December 13th-16th 2013 :: Theme: You Only Get One
[ Real World Gatherings | Ludum Deals | Warmup Weekend ]
Crew is a futuristic re-imagining of CLUE, where you try to discover who killed the captain of your spaceship, where, and with what. The game-play includes narrowing down suspects with information and writing down info on loose pieces of paper. Not only can you solve who killed the captain of your ship, but you also get judged and graded on how well you've done and how few clues you took.
Tutorial:
Clicking on people will give you a hint about the crew or that crew member. Here are some tips that will help you narrow down suspects:
- Crew members never lie. You can take anything they say at face value.
- If a Crew member tells you someone was in a certain room during the captain's death. That room is not the murder room, nor is the person referred to the murderer.
-If a person suggests another crewmate was angry, or upset. They likely killed the Captain.
-The murderer won't tell you what room they were in when the murder occurred.
Investigating rooms will tell you the murder room and the murder weapon. There are only 4 possible murder weapons. If you find three of the weapons, the missing one is the murder weapon. Try not to investigate too many rooms. You can narrow down the room that the Captain is murdered in through dialogue, but currently the only way to find murder weapons is to guess at rooms. Don't investigate more rooms than you need to. The room with the blood drop in it, found while investigating, is the murder room.
Select your suspect, weapon, and murder room, then press the accuse button.
If you were right, you will be treated to a win-screen and your score/rating. If you were wrong, you can play again.
Currently there is a problem in that the dialogue inter-laps making it difficult or impossible to narrow it down to one killer. As of right now, your best mode option is to guess based on the clues you are given. I am working on this, but am afraid I won't finish it by the time the compo is over as it includes spreadsheets and cross-matching dialogue, which is a pain and time-consuming.
Downloads and Links
Ratings
| #10 | Graphics | 4.45 |
| #83 | Mood | 3.61 |
| #103 | Audio | 3.41 |
| #117 | Overall | 3.60 |
| #312 | Innovation | 3.18 |
| #357 | Fun | 3.06 |
| #375 | Humor | 2.53 |
| #415 | Theme | 3.04 |
| #1083 | Coolness | 46% |
Comments
neat idea, kind of unfriendly to the user. There's a lot of redundant cross-referencing involved that could be made easier by highlighting certain characters/rooms at appropriate times
Agree with people above, there are often cross-referencing of the same fact by different people. This could be better if it has a good in-game introduction/tutorial and music to set the mood. Overall, I like the gameplay and art style. Good job!
As I mentioned in the game post, the repeated dialogue is the one thing I didn't get a chance to fix before submitting. A tutorial with back-story is also something that is really needed if I were to take it further. As my first Ludum Dare game, I learned a lot here, and I'm glad you like the game-play and art style. I appreciate that you took the time to play it.
Very inspiring art style! I love the color palette and the little animations, as well as the ui.
Very well executed in forms of aesthetics. A bit confusing - but patient people will like it.
Interesting game play mixed with cutesy aesthetics and great audio design, good job
Incredible art and a good game concept. Sorry you couldn't work out the game logic of identifying the killer in time. Maybe you could have set a rule stating that the killer is always one room away from the scene of the crime, and thus limit the choices that a player could make?
Really great entry. I love the art, and I've never really played Clue, but it was intuitive enough to figure out. Great work!
I like the art style very much. Nice pixel graphics. But I never managed to catch the killer ;)
There were a lot of counter-intuitive things about the game and I had to rely on the description to figure out most of it. Once I read through, it seemed pretty easy though. The art and the mood were really good!
Thanks Nick! Until a tutorial is added it's a game that takes some effort to learn. That's not the most optimal for a game-jam game, I've learned, and I will try to make a simpler to play game next time around. I'm really glad you liked the art and mood!
Great visuals and mood. It would definitely benefit from highlighting the people and rooms mentioned by crew members. Also the score is very random so it would be better if there were none.
This is a damn solid entry. Awesome looking sprite art and audio/ambience. Only negative thing I think to say is that it could be a bit deeper. If was more meaningful than just straight up "here's a fact", and you could maybe derive more information if you really thought about what people were saying.
Awesome job overall, really one of the best I've played.
Thank you for trying it, Jakub and Broxxar. Lots of great advice!
Great atmosphere, the graphics were good too as was the music.
Nice game!
I really like it, though I feel like the information provided isn't enough to 100% verify the killer each time, though that may be the point. Very fun, lots of replayability, and great pixel art!
Thanks Whoa! I need to work on the dialogue system more, but I'm glad you liked it and found it really re-playable!
Once I actually read the description, the game made a lot more sense and I figured out who the killer was! Yes, it does need work so that it becomes possible to logically and surely identify the killer based on all the clues, but that is not the point - the concept is great! Logic aside, graphics and sound were wonderful. Love this entry, well done!
I always enjoyed playing Clue so this was a really nice experience. :) And such awesome pixel art! Great job :)
I forgot to leave a comment when I rated it yesterday! Enjoyed the game a bunch, we always used to play Cluedo on summer holidays, so it was fun to see a sweet pixelly version set in space!
Design of the game is really adorable!
This game is obviously not easy-to-start (because player need to read before start playing). However, it's replayable.
So I loved it!
Amazing ! Without a tutorial you have to rely on your description but overall it is a very solid and innovative concept you got there. I would love to play an extended version of this game if you think about updating it in the future.
Really liked the visuals and mood in this game! managed to find the killer after some tries, I must suck at Clue..
