Murder on 34th Street by DanyVk
The murder of Roman Norton is under investigation. There are several suspects in the examination room. You are working for the police.
However, you know from the beginning who the murderer is... Your lover!
You will have to collect and deliver the necessary clues to be able to incriminate someone innocent. In order not to make a mistake and the police accuse you of proof manipulation, you will have to be absolutely sure about the testimonies of the accused. The only way to obtain their testimonies is to interrogate them one by one.
You will have to bring to the table the evidence you deem necessary to incriminate an innocent person.



| Link | https://danyskk.itch.io/murder-on-34th-street |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/murder-on-34th-street |
Ratings
| Overall | 1198th | 3.35⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1443th | 2.974⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 286th | 3.816⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1719th | 2.778⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 387th | 4.132⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 912th | 3.194⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1197th | 2.313⭐ | 18🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 183th | 4.158⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 59🗳️ | 4🗨️ |
Presentation is almost perfect – maybe could've been a bit less high contrast, but this style nevertheless is everything.
Gameplay-wise I had some problems:
First of all, I couldn't accuse a person I want – only the wrong ones. Enter just doesn't work if I collect all the right clues. Do I miss something?
Second – text and walking pace **is** a bit too slow, even after the update. Not a big problem, just some quality of life fix you may consider.
Other than that - solid idea. I wanted it to be deeper (get it?) but it's fine as is. Maybe you can elaborate on that idea and make a game about rearranging the clues on crime seen, not just collecting them! That could be cool.
Yes, it is a bit buggy, we got caught up on time, fix coming soon :D
Now about the game. I really liked the arty style and high contrast, but I found many things confusing. I could not accuse anyone, enter wasn't responding. Also a visual dot/circle/crosshair to be able to locate things. Now it was quite annoying trying to get the hover text. Then picking things up, I'm pretty sure the game said to click, but it was right-clicking for me. I would suggest either would do and if one needs to bring the object to the table (?) then perhaps better to have a click pick up and a click drop rather than needing to hold button down to carry.
I liked that the game was basically black, white and yellow, but the text really needs a border or shadow because it was near impossible to read when over white surfaces.
The style was great, and it might be a really nice detective story, but I really couldn't progress more than to have a look around the apartment.
It's a really good idea and mood but needs a bit more playability.
Critiques, everyone's said it, but yeah - text speed is extremely slow and prevented me from going very far with the game. I was also really lost at the beginning and didn't really know what I was meant to be doing with the evidence strewn about. A clearer message of the goal, and maybe some example of what it would be like would have helped. Obviously I get it's beyond jam scope, but some kind of intro where you have to engage with the evidence collection + interrogation mechanics *before* digging into the actual game would help motivate what I'm supposed to be doing once I'm invested.
All in all though, extremely interesting premise and quite a good execution + aesthetic! I'd love to get deeper into it but I'm just thrown off by the text speed.
It would be good to just have the ability to skip the slow typing of the text, so that you can see the whole text immediately. It's nice at the first time, it gives the feeling of interrogating, but when you want to re-read, it gets a bit annoying. Aside from that, walking around felt a little too slow and picking up evidence was sometimes hard. Also, I tried a few times to incriminate someone, with five items on the table, but nothing happened when I pressed enter. What could I be doing wrong? I would like to know, because I'm curious about how it continues from there.
Very nice game!