THE LAST SUPPER, A WHODUNNIT (MAGS entry August, 2017)

Started by Mandle, Thu 31/08/2017 17:12:04

Previous topic - Next topic

Mandle

THE LAST SUPPER, A WHODUNNIT



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

A game I made during the last two weeks of August for the MAGS contest, the theme of which was "The Bible".

Can you figure out who betrayed Christ to the Roman soldiers for 30 pieces of silver by examining the alibis of the disciples and finding the one that doesn't add up?

The game has a lot of behind-the-scenes A.I. work done in the code (including motives, framing of innocents by the guilty party, gossip between disciples when they met during the day, friend/foe relationships between the disciples, etc.), but which I did not have the time to implement, so for now it's just a simple puzzle like you might encounter as a mini-game in a larger game...

But it works and might be fun until you figure out the system to beat it every time. Shouldn't take you too long.

Click on the "RULES" label in the top-left for instructions. A better tutorial will hopefully be in future versions.

If the gameplay is unclear please post in this thread and I will explain it more fully.

IMPORTANT: THE GAME IS RANDOMLY GENERATED EACH TIME YOU PLAY. THE GUILTY ONE WILL NOT JUST BE JUDAS. IT COULD BE ANY ONE OF THE DISCIPLES.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD


Mandle

Quote from: ClickClickClick on Thu 31/08/2017 17:35:23
This game RUELS (laugh)

Hahaha... Cheers for catching that...

It seems I cannot parse words in the vertical format... I need to do more crossword puzzles I guess...

Corrected!

EDIT: I found the time to play the game a few more times through and it seems it might be a challenge now and then...

I'm very interested to hear feedback on this one:

(1) Could you understand how to play the game? (I strived for a streamlined interface but worried if it is not clear how to use)

(2) Was figuring out the guilty party too easy or too difficult for you?

I'm planning to expand this game and/or use what I've learnt from making it to develop future games I want to make involving A.I. NPCs and the interface with which to deal with them...

This turned out to be just a very basic step so far, but feedback would be very appreciated as always!

Cheers!

rongel

Just played this, fun concept! I always thought it was Judas...

The start was a bit difficult, I used more the interrogate option in the beginning, didn't for some reason get the point of the soldiers. When I got the system (maybe after 10 mins?) it was fine, and could spot the betrayer every time. But I didn't think it was too easy even then.

One thing that could streamline the game more, would be that right-click would deactivate the interrogation mode. It was bit clumsy to switch it off. I really would like to see more detailed version of this, with the framings and gossips and so on. Anyway, a fun little game!
Dreams in the Witch House on Steam & GOG

Mandle

Quote from: rongel on Thu 31/08/2017 20:14:58
I always thought it was Judas...

Sometimes it is ;)

(A freaky thing happened at one point when I tested the game: I played about 5 times in a row, and 3 times it was Judas...)

Thanks for the feedback!

Very glad to hear someone could understand how to play the game and win it!

I agree with the right-click idea you had and will use in future versions.

Cheers!

Hobo

I blamed Jesus. Each and every time. I did not win.

Great work, Mandle. An interesting little minigame.
(1) The list of rules seems a bit intimidating at first, but once I read through, it was clear enough.
(2) If you know the rules, it's pretty simple. Requires flexing some memory muscles and a little bit of cross-checking.

Mandle

Quote from: Hobo on Fri 01/09/2017 16:20:05
I blamed Jesus. Each and every time. I did not win.

Great work, Mandle. An interesting little minigame.
(1) The list of rules seems a bit intimidating at first, but once I read through, it was clear enough.
(2) If you know the rules, it's pretty simple. Requires flexing some memory muscles and a little bit of cross-checking.

Jesus was for sure the mastermind behind the whole thing! Why else would he have not included a dessert on the menu?! He knew!!! False flag!!!

Glad to hear that once the rules were understood you could play the game. The rules are pretty badly written. I was fighting against the AGS limit of 500 characters per line. I realise now I could have just coded it with a bunch of %s and some rule strings to fill them in with but I was down to the wire and that option did not pop up in my head.

Also glad to hear it required at least a slight bit of mental effort to solve the crime even once the system has been figured out.

I've replayed the game a few times today and the random scenerios seem to provide some pretty interesting variations of investigations now and then: From simple "DUH!" cases through the spectrum to ones where you really have to hunt to find the betrayer.

I'm also quite happy that the game seems bug and crash free... Mainly because I finally followed the advice of veteran coders such as Khris and Crimson Wizard and the like: I indented correctly, and I also wrote almost as many //notations as I did code just to remind myself what each thing did and to be sure not to break it next time I sat down to work on the game...

Valuable advice...

Mandle

Oops... I realized that I forgot to mention a vital fact about the game:

IMPORTANT: THE GAME IS RANDOMLY GENERATED EACH TIME YOU PLAY. THE GUILTY ONE WILL NOT JUST BE JUDAS. IT COULD BE ANY ONE OF THE DISCIPLES.

I thought this would be obvious to anyone who plays but then realised that 1 in 12 people or so will hit upon a game with Judas as the betrayer on their first try and assume that's all there is to the game. :-[

If this happened to you then please feel free to replay the game as it is a bit deeper than that. And my apologies.

lorenzo

I played a few "rounds" of the game today. In the beginning it was a bit confusing, but when I understood how to play it, I became pretty good at it.

The idea behind it is great and the execution solid. I had quite some fun playing it! :)

The only nitpick I have is that after selecting Jesus, you can't deselect him. If you misclick, selecting a part of the background instead of a person, you just get the "Sorry, you wrongly accused this disciple" notice and the game restarts. At least it would be nice to know who the traitor was, when you lose.

Anyway, it's a lovely little game. I would love to see the idea expanded and put (for example) into a detective game, where you have to identify the killer from a list of suspects. Or something like that!

darthkiwi

I'm kind of confused? As far as I can tell, we need to figure out who is unaccounted for some time during the day, and had access to romans during that time. But the romans move randomly, and the disciples move randomly, so if a disciple is unaccounted for at a particular time there's no way to know whether they met romans or not, because by being unaccounted for they were necessarily in a place that may or may not have had romans in it?

Mandle

Quote from: darthkiwi on Sun 24/09/2017 12:46:23
I'm kind of confused? As far as I can tell, we need to figure out who is unaccounted for some time during the day, and had access to romans during that time. But the romans move randomly, and the disciples move randomly, so if a disciple is unaccounted for at a particular time there's no way to know whether they met romans or not, because by being unaccounted for they were necessarily in a place that may or may not have had romans in it?

The game sets it up so that there was always a disciple present to witness the betrayer meeting the roman soldiers and the betrayer always lies about where they were at that time.

So the player must simply find the one disciple who says they were somewhere different than where they were spotted together with the roman soldiers by the witness.

I hope that makes sense. ;-D

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk