neutral,dialogue,"Hey what's up.")
scr_dialogue("Zed",icon_zed_neutral,dialogue,"Not much you?")
scr_dialogueend()

And that would result in a two line dialogue. I keep all the individual exchanges in their own scripts, which are in turn indexed into scripts I use like dialogue databases for NPCs I can ping whenever you highlight them with an inventory item or a journal entry.

I can probably get into more detail on a specific function if you want to know more about how anything in particular works, but that's the general basics of how it works before you take into account stuff like animations and cutscenes and the such.

[9/9/17]

9/9/17

Megapost in a week, megapost in a month, same difference. Sorry about the lack of activity, I've been really busy helping out with another gamedev project. That said, there's been a lot of improvements over the last few months or so, so lets dive into those right now!

Let's start with the journal front. Over the last few months I've continued to expand upon the layout and basic functions of your journal by adding a new section for lore and other miscellaneous topics. While updating this section of the journal may not be essential to solving the case, it does give you a quick reference guide for the terminology used in-universe, as well as allow you to gain more insight into the opinions and perspectives of characters on hot button topics within their culture.

I've also added a new section to the journal for case files. This will hold all the information pertaining specifically to your investigations, and will contain things like alibis, witness testimonies, and details about evidence, crime scenes, and cause of death. You'll be using this section of the journal the most while investigating crimes, not only while cross-checking evidence and questioning suspects, but while calling out lies and contradictions from culprits and during interrogation sequences.

On the Interrogation side of things, I've continued to make tweaks to the animations and function of the system. As Wizered67 suggested previously, the portraits now alternate which direction they slide in from to give the sense of a conversation being a back and forth. I would still like to improve upon this by taking into account the actual positions of characters within a conversation and alternating the direction this way, but for now it works well. Additionally I've also made some slight alterations to the animation for losing health. I've added just a touch of screen shake now for when you take damage or something shocking occurs mid conversation.

In addition, I made a few steps to continue fleshing out the functionality of the interrogation system with the implementation of pinpointing a suspect. As I discussed in my original post, the timeline of the game diverges, not based on choice, but on how well you succeed in your investigation. This primarily manifests in whether you successfully collect the information you need before the time limit expires pre-interrogation, but it gets a little more nuanced than that.

Because of the open nature of the player's investigation, I thought it would be important to allow for some leeway for missing evidence, lest the game become an exercise in frustration trying to find the one question you haven't asked a vital witness from your journal. As such the system right now is based on a court of public opinion. You'll start an interrogation by going over the evidence, and when all is said and done the player will have to choose who they'd like to finger as the suspect.

Right now fingering the wrong person accounts in a complete loss of friendship with that person (accusing someone of murder is not something to be taken lightly) and a hit to your health, but I would like to explore the possibility of allowing players to make their case with the evidence they possess for any of the eight passengers, instead basing the cases not on a single "correct" solution, but on how well players are able to gain public opinion and diverging the timeline based on who ultimately is accused by the end of the trial: the original suspect, or an alternative the player has successfully managed to convince a majority of the others is the real criminal.

This presents problems in presentation however: Phoenix Wright and Danganronpa may keep the true culprit a secret till the end of a case in most instances, but they often lead you to that conclusion with the questioning and evidence prior. In this scenario players would be unable to link their evidence to a specific third-party until locking them in as their suspect, which can perhaps present issues with difficulty. I would like to continue with this line of thinking however, and see if there are ways to present these cases so that the player can feel confident about who they're accusing before writing the idea off as non-feasible.


I'm also continuing to make some progress on animating the emotes for each character. Previously in this thread I showed off some of Nora's animations. Nora as a character is generally a bit bitter and judgmental, and I think it really showed in the way she emoted in her animations. Likewise I wanted to showcase the individual personalities of other characters as I animated their emotes and generally avoid repetitions of the Nora's animations.

• Robyn's personality is generally very upbeat and bubbly, so I wanted all her animations to have a cutsey feel to them. In this regard, the anger emote was probably the toughest to portray, but eventually I decided the best way to animate this was to approach it as Robyn throwing a tantrum rather than expressing disapproval. Robyn is perhaps the second most "animation complete" in the game at this time right after Nora.
• Royal on the other hand is very self confident and has an inflated sense of self worth. While originally this animation just had him tilt his head down and close his eyes, I eventually decided that him flicking his wrist out in the process did a great deal to make him look smug and cocky.
• Maya meanwhile is portrayed as very nice and compassionate, but also shy and socially awkward. As such her animations needed to convey a sense of reclusiveness. For her most frequently recurring emote, as such, I decided a simple recoil and look of dismay did a lot to convey her discomfort in conversation.

In general, animating the emotes is one of my favorite aspects of working on Passengers and its a shame I don't get to touch up on it more while in the process of actually programming the engine, but hopefully I'll be able to share more of the ways I convey character personalities and quirks through the medium in the next update as well.

Last but not least, I've started rolling out a few of the follower abilities. Each follower grants Nora a unique buff while they're in your party, on top of providing excellent company and the occasional quips. Some of these are more active (Virgil is a thief, so he can open lockpick things on your behalf) while others are passive (Royal's, as depicted above, will allow him to interject into conversations where he thinks the other person is lying, saving you the time and hassle of cross-checking information from other sources) Hanging out with your followers and allowing them to use their designated special abilities will upgrade your friendship with them, as well as net you the immediate benefits of their expertise, so its generally a good idea to bring a pal along wherever you can.


And that's about three months worth of updates all compressed into one post! Thanks for bearing with me during the downtime and hopefully I'll have more exciting news about Passengers again soon.

I bookmarked this months back and wanted to see how this is coming along! It's crazy that this isn't getting more attention, but so it goes sometimes! I am really looking for ward this and I love the art style, even if it's the say progress is still coming along I'd be glad to hear it!

Hey, thanks for the interest! Passengers is still going strong, though I've been involved with some other projects so I've had less time to dedicate to the project and updating the devlog than I would like. That said, there's been a lot of new minor additions and improvements over the last few months I think go a long way towards the final end goal. I'll probably make a mega post sometime over the next week to show off some of the new stuff that's been added.

Thanks again for checking in. It's really motivating to see my work so far has had a large enough impact on them to make them want to check back in again after this long.

The update looks good! I can tell the interrogation system is heavily inspired by Ace Attorney, so as a big Ace Attorney fan I of course like it The only thing I'm iffy on is the Special system you mentioned. Is it something that will be needed or is it just extra hints if the player gets stuck? I think you should keep in mind that a portion of players will be adverse to using hints, so how you design it plays a big part in how much people like it. For example, as far as I know pretty much everyone that plays Ace Attorney is fine with the hints the assistant gives you after scrolling through all statements in a testimony, but there was at least a bit of a backlash from some fans when the new games added a hint system that can tell you exactly what statement has a contradiction if you get stuck too long. I like that you made intuition limited, perhaps something like Layton hint coins could work? Although I also have a friend who absolutely refuses to use hint coins in Layton games Maybe you could make multiple difficulty levels and change the hint system depending on the difficulty, so that players that want it can get hints and players that don't either get less hints, less obvious hints, or no hints at all.

One thing I'm not really a fan of in the gif is how the camera always scrolls to the right. It just feels like the character portraits aren't in a real space when it keeps moving right and eventually returns to the first character (unless it's going in a circle...) I think my preference would be like in Ace Attorney trials where it scrolls to the right when the prosecutor talks and then back to the left when the defense talks. That way it feels like the characters are in actual positions in the world.

Awesome that you have it running on Android! That could definitely work as a secondary platform for a game like this. Keep up the good work!

As far as intuition goes, it's definitely something I'm sort of fine-tuning. You'll never have to use the special meter to progress, but even so, I don't want any of the hints to be overkill or make the game too substantially easy so I'm looking into ways to make it more of a gentle prod in the right direction versus "this is the correct answer pick this." I think the approach I liked the most was in the Layton-Wright crossover game where it would eliminate some of the wrong answers or pieces of evidence, but still kept a few fakeout choices. It helped narrow your line of thinking a bit while still not playing the game on your behalf, so I'll probably take a similar approach to that.

I had been considering having difficulty levels that effect things like health loss/gain and how tight the time limit is in the investigative sections, so I could play around with intuition doing different things across different difficulty levels.

I get what you mean about the hints though. Similar to your friend I also never use the hint coins in the Layton games (though this is in part because the game also treats them as a collectible, and there's nothing nicer than having that full hint coin number on your save file when all's said and done) I feel like a lot of the more "hardcore" adventure game players will usually neglect hint systems while more casual gamers benefit more from their inclusion. Hint systems I think are good in that way since they're very easy to not use, but appeal to a very large demographic as well: its just a matter of figuring out the best way to present them.

