Topic: The Phantom Fellows

[TheVolumeRemote]

The Phantom Fellows is about two best friends who start a paranormal investigation
business together, since one of them is already dead.

Download the Demo & Wishlist on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com//app/1581490?beta=0

Story

(The word-y version)

Oliver Cobblestone can communicate with a dead- not the dead, but rather one Englebert Picklebender. Together they investigate the paranormal to bring peace to occupant spirits and haunted hosts alike.
Share laughs with the living and deceased in this point-and-click comedy adventure while attending to specters who haunt your clientele. Use Oliver's incredible ability to, um, be alive, and Englebert's capacity for the incorporeal to fulfill agreements with the respiratorily challenged. Oh! and the breather paying you will need physical proof you've done anything at all, and how will you get something out of nothing? Call your closest pal, take your deepest breath, and stumble headlong into the unknown on a personal journey of social entanglement and brotherhood beyond the veil.
As you pass a week with the Phantom Fellows, you'll encounter many spirits. Some yearn to be reunited with a possession, others wish to commence their eternal repose, and of course a few simply enjoy a good haunting. Between spooks you'll also meet many warm-bodied breathers (for better or worse), and all the while a shadowy, malicious spirit will lurk near Oliver for a dearly personal reason.

-Hand-drawn pixel art and animations
in glorious 160x100 (upscaled to 320x200)
-Completely interactive- take control of the characters!

-Switch between Oliver and Englebert! Sometimes being dead has its perks. Maybe.

-Play through eight days, explore each new location, negotiate with ghosts, sweet talk the living, and perform slapdash acts of tomfoolery!

-Revisit locations from previous days any time after Day 3 and discover more answers! or questions?

-Some puzzles have alternate solutions as the ending has an alternate of its own


Overall Progress

Day 3 of 8 fully completed
Day 4 currently in development

Manual

Point & Click
or
L - Look
I - Interact
T- Talk
F1 - Switch to Oliver *
F2 - Switch to Englebert*
Arrows - Walk

Say hi on Twitter maybe!

@PhantomFellows

https://thephantomfellows.com

Trailer has very minor spoilers!

[newwaveburritos]

Oh, I saw this on Twitter the other day.  It looks good!  I'm a big fan of games with fun dialogue and it looks like you've got plenty of that.  Exciting stuff!

[lanchong]

Have you been inspired by the Blackwell series and the Darkside Detective series?
I loved both games so I look forward to yours.

[TheVolumeRemote]

Oh, I saw this on Twitter the other day.  It looks good!  I'm a big fan of games with fun dialogue and it looks like you've got plenty of that.  Exciting stuff!

Thank you so much mate! The most important thing to us is the writing and myself specifically it’s fun dialog so your comment means a lot

Thanks for dropping in to say that and I hope if you play it, it brings you smiles and some laughs!

[TheVolumeRemote]

Have you been inspired by the Blackwell series and the Darkside Detective series?
I loved both games so I look forward to yours.

Thank you mate! I have played and adore both of those games(/series’). I was definitely inspired by Darksides unique “truly 2D”  approach, where there’s left-to-right but no up-and-down but I wanted something with more interaction, growing up w Sierra/Lucas games I want to be able have that little bit more agency walking around gives you Take nothing away from DSD, I absolutely love the game and it set the bar incredibly high, so I’m working hard to make sure my game is worthy of comparison!

And while I played and sincerely love the Blackwell series (and literally all the Wadjet Eye games), I kinda got so swept away with the premise for this game that when I came back down to earth I realized a human and ghost team, in an adventure game, wasn’t as original as I first thought lol

But I stuck with it because as a player I was excited about being able to switch characters and take advantage of the pros of being alive, or dead. And for a more comedy-centric game, there’s a lot of potential to work with:)

Anyway thank you for writing and showing support and interest, it means a lot to me!!