A nice little twist to an old concept.
also the mood of this game is so relaxing!
There are more hints than just a random "One Killer" game, but not so user-friendly.
Took me awhile to understand how it's played. Also I'm not aware with CLUE so I have no idea. :P
But it was nice once I got the chance to really understood it. :)
Thank you all so far, been enjoying the comments! This is officially one of the most worthwhile things I've done this year. I am so glad I did Ludum Dare, and a big part of that is your feedback!
Great game, five stars! Love the art style, and the sound design ^^ Flesh out the information system and you have an excellent product in hands :D
Beautiful art and interesting concept. Really nice game, well done :)
Struggled with it until I came back to read the instructions (RTFM!). Lovely graphics and atmosphere!
Very interesting game, I love clue games and this has a lot of personality, good job! My advice is, maybe to care more for an intro, how to play and start menu ;-)
Good looking and finished! I don't know is there anything that I would change to make it better.
Lovely visual style. The background music fits very well. Was fun to play, but I needed always so many rooms to uncover the items, which somehow makes the score worse :D
It would be nice, if you could see the murderer, the item and the room after accusing someone wrongly.
The theme was well used and the graphics are great!
But, though I really liked the concept, I didn't like the gameplay that much... :(
I couldn't help but compare it to the based game, and I missed being better able to track down who the killer is. Perhaps if each one had a unique line (like, being able to know about almost every one and every room). As of now, it's possible to know about only two people, at times...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiJUwAghnUU
Recorded my first impressions of the game :)
So this is the game everyone is talking about! :)
Finally I managed to have a go with it! :p
Thank you Dan for making a video. I appreciate you taking the time. I know it's not the easiest to understand and the dialogue system isn't perfect. I'm glad you liked the idea, though.
@Alan, no way is everyone talking about my game Haha, it's got a lot of problems, but I'm glad you tried it.
Here's the link to the post-mortem which explains some of why things don't quite work right, and what I felt about the experience of doing my first game-jam:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/12/20/crew-a-futuristic-detective-game-post-mortem/
Gorgeous pixel art.
I had trouble working out who was who and which room was which; labels at all times rather than just when highlighted could have made it clearer.
Wow, really outstanding pixel art and mood. Very clever pick for the theme too. I found it abit difficult to play at first, but it kept my interest :) awesome!
Definitely one of the top Ludum Dare 28 games! I was excited about this entry since you posted those screenshots during the compo. ;)
I wasn't able to catch the killer, but I find the gameplay really interesting. Beautiful pixel art! Love the ambient music and the space-y sounds. And there even is a Star Wars reference :P
Amazing work overall!
The game looks nice and complete, but it felt unbalanced.
Do you need to guess everything to win? Or is guessing the killer enough? It doesn't seem like that, and it's kinda illogical.
So, I suppose you need to guess the weapon and the room. There is a quite high chance that you'll have to investigate almost all rooms. And there is a quite high chance that you won't be able to find the killer for sure. It's a matter of luck if you'll find a killer or not. I would like it to be more logic-related.
Also, I'd like a hint when you hover over portraits in the lower-left corner or rooms after you investigated them.
I got "Brandy was definitely in the eatery" and "Brandy was in the study at the time..." during the same play.
@Madball Uh oh, some dialogue is wack then. I was going to have a seperate type of investigation that led to clues that helped you solve the murder weapon and room in a more logical instead of random way. Just ran out of time for the competition. Next time, I think I'll just shoot for the jam, as you just get more polish, which means better feedback, and better coverage. Seems like a no brainer.
Love the idea I hope you'll work on it more. The graphics are great!
I would have liked to be able to ask each crew member some questions - so if Ryan says Toko was in the nursery, I'd like to be able to ask Toko where she was to cross check the evidence. :)
I liked the game much, but either the score you get is highly random (and depends mostly on random order in which you click people and places) or I didn't get how to play this game efficiently, and not by clicking on every thing available.
Nice idea and cute graphics. I did unfortunately get one situation where I could only narrow it down to one of two crew members.
Nice art and good gameplay! Would like to see more levels :)
Really good game, I like it very much. Dialogues could be longer and with some choices. Sadly it's a bit easy at the moment, with a few clicks is the murder solved, but maybe it was pure luck. I think it's definitely worth to work further on your game.
Very well executed, though many things depended on luck alone for the score. I really dig the art and aesthetics.
innovative game, wonderful design, but very difficult to understand in the beginning ... I almost discouraged ... but then super exciting, congratulation!
The art is great, definitely pulled me through a few extra playthroughs. I think many of the pieces were executed well, but the game logic was a little confusing where it seemed there was no way to totally get the correct answer without guess, which makes a pass/fail style of rating frustrating. The scoring confused me, because it would be nice to get a better score for guessing correctly after checking fewer clues, but the score didn't seem to work that way; so there was no incentive not to check every room, and hence no point to the score. A little more consistency to the main objective of the game would make it a lot more fun for repeat plays, but still a very nice job!
Really a neat take on a classic gameplay concept. As others have said the interplay of the dialogue could be refined, but this is a great base for a more intricate game! It would work well on a phone or tablet too.
Excellent puzzle game ! Extremely well polished, with beautiful graphics, and very challenging. Amazing work :)
What a lousy detective I am... As everyone else said, solid entry!
Sometimes the Crew members refer to themselves with their name which is a bit weird. Like the smooth BG music, fits very good to the investigation feeling
I love the graphics and the idea. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find the murder just once.
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love it - don't forget to upload the source code as well (it's required for the compo category)