As for the rotating, I think you do have a good point there. A friend of mine also brought it up, and I dismissed it as, yes, the characters are supposed to be standing in a circle, but realistically if that is the case we should still be passing by people in between speakers, and also occasionally scroll in from the other side of the screen depending on which would be the quickest way to get to the speaker. There's still a lot of fine tuning I think I need to do here since, as you say, just having them scroll in from the right doesn't give a good sense of position in the world.

Anyway thanks for the feedback. I'm going to keep all this in mind as work further on the interrogation content.

[6/3/2017]

6/3/2017

Hey everyone, it's been a bit. I've got quite a few updated going on this week so let's just dive in with the big one first.

First thing on today's agenda, let's talk about interrogation:

Interrogation is the stage of the game that follows a murder investigation. Using any evidence you may have found, you'll be questioning suspects in the vein of games like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa. The goal of this portion of the game is simple: using the testimonies of others and the evidence you've collected, you'll have to lead the other passengers to identify the culprit.

You have four tools at your disposal during an interrogation to pursue your case:

• Press - Push a suspect to elaborate on a specific statement. Pressing on the right topics can unveil more information in a testimony or reveal contradictions in a suspect's statements. This counts as a free action and won't cost health if you push on something irrelevant.

• Special - At the cost of some of your intuition meter, the game will help guide you towards the correct solution. This includes redirecting you to suspicious statements and highlighting correct multiple choice question answers. Intuition recovers slowly over the course of an interrogation however, so spend it wisely.
  This slot on the UI was originally allocated to "Contradict", which has since been rolled into the Press command. The contradict command would previously allow you to point out when the suspect contradicted themselves, but not neccesarily the evidence.

• Evidence - Identify a contradiction in a suspect's statement using evidence you've found. This is when an object in your inventory specifically contradicts a suspect's testimony. This can be looked over mid-testimony for a refresher.

• Case File - Identify a contradiction in a suspect's statement using your case file / journal. This is when case specific information, such as cause of death, location, etc. contradicts a suspect's testimony. This can also be looked over mid-testimony for a refresher

At the moment the system currently has pressing and contradicting implemented. Special is still in a design tweeking stage where I'm trying to figure out the best way to implement a hint system, Evidence needs some updated UI, and Case File has to wait until I've added a case file portion to the journal in the main menu. I've also updated the dialogue engine for this portion of the game specifically to make use of the full-size portraits, and worked on some animations for switching characters, switching portraits, and losing/gaining health/special.

---------------------

In other development, I've expressed previously on my Game Maker Forums development thread that I had some mild interest in bringing this game to mobile devices, since it draws so many influences from mobile adventure games to begin with. So this week I spent the majority of my development time tweaking the functionality of some of the menus as well as the control schemes to make the game mobile compatible.

So with that in mind, I'd like to state that as of this time, Passengers is compatible with Android operating systems.

(You'll have to forgive the poor image quality on these by the way, as it turns out my best camera is actually on the phone that I'm taking a picture of here)

Getting Passengers to this point was a little trickier than simply running the game on the Android of course. To account for the lack of a keyboard, movement was allocated to tapping the screen to either the left or right of Nora, and pulling up the menu, which is normally mapped to the escape key, was reassigned to the back button on Android specifically when the game is running on the Android operating system. Several of the menus also needed some mild tweaking, as the way the game was coded previously, tapping somewhere on the screen would be treated as clicking and THEN moving the cursor, which caused some issues with selecting a different menu option than what was actively being tapped.

The UI for a mobile release would likely have to be adapted to have some bigger button inputs for the player, but otherwise this build of the game has been fully playable through touch commands.

While Passengers is still primarily aiming for a PC release and I am by no means committing to a mobile release at this time, being able to test the game on mobile devices has actually helped me quite a bit with bug-testing on the go, as well as opened up some possibilities for an Android port down the line. I'm very excited about the possibility of bringing Passengers to mobile, on-the-go gaming.

And that's that for this update. Hopefully I'll have more on the interrogation system soon (though there are some other functions that need to be addressed before that).

I've seen this on my twitter feed a few times. It looks amazing everytime I see it, but going through this thread and looking at how much it's evolved since the beginning is simply mind blowing. The new animation work is phenomenal. Just excellent stuff all around.

Like you mentioned a few posts back, the 4px font can be a bit difficult to read at times, and I think it's mostly because you added breaks in the actual lettering. I think trying to stylize font that small is just going to be difficult in general. It looks good on the 8px version of the font though. I think that's my only criticism about the UI though. It's very aesthetically pleasing in general.

That overworld to battle transition is simply gorgeous by the way and I love everything about it. Nice work!

Oh, yes, I am very aware of why I am seeing the old man with a beard as I like such "illusions" (e.g. the classic old woman/young woman) and have seen similar faces where the nose could be seen as a mouth.  I haven't seen Diglet, thanks for that. Added to my collection.

Though the strange thing is, in your dog image even when I first looked at it and even now after trying to find it, I still can't "see" the dog head.      It's either the old man, or a "not sure what is it".  I've seen dogs with beard that would be quite similarish looking but that doesn't help either.

Sorry for overly explaining it then! Bad habit of mine.
I think part of that is just that it's difficult sometimes to see the alternative with optical illusions. I had to strain my eyes a bit myself to see the old man with the beard, but boy was it a funny image when it clicked.

The other part of it is that she doesn't have a pronounced snout, which probably leads to some of the illusion in the first place. It's harder for me to see the old man when the snout looks like this, for example:



There was also an alternate color scheme early on in concepting that makes the beard less uh... beardy



So it definitly seems like a number of factors, including color and shape, that make it less dog like. Something I'll probably keep in mind and toy around with to make it more readable. Strictly on the down-low I'm not very good at drawing dogs, so seeing it from other perspectives definitely helps me improve upon the art assets.

I like the visual style.

One thing though:  why does the dog looks to me like an old man with beard and "limited teeth"?   

It's likely the same reason why some people think Diglett's nose is actually his mouth, and the shine is just one big tooth:

Of course if you look at the actual concept art its pretty obvious its just a nose, but when you use two colors, it's easy to misinterpret details as being something else. In this case the two smaller white pixels from Chloe's snout come across as teeth, and since the nose and the mouth are the same color, it can look like one large, open mouth rather than a nose and a grin. The fur lookling like a beard is pretty self explanatory though.

The long and short of it: Basically that pupper is an optical illusion and thats pretty rad.

[5/13/2017]

5/13/2017

Boy its been a busy week. I say busy week because "I've been too distracted by Persona 5 to do actual work" doesn't come across as well.

So let's start off with more updates on that dialogue engine.

The phone is something of a common element throughout the game. The character's pause menu is treated as Nora fiddling with her phone in universe, texting is a major mechanic, and often characters communicate to each other through phone calls, rather than meeting in person. Even saving your game involves using your cell phone in the bathroom. The most important use of the phone however, is communicating with the game's villain.

Our antagonist, Ulyssess, is something of an omnipresent force: They don't appear to the passengers physically, but constantly communicates with them via texting and phone calls, prodding them into action with threats and blackmail. As such, one of the way I wanted to expand on the dialogue engine was to make a clear distinction between when Nora is speaking on the phone, and when she is speaking to someone in person.

To accomplish this, I made a UI element for the phone: This showcases who is on the other line at any given time, even if they are not actively speaking, so that they have a constant presence in any conversation where you are on your phone. I also played along with the concept of using different shapes for the character icons in the dialogue box to indicate when the other speaker is speaking through an electronic medium, such as a cell phone or an intercomm. I originally tried using a circle for this but eventually decided I liked the aesthetic of simply using a diamond for this. I also made a repurposed "Upset" emote animation for Nora fiddling around on her phone during all of this.

Implemented in engine and animated, this was what the final result looked like.


---------------------

On the non UI side of things, let me introduce you all to Chloe.

Chloe is Robyn's dog. Design wise, she's not any particular breed, but I took influences from both a Corgi and a Shiba Inu to make her small, but fluffy. But what she lacks in stature, she makes up for in intelligence and protective instinct.

Much like how you can occasionally recruit the help of other passengers throughout your investigation, Chloe will occasionally follow you around the train. Unlike others though, she isn't treated by the game as a full-time companion and doesn't take up your companion slot, so she'll make a perfect third wheel. I'm currently experimenting with the idea of Chloe being able to find collectibles for you, but for the moment the benefit of her chasing after your footsteps is that you get to spend time with a puppy and that's rad.

Chloe's not the only animal companion you'll meet on your travels: Nora also has a pet cat named Stella. But while you spend only a few brief moments with your cat, you'll be spending a long stretch of your journey with Chloe and her owner.


And that's that for this update. No substantial game changing additions, but improvements on preexisting game functionality is always a plus in my book.

Great progress and details on the dialogue. Really looks like they are having a conversation. One press of a button shows the entire text, another press skips to the next, right?

Yep! You click once if the text box hasn't finished to unveil the rest of the box, twice or once the text has finished to progress to the next box, or if you're in a rush you hold down the right mouse button to fastforward through chunks of text at a time. For the latter, I'm thinking of implementing something similar to Virtue's Last Reward where the game will automatically stop the fast forward if its text you haven't seen yet, but that's more something I'll probably implement during polishing stages of development.

I wonder if Visual Novel fans are put off, if they can't influence the dialogues.

I think there's a pretty sizeable chunk of visual novels that don't let the player influence the dialogue at all, but even looking at your inspirations, Danganronpa and 999 managed to achieve some degree of mainstream success despite not really having players choose their dialogue options (though also admittedly in the case of 999 it lets you choose between a few options at branching points)

I know you have to make money, but personally I think $10 seems a bit much for the 2-4 hours you mentioned, although if the minigames give some replayability maybe it won't be an issue.

I was under the impression it was 2-4 hours per playthrough, but with multiple endings that amount to more cumulatively. If that's the case I could definitely see justifying a $10 pricetag, though I suppose you'd have to do research on how often people who play visual novels go back for other endings and how much that factors into someone's purchase decision.

Also, I was wondering what you're developing the game with and if you'd consider making a Devlog for it? I'd love to follow the game and hear more about the development process!

Mark me down also as someone who'd be interested in a devlog.

Lump me in with everyone else saying this game looks gorgeous. The color work alone is fantastic, but there's also a lot of subtle detail that works wonders for you.

The AI improvements in your most recent gif are top notch as well.

[5/3/2017]

5/3/2017

During development I had a chat with one of my friends about the numerous updates I made to the dialogue system in the weeks prior. One of the things that was continuously mentioned to me was that the main character looked very bored in the context of what is basically a horror game at points.

This was somewhat intentional, the main character, Nora, is intended to be portrayed as cold and emotionally distanced, but there was some truth to what he said. Without some variation in emotion, all the characters look like static brick walls capable of only one emotion.

That's why this week I implemented character emotes, in game animations that reflect changes in the character's mood throughout the dialogue.

I started this update by focusing on Nora. Since you play as Nora for the entirety of the game, it was fairly clear that getting her some mood animations was more important than anyone else. To start off with, I did two animations: A transition into being upset, and a transition into being angry. This allowed Nora to transition between the three most common emotional states in game freely:

 

From there I had to decide how to actually signal the character's to perform the animations. The dialogue engine doesn't have anything to accommodate a designated animation slot at the moment without some jury-rigging, so I decided instead to tie it to the portrait. After all realistically, outside of special animations for cutscene purposes, the animation is always going to be an extension of the mood portrayed by the portrait in the dialogue box. Problem there being at the time I only had the one portrait for each character.

I spent some time creating a few batches of portraits for Nora earlier this week to fix that. First, I gave the character a slight make over. Prior, her haircut fell down her forehead in a real strange way, so I extended the bangs so that it looked more like a parting in her hair than just a weird strip down the middle. I also darkened the color of her hair abit. Since I use dark blues instead of blacks, the lighter colors used earlier made it look like she had some extremely anime blue hair, where as now it seems more like blue is used as a highlight than a base.

I started off doing one for neutral, upset, and angry, then went on to do confused and happy, just for future's sake. I also took the opportunity to do a batch for Zed and Robyn, who are probably the most frequently appearing characters in the game, as well as a batch for Autumn, who, outside of texting, communicates with the character entirely via facial expressions. I'll likely get around to the last batch of characters sometime in the coming weeks.

That aside, integration was as simple as putting a check in the player and NPC's step events. Now every actor in the scene checks what the current speaker is, what the portrait is, whether the emotion is different than the one being portrayed currently, and if so, it'll transition into the new one. As a fail-safe, I've also programmed it to snap into a mood if the player decides to skip through text and, subsequently, any animations that follow.

The Result:

There's still a ways to go with this of course. Nora is the only one who has any animations in place, and of the several other characters that have animations in need of completion, some of them need several variations, such as the security guard, who appears with and without the helmet over the course of the game. That said, it does lay the groundwork for creating a more visually engaging game and keeps mood consistent both within the dialogue box and within the actual gameplay environment itself.

Basically, this is my overly wordy update on doing some if-then statements with animations. But hey can't argue with the results. I'll be continuing to work on art assets and animatons over the next week or so. If you have any questions or feedback, let me know!

Ungrateful Dead> Thank you for your kind words. Btw. I really like your avatar. Do you have a portfolio somewhere?

I do. I added my website and twitter to my signature if you want to take a peek.
But back to the topic at hand:

For the gameplay. I'm currently considering, taking out all the "normal" decisions (in the way Visual Novels work) and only let the game branch the story depending on the outcome of the "minigames" you play. This means, if your win, make 2nd or last place in the ranking, the story will develop accordingly.

When I say minigame, I'm not talking about match-3 or puzzle, stone-sliding games. More in the area of poker with bluffing.

One game I designed is a card game, where each player has 2 cards. One rank card and one ability card. The player can decide to either swap a rank-card with an opponent, swap a ability-card with a player or use his ability card. There are two rounds, and the one with the highest rank wins. But depending on how the abilities are used, the ranking order gets swapped, values change or you can't use your ability.
In this game you have to think and anticipate what your opponent will do. Maybe even learn their behaviors beforehand. The game will feature these kind of games.

If you know Liar Game (Manga / J-Drama), then you'll get the mood/feeling/theme

Sounds interesting. So with this card game you're describing for example, is it going to be like a full fledged mini-game (as in, the other players are dictated by AI rather than acting on a flowchart) or is it going to be more like a puzzle where there's a specific set of actions the player would need to take to get the best results?

I remember there being five characters in your game, so having it keep track of where you place and then diverging based on that sounds like a lot of work unless you group the results (so like 1st, 2nd to 4th, and 5th maybe as things the game tracks), but all the same it sounds like it'll add a lot of replayability if you can pull it off.

Would you find this mechanic : "Branching story depending on winning/losing minigames" (and no traditional decisions) be interesting? Do you know a game which did this before?

I personally really appreciate when games include subtle decision making; ie story or plot points diverging based on how players perform in gameplay, rather than dialogue trees. As far as games that use this a core means of making decisions, I can think of a few that have a few instances of setting flags off when you do certain things but not a lot are coming to mind where this is the primary way of diverging the storyline.

I suppose maybe Stein's Gate if we're sticking with visual novels, since one of the endings in the game is hidden behind how you talk to a certain character, but there's no real indication of it factoring into the ending at all. I also remember there being a Dragon Ball Z game on the DS that would unlock different routes in its story mode based on whether you completed (or lost) the match under specific conditions. That's a bit reaching as an example of course, but I digress.

[Seek and Investigate -]

AKA Chris Pratt beat me to my own video game, damn!

It's Christmas Eve, 2098
A murder has taken place on a midnight train leaving Seattle II. Trapped on board a moving train with no signs of stopping, tensions rise between the passengers as they try to figure out who could commit such an atrocious crime. Only one thing is certain: The killer is among the eight passengers on board. And there's more to this mystery than just one dead body.

Passengers is a cyberpunk adventure game that draws inspiration from Nintendo-DS era adventure games such as Ace Attorney, 999, and Hotel Dusk. The game features a divergent story where in the actions of the player determines how the story plays out.

In the current stages of development I am working primarily on engine work and streamlining the way the engine handles dialogue and inventory so that its simple for me to go in and write dialogue and cutscenes. While the basis for most of the planned features is already implemented, it is my hopes to polish and flesh out much of the functionality so that it can be integrated with the writing in a way that feels nuanced and intresting.

• Seek and Investigate - Your journal isn't just a compendium of all the people you meet in your travels. It's also a dynamic tool invaluable to your investigation. Using a mixture of your inventory and your journal, players will inquire further into the history of people, places, and rumors: whether it be just asking someone for their name, or breaking down a person's cover story.
  
  But be careful: Everyone has their secrets and not everyone will answer your questions honestly. You'll have to search for evidence and cross question multiple witnesses to get the full story.

• Time Isn't Holding Up - Time is both your greatest adversary and your greatest advantage. With every question you ask, every action you take, time continues to move forward. When time expires the story will continue, for better or worse.
  
  But fret not: With each playthrough, your journal will carry over from previous runs, and with it a new breath of possibilities. Pathways previously unavailable to you will open with your knowledge of other timelines. Of course, just because you can repeat the past doesn't mean things will always play out the same and you'll find that some timelines are quite different than you remember.
  
