Make Haste, Detective! by frogwizardhat
Time to speedrun some detective work🔎! Make Haste, Detective! is a fully voice-acted narrative whodunnit game where you solve criminal case in under a minute! Every 10 seconds the suspect you're interviewing changes! Best of luck, detective, clock's ticking!
🕵️ Download now and let us know what you think!
Gameplay hints
- New clues only unlock at the end of an answer.
- The hour hand on the clock goes round exactly once during the game.
- The buttons in the main menu and interrogation scene can be navigated using keyboard.
Ratings
| Overall | 61th | 4.153⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 183th | 3.875⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 57th | 4.111⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 21th | 4.458⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 51th | 4.5⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 39th | 4.25⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 48th | 4.181⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 88th | 4.125⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 48🗨️ |
Thoroughly enjoyed playing this, well done!
If you want some more feedback, here's a recording of myself checking out the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLBL7K9PSn0
- It's so much fun!
- Amazing graphics and voice acting
- Amazing dialogs and characters (the idea with the cat made me laugh)
Cons / Feedback:
- AAAhJKQDHSJKFHJDKHK oh, the frustration. Changing every ten seconds is of course very thematic and also brings a time pressure to finish the game
BUT the sentences are way too long for 10s (sometimes I could not even click on a dialog option for a character before the timer ended because I was still hearing the previous character's.
The voice acting really adds to the game, but with this timing, an option to have the entire dialog written without waiting for the voice would alleviate some of the frustration.
Also, you get randomly pulled out of a dialog without warning to end the game, and often selecting a random suspect because you did not really have the time to solve the mystery.
This is a shame, because the system of gradually unlocking dialog options is great, and the scenario, characters, and dialog are really awesome!
I wanted to see more, explore all the dialog options, but I gave up in the end :(
- An indication of already heard line would be really cool (with 5 characters, it was pretty much impossible to keep track of it, even if selection the options in order - which defeat the purpose of the game)
Bugs:
- In the main menu, the name of the second and third mysteries is hidden by the blackened icons when not hovered
- Text was not always synced with voice acting
- The first dialog of the third character in the scepter story does not show in text
My biggest complaint would probably be how long you get to make your pick i always felt way too rushed and that i had 0 time to piece my final decision together it often felt like a guess because of this. Best example is during the second puzzle the guy drops the fact you can arrest multiple people which COMPLETELY recontextualises all the info ive already gathered, giving me 2 seconds to think about that. Not even sure if you need a timer on the final lock in because its not like you can squeeze any more info out of the suspects. Maybe i would just make it quite long so you are forced eventaully to make a decision.
That is just about my only non nit-picky complaint though. Very well made game good job team!!
I agree about the scene transition. We probably should've at least fade out the one talking. Maybe add some tense background music to indicate you're nