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[Rosse]

Hello Tigsource

I was working on a Visual Novel in the past few months and I'm ready to share the game with a bigger audience. A quick pitch for you:

Truth Invoked is a story-driven escape-room game in the form of a mystery suspense Visual Novel. Five People, Five Days, Five Games.

Five strangers get abducted and are forced to participate in tricky games with their lives on the line. Each participant has a hidden supernatural power grounded in their personal complex. A suspense-packed situation where trust, lies and luck must be balanced to escape with one's life.

The theme is "what is your truth". Each person has his own narrow-minded view on the world based on their complex. To escape, the player has to gain the trust of the others, learn their ability and find more about their tragic backstories. A wrong step can lead to a bad end but maybe seeing every bad ending is the only way to find the one single truth.

The VN is inspired by Ever17, 999 and the Danganronpa series.

Screenshots:





Teaser:


(click on the image to start the trailer)

I'm currently on Steam Greenlight. If you like the game, then please go to the Greenlight Campaign Page and vote "Yes" Thank you for your help. If you know other Visual Novel fans, please share the link with them!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=914946214

The game will be released Summer 2017

If you have any feedback or questions about Truth Invoked, please post them!

[Ungrateful Dead]

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.

[Rosse]

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


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

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?

[Ungrateful Dead]

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.

[Rosse]

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?

Yes, I have a full fledged minigame with an AI for each character (no flowchart). And the cards will be shuffled randomly each time - so you do have replayability and have to think hard how to win
I think I'll have it in way that in the first game, the 2 winners get to choose with whom they want to pair up in the next game, so I have less combinations (the player has 4 options, for the AI decisions I can limit them).

Your samples for the branching by gameplay sounds interesting. I guess I should give Stein's Gate a try, as it has been on my radar for a while.

I think it is a balancing act: It's not a "kinetic novel" in that it certainly does have branching - but there would be no decisions (as in dialogues), only implicit by gameplay. I think this could be an USP, hmm :/ I wonder if Visual Novel fans are put off, if they can't influence the dialogues.

[wizered67]

I'm a big fan of Dangan Ronpa, Zero Escape, and Liar Game, so I'd say I'm probably the perfect audience for this game! I do feel like the Zero Escape influence might be a bit too obvious, especially with the bracelets. Considering you said it was inspired by 999, my first thought after seeing the bracelets was "well, this is going to be a 999 ripoff." I can tell you're trying to make a unique identity for the game and differentiate it from 999, but my concern is that potential players may be put off by the similarities. Or I could be wrong and fans of 999 would want to play this even more after seeing the influence.

I'm very excited to see what minigames you come up with! You should check out the manga Kakegurui, it's all about games like that full of tricks, bluffing, and psychology.

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.

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!

Thanks and good luck! I voted yes on Steam!

[Ungrateful Dead]

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.

[Rosse]

Thank you for your discussion!

Considering you said it was inspired by 999, my first thought after seeing the bracelets was "well, this is going to be a 999 ripoff." I can tell you're trying to make a unique identity for the game and differentiate it from 999, but my concern is that potential players may be put off by the similarities. Or I could be wrong and fans of 999 would want to play this even more after seeing the influence.

This is something which only came to my mind as a problem after marketing Truth Invoked towards a bigger community. I'm not sure yet how to communicate it for the final release. So far, at exhibitions, I only said it was a mystery suspense visual novel and people said for themselves it reminded them of 999 (which was intended).

I choose to market the game as "inspired by" because I think it help communicating in which direction I want to go with the game, set expectations and want to let players help discover the game. Basically it's: I want to make a game I would love to play myself. How would I search for it?

If it puts off 999 fans, then I made something wrong. But if it helps others find the game, let them enjoy it (and others will hear good things about the game), then maybe it's worth it. Mind you, this is all marketing and has nothing to do with how I make the game or the story - the story stands completely on his own

I'm very excited to see what minigames you come up with! You should check out the manga Kakegurui, it's all about games like that full of tricks, bluffing, and psychology.

Thank you very much for the recommendation! I'll check it out immediately. The short description sounds like the perfect manga for my taste

[...]Devlog[...]

Yes, I agree with you. A devlog would be awesome (and I already started a thread at the renpy-developer forum). Unfortunately, there are two drawbacks. It takes a lot of time to maintain, and I would plaster the thread with spoilers. I already have the true-ending and story-twist revealed in the devlog, so I probably have to delete it, to keep the game interesting enough for the release.

But what could be useful and interesting would be a devlog about the minigames in the VN, which also work as standalone and I could get feedback for those. I think I'll open one, after having completed the first one. Currently I prototype them in BlitzMax, but I have to port them to Renpy later.

2-4 hours

This is another big question to me. The problem is the following: If I take a look at the VN Playtime statistics at Steamspy, then the majority of players only spend 3-4 hours on visual novels. Maybe the average is skewed because there are so many short (or bad?) VNs on steam, but it is a concern. The big releases of course have better averages, like 10-30h (Danganronpa, Nonary games).
There is a trend, that players only play many short games, instead of a few longer ones. Maybe for VNs it is different, but it's a trend and I'm not yet sure how to handle that as a developer.
There is also the problem of developer resources. Making a longer game is more time consuming, and I have to finish the game by the end of this summer.
When I extrapolate how long the game will be (I haven't finished writing the story yet), I get approx. 4h for one playthrough - but I consider shortening it, if it helps the story.
The path will probably be late-branching, meaning, that you get small different parts inbetween depending on your actions, but you get different endings (maybe 1h?). And then of course the final path will be different as well.

If I get 2h for the first playthrough, and then get another 2h for the other 4 paths, I'm quite happy - meaning that the quality is top-notch. But it could turn out, that it might be longer than that.

A quick VN-length statistic:

$10

Good question. There are two components. First is the market situation. The other VNs which are similar to me and my competition has a price range from $7 to $15, and their respective playtime is also around 3h to 10h. So I have to fit into the price-range, to not destroy the market for the next VNs. There are always Sales for the people who want to save money.
Another factor is produce-cost and breaking even. I'm a solo-dev, which keeps the cost low, but even with that, I have to sell a lot of copies to break-even and this goal is hard, even with a $10 price. Don't forget that I only get around $5 per game when I sell it for $10, taking Steam and Taxes into account. Even other VNs with higher production quality have problems reaching the sales-goal I have to break-even :/