  With several endings, failure is just one step on the way to uncovering the full truth of this case.

• It's About Being a People Person - Cultivating a relationship with the other passengers is crucial to survival. As you progress through the story, how you talk to people will effect how they percieve you. Being pushy might not sit well with the softer-demeanored characters, but may earn you the respect of more abrasive characters, and vice versa. How you speak to people determines how they speak with you.
  
  In addition, you'll be able to ask for the assistance of other passengers throughout your investigation. As your followers, these characters will give you unique dialogue based on your situation, as well as offer you unique abilities that will let you solve puzzles you may have been unable to do on your own.

• A Brave New World - While the majority of your investigation takes place in the isolation of the Seattle Metro, there's a whole 'nother world outside. Speaking with others will give you more insight into the state of the dystopian cyberpunk future on a cultural, political, and personal level.
  
  Before each playthrough you'll have the opportunity to explore Seatle II and get drinks from Pub 99. Each beverage offers you a unique perk that'll help you along your investigation. Additionally, the bartender, Maya Whitney, is an invaluable source of rumors and can give you new leads and tips.

• NORA WINTERS - A private investigator that suffers from memory loss and intense migraines after surviving a bullet to the head. Strangely, she feels like she's seen all of this happen before.

• ZED FOSTER - An Irish active duty paramedic. His medical expertise will surely come in handy, but you could live without the half baked pick-up lines and poor attempts at humor.

• ROBYN YUKIMURA - A young girl with aspirations of becoming a photojournalist. Despite the circumstances she remains optimistic and upbeat. There's something odd about her, but you can't quite put your finger on what.

• ROYAL WOLFGANG - A retired journalist, practically disbarred after the publication a controversial news article. Despite his infamous namesake, there are many out there that still hold his works in high esteem.

• AUTUMN - A silent woman with an intense glare. She never speaks and communicates exclusively through texting. If not for Zed's tendency to give people nicknames, you wouldn't even know what to call her.

• VIRGIL CLARKE - An abrasive young thief and an itchy trigger finger. His loud mouth gets him into more trouble than it resolves.

• ? ? ? - A former A.Egis Security veteran with surrogate limbs replacing ones lost in the Dust Bowl conflict of 2089. Now they work security on the midnight shift of the Seattle Metro. Like all A.Egis Security law enforcement officials, its impossible to tell who they are behind the helmet.

• JARED MAXWELL - A socially awkward decker with a great deal of technical expertise. A master of hacking but not a master wordsmith, he's a bit too absorbed into internet culture and has a hard time relating to people who aren't/

Passengers features a soundtrack that mixes piano composition with elements of electronica to create ominous, suspenseful atmosphere. You can find a selection of demo tracks here:

https://soundcloud.com/sunsetdrifter/sets/passengers-soundtrack

Follow me at @UngratfulDead for the occasional assorted gifs and updates.
Questions, concerns, and/or tearing my heart out is encouraged

I'm a big Zero Escape fan so this definitely caught my attention. From what I've seen you definitely wear your influences on your sleeve and I'm definitely curious to see what direction you go with the plot based off of your description, though I'm also interested about how you're going to deviate from 999 and Danganronpa conceptually.

The imagery of the bracelets for example immediately reminded me of The Nonary Games, and the general premise of "betray or ally with people who might backstab you as well" is pretty par for the course in these games, but the hidden supernatural power and the actual mechanics of your interpretation of a nonary game seem to be a unique spin on the formula.

This looks interesting from what you've shown and I'll probably keep my eye out for more of this in the future.

Hello everyone, my name's Ungrateful Dead. Not legally of course. That would be weird and I'd have to have a very long chat with my parents about their priorities in life.

I'm primarily an artist and have dabbled in pixel art, raster art, vector art, and all of that good stuff. I also dabble in music and make ambient/synthpop. I can sort of program, which is to say, I'm very good at working a roll of duct tape and hoping everything doesn't catch on fire. I'm receiving my degree in Graphic Design in Interactive Media very soon.

Making a list of games that inspired me would be tough because there are a lot of games I hold in very high esteem for very different reasons, but I will say that nothing gets me pumped up like good writing in a video game. Fallout New Vegas, Zero Escape, Persona and Drakengard/Nier are a few of my favorite games/series. As you can imagine, this year has been a very good year for games for me as a result.

It's a pleasure to join the community, and hopefully I'll be seeing some of you guys who have posted in this thread around.