Once Upon A Crime: A Fairytale Whodunnit (new v1.3B)

[Ghost]

Ghost presents

Once Upon A Crime
A Fairytale Whodunnit


Parodise... a world where characters of fairytale lore live happily ever after. A strange world, for sure, but there is obviously no reason why it shouldn't exist.

Sometimes, though, tales run wild. Tired of constant delivery runs to remote forest cottages, Little Red Riding Hood goes for a change.
She wants a life. She wants a job. And thus, she becomes a private investigator. A world of fairytales has more than one black hat to pursue.

And Parodise really needs a skilled PI. Someone killed the Big Bad Wolf.
Someone...
But whodunnit? And howdunnit, and indeed whydunnit?

For Red, the chase is on.

Game Stats:
* medium length game
* 320x240 screen resolution, 16bit highcolour
* a total of 12 rooms in 5 unique realm locations
* completely custom-made shell interface
* 12 charismatic characters
* approximately 1.2232 tons of candy
* made with AGS v2.72

Download OUAC_v1_3B.ZIP now and go all gumshoe!

The game is also present on my website, where more info might accumulate.

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Note: This is my first game release ever. It was a lot of fun to make it. It was also a great lesson in actual game design- you cannot hide forever behind a WiP, and I hope you'll like this one.
I had the pleasure to work with very good beta testers: bicilotti and Jon really did their job to the fullest, and any fun you get out of the game is to a good part their work.
========================================================

No go and grab a copy!

If you liked it, why not head over to the Games Page and rate it there?

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Update
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Version 1.3B cleans some typos, missing face character commands and also
removes a situation in the endgame that could get you stuck in the game.

In detail:

Spoiler

* you can no longer use the jar on the molasses while on the oven door
* you cannot get an additional file from the pig's muck
* two missing sound files added
* typos and bug crash as reported by SimB cleaned up

[close]

[bicilotti]

  Yay!

I've had the pleasure to beta test this cute little creature and I have nothing but words of praise for his creator!

Nice job Ghost!

[CodeJunkie]

Been looking forward to this since the (quite recent) WIP thread, playing now...

[Dualnames]

There is GOD!!!!!


I'll edit this in a while... to tell you which God exists..

EDIT:

The game reminds me of Maniac Mansion..
All the stories I heard of when i was a little boy are here...
Maniac Mansion reminded me of all the horror b-movies...
I voted the game btw.

[Ghost]

There is GOD!!!!!

Incidentally, putting the game announcement up gave me a post count of 666. Could be Pan.

[Dualnames]

There is GOD!!!!!

Incidentally, putting this up gave me a post count of 666. Could be Pan.

Noticed that....
Since your posts were 666 that means there is ...
SATAN?

[CodeJunkie]

Playing great so far, thought I'd post my comments so far while I work out what to do next

A crashing bug:

Spoiler

In the nutshell game, if I have an inventory item cursor and press right mouse button the game crashes:

Error: run_text_script1: error -6 running function 'repeatedly_execute':
Error: Null pointer referenced in Global script (line 169) from Global script (line 242)

[close]

Other comments (some terrible nitpicking):

Spoiler

Extra "); after 'inches!' when talking to witch
King Neptune says "What king of crime?"
Tin Soldier says 'revieved'.  Should probably be c instead of v AND swap i and e.

The owl noises at klutzencastle are a little too loud
Perhaps the inventory cursors should be all in the top-left, or somewhere nearby.  It's odd sometimes having the icon move to the other side of the cursor (especially the comb)

[close]

Really good game so far, I like the references (including your other project ) and the GUI has had particularly good attention, the system menu especially.

[Ghost]

A crashing bug:

Spoiler

In the nutshell game, if I have an inventory item cursor and press right mouse button the game crashes:

Error: run_text_script1: error -6 running function 'repeatedly_execute':
Error: Null pointer referenced in Global script (line 169) from Global script (line 242)

[close]

Strange, that's the first time ever that this happens. I tried it and it worked fine. Can you reproduce that crash? It could be a quirk, but I will look into it.

As for part 2, there's *always* a typo you miss...   :

@Dualnames: Nope. Mephistophilis.

[CodeJunkie]

Spoiler

Crash happens every time I try, both before and after beating the pirate.  Crashes instantly if you press the RMB somewhere on the scene (regardless of if the mouse is over a nutshell) and if you RMB on an inventory item you'll get the 'look' description, then the game crashes.  Can RMB on the rest of the GUI without crashing.

[close]

[vertigoaddict]

There is GOD!!!!!

Incidentally, putting this up gave me a post count of 666. Could be Pan.

Noticed that....
Since your posts were 666 that means there is ...
SATAN?

Of course there's a Satan, he re-arranges the letters in his name every year to break into people's houses via the chimney), dressed all in red, and put mind controlling toys under these decorated trees.

This game is finally done! I'm gonna download it soon!

[Ghost]

SimB, that really was a bug. I was, however, able to correct it. There is a new file for download, named OUAC_v1_3.ZIP instead of OUAC.ZIP. The links here and in the Game Database have been replaced.

This only removes the crashing bug, not the typos.

Thanks for finding that!

[CodeJunkie]

Ok, I'm fairly stuck now

Spoiler

Probably fixed in this new version, but I noticed that in the nutshell puzzle if you select an inventory item, then click 'use' and select a nutshell, the cursor returns to the inventory item instead of a blank cursor.  Also, if you then proceed to 'get' a nutshell the game will crash, same error except from 'on_event' from Global script line 211.

If you use the oven door while standing on it then the character walks down, then jumps up, which looks odd
You can refill your jar with molasses, is this intentional or can it lead to a walking dead?
If you're meant to fill the jar up again, you can stand on the oven door with an empty jar and when you try and fill it from the lake Red tries to take it from the oven door, which looks like she's pulling it out of the beehive.

You can talk to the ghost with your back to him, perhaps Red should be made to turn around.

Personally I found the cherry puzzle quite hard, and solved it by brute force.  The fuse seems to stick to the surface, so perhaps a litte depression or hole (where the stalk was?) would help.  Purely opinion.

[close]

Please don't take my comments too seriously, I'm being picky because the game is worth it.  Still having a lot of fun, it's very immersive.  By the way, is Flim a reference to Howl's Moving Castle?  Nice one if so

[Ghost]

@SimB
Thanks for the honest feedback, I really appreciate that, and as far as CC is concerned, no ego is ever involved.

Spoiler

* Refilling the jar is possible intentionally, and will not lead to a dead end. I just thought that it would be pretty much a gamer's thought to allow filling once, and then not again. I mean, there is a whole LAKE of the stuff.

* The cherry puzzle is based on one simple pun, cherry bomb, which is so
frequently used in the works of Anthony Piers that I though most british or americans would instantly spot it. My bad 

* I bet there are more scenes where Red doesn't face the people she
talks to. Version 1.4 it will be, then 

* All trouble in the Shell Game screen should be gone.

[close]

You *know* Moving Castle! And you spotted the reference! A virtual cookie for you!

[Galen]

Oh yes thank you, me love you long time. 

[Ghost]

My pleasure. If I was to tell you how much fun last night (and early, early morning) has been, well, there's little to describe the sugar rush.

I see someone has already started a Help thread, and by reading it I feel that little pride of seeing the mechanics in the work. Feels good.

[Cinfa]

dang. It crashed.
run_text_script1: error -6 running function 'on_mouse_click':
Error: Null pointer referenced
in Global script (line357)

Spoiler

I was using the powder on the wolf

[close]

[P S]

Awesome! Will totally check this out!

[Ghost]

dang. It crashed.
run_text_script1: error -6 running function 'on_mouse_click':
Error: Null pointer referenced
in Global script (line357)

I was using the powder on the wolf

This has been reported via PM, too. It does *not* always happen though, so it seems to have something to do with a trigger event. I would say it's annoying to have it in the game, but so far there were only two reports of that...
I will see to it. For the time being, avoid throwing stuff at corpses  :

[Cinfa]

I tried to repeat it too, but it didn't happen again. Whatever, maybe it's pidgin's fault (it tried to switch focus from the game to itself).

[sthomannch]

A nice game, excellent puzzles and beautiful graphics, congratulations.

The only drawback is that it crashes every 5 minutes or so with this mouse pointer exception that has been reported before. It crashed in several rooms and on actions that on other occasions work fine. It seems that the problem became much worse since

Spoiler

I worked on the horse shoe magnet and met the boogey man

[close]

I enjoy the game despite this nasty bug