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[goshki]

Last saturday marked second anniversary of working on my tiny detective mystery adventure game. Seems like a good time to reveal game's title in a hastily created trailer.

So without further ado I present to you: “Wright Files: Egerton's Pickle”

It's going to be a tiny, super-short mystery adventure drawing inspiration from a Commodore 64 game “The Detective”. The player takes the role of a Scotland Yard inspector invited to a British countryside mansion to solve the case of a mysterious fatal accident.

Or maybe it was not an accident at all? And did the butler have anything to do with it...?

Anyway, the game is being created in Unity and the visual style is a consequence of two factors: my deep affection for mixing low-poly 3D with pixel-art and the fact that I'm mostly a programmer, not a graphic artist. Gameplay-wise the game will be rather similar to “The Detective” – the player walks around the mansion and gathers clues by talking to characters, interacting with objects and collecting items. The time will flow in real-time () and there will also be a hard time limit (just like in C64 original). Control scheme is rather simple (movement, action, cancel) and will support both keyboard and gamepad (along with touch-screen controls, hint, hint  ).

Most of the story, characters, dialogues, objects, items and mansion layout is established and decided upon and currently I'm focusing on actual production using Aseprite for graphics and Blockbench for 3D modelling (do you know Blockbench? OMG it's so cool!). The work is going rather slowly (but steady!), so I expect this thread to be updated somewhat regularly, even if not too often.

From now on the development process will also be posted on:

• Itch.io: https://goshki.itch.io/wright-files-egertons-pickle
• GameJolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/wright-files-egertons-pickle/712868

[mobilelast]

An interesting project. Images look very moody already.

Wasn’t “The Detective” at least somewhat procedural? Agatha Christie -style mysteries tend to be very logical, and it would be an interesting task to make a generator to create something like them.

[goshki]

Well it is/was procedural in the sense that in-game time flows in real time, the NPCs mind their own business and the events will happen when the time comes and their conditions are fulfilled (for example, player is not in the same room that the event is about to happen). Other than that everything was rather linear and predefined (i.e. who's the culprit, what are the clues, events, etc.).

But I remember various reviews of the game specifically mentioning that there is an apparent inspiration with “Clue”. So the whodunnit-generator idea is quite in place.

Yet, at this stage of the project, I still haven't decided as to how much similar will my game be to “The Detective” in this aspect – I mean, I'd love to have some kind of a closure where the player needs to provide an explanation of what has happened using gathered clues and evidence but currently I'm leaning towards a more adventure-like finale that happens on its own when the player gathers all required information.

This part is quite fluid at this moment.

[Alec S.]

Ooh, this looks neat!  I love the visual style, and I'm always interested in detective/mystery solving games.

[goshki]

Thanks, glad you like it!

Yes, detective/mystery solving games have this special kind of charm when compared to classic adventure games. Putting all the pieces of the story together can be much more enthralling, when done properly. But it's also much harder from development and storytelling perspective, which I've learned fairly quickly after starting this project. “The Detective”, being a fairly old 8-bit and seemingly simple game, seemed like a good candidate to serve as a base for a more modern mystery adventure. Only now I appreciate how much work actually went into this – the free roaming NPCs, the story flowing seemingly in real-time (not to mention typical adventure game features, like UI, inventory, object interaction and NPC dialogues). Quite a feat by Sam Manthorpe!

[goshki]

Just a quick update – work on the game trots along. All the story beats, dialogues, items, events are there. Just like almost all cutscenes.

Current focus is on creating all required props to fully furnish each and every room in the game. Here's the most recent room i've got done and, as you can see, it's a “trophy room”.



Also, I've got the door fully working. Even the NPCs get a hang of the doors – up to the point of being jerks and closing them right in front of your face.



Still quite a lot to do to call it finished but the end is definitely in sight!

[goshki]

Currently modelling a low-poly 3D car for introduction cutscene (turns out 3D modelling is hard even when keeping it low-poly ).

[nathy after dark]

Looks cool!

[goshki]

Looks cool!

Thanks! Glad you like it.  

And here's something fresh – an intro of the intro cutscene. The cutscene is actually done but it wouldn't make sense to show it all here.

[mobilelast]

Wasn’t “The Detective” at least somewhat procedural?

I remembered wrong: the game I was thinking about was “Murder!” (https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/murder/). Might be worth checking out for ideas.

[Alain]

I love the mood and look of the intro cutscene, great job!

[goshki]

Last saturday marked second anniversary of working on the game. Seems like a good time to reveal game's title in a hastily created trailer.

So without further ado I present to you: “Wright Files: Egerton's Pickle”

[goshki]

From now on the development process will also be posted on:

• Itch.io: https://goshki.itch.io/wright-files-egertons-pickle
• GameJolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/wright-files-egertons-pickle/712868
• IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/wright-files-egertons-pickle