[PointandFrick]

I just wanted to say I am a huge fan of this game, it had been a while since I laughed that much while playing a game. The writing is top-notch quality all the way through and I also really appreciate the massive amount of unique flavour text while clicking around (all the lights, even the stars in the sky!) and the art is fantastic.

Oh and I love the idea that in the full game (or from Day 3 onwards so I've read?) that I will get to travel back to locations from the previous days to find alternate puzzle solutions, very cool idea.

Keep up the great work on the game (and on the CGG podcast, been a listener for a while, I appreciate all the Sierra and LucasArts love and your interview with Ken and Roberta Williams was wonderful).

Cheers,

John

[heltenjon]

This was fun. I especially like all the descriptions, but you've got your work cut out for you if the entire game will have so many lines for everything the two characters look at. I spent most of my playtime looking at everything with both characters - I mean, there's two new comments about the moon or the stars for every screen. 

I like the art style as well. The campfire and the horses looked very good.

On my first playthrough, I

Spoiler: ShowHide

burned the rake

, and the farmer was not happy about it. So I had to go back to see what happened if I didn't do that, and was pleased to see even funnier dialogue. Looking forward to the rest of the game!

[TheVolumeRemote]

This was fun. I especially like all the descriptions, but you've got your work cut out for you if the entire game will have so many lines for everything the two characters look at. I spent most of my playtime looking at everything with both characters - I mean, there's two new comments about the moon or the stars for every screen. 

I like the art style as well. The campfire and the horses looked very good.

Thank you so much mate! You are my kind of adventure gamer, clicking on all the things, going back to see how it would have gone... totally made my day to read this And you're right about work cutout but we're not going to let up on the flavour text, it's really important to me because growing up with adventure games, nothing was better than unexpected or just large amounts of descriptions! Luckily, I'm co-writing this game and so I write Oliver's descriptions and he writes Englebert's (with a few exceptions) so it's a bit more manageable!

Anyway thank you for playing it and for the kind, encouraging words!

Spoiler: ShowHide

and thank you for not only burning the rake but telling me you did, very few have so far!

Spoiler: ShowHide

there was one other thing you could burn

[TheVolumeRemote]

I just wanted to say I am a huge fan of this game, it had been a while since I laughed that much while playing a game. The writing is top-notch quality all the way through and I also really appreciate the massive amount of unique flavour text while clicking around (all the lights, even the stars in the sky!) and the art is fantastic.

wow thank you John! I really appreciate your support and amazing feedback mate and more than anything, I'm just so happy that you liked it and had fun playing

Oh and I love the idea that in the full game (or from Day 3 onwards so I've read?) that I will get to travel back to locations from the previous days to find alternate puzzle solutions, very cool idea.

This is correct! The map unlocks during Day 3, allowing you to travel back to previous locations. It may sound kinda silly but as a kid, games like Police Quest 1 (AGI) felt like an open-world game to me, being able to go where I wanted, when I wanted (or so it felt!). So I really want players to feel like they can stretch their legs and go exploring. And of course providing a reason to do so is important so the main reason (albeit not the only reason) will be to seek alternate puzzle solutions to the current day's puzzles.

Anyway thank you for the incredible comments and for playing, I really appreciate you!

[heltenjon]

I have one suggestion for improvement. The game design takes it for granted that the player only visits the garage once. I went back to explore more, and got the same descriptions. This had triggered the "ghost-only" function that is used when you first explore the garage. However, this time, I decided I was on a wild goose chase and headed back to the barn instead of entering the garage. My human companion tagged along. Then I discovered that I couldn't swap to the other character and had to go back to the garage and enter and exit, presumably. (I used a saved game instead.)

You have already changed it so that the human investigator waits and tags along if you visit the garage again, but it would be nice to make the "must visit garage" a one-time-event. I don't think this is game-breaking, but it's an inconvenience. If all the former locations are available later in the game, you need to make sure there aren't many (or even better, any) leftovers from the first visit like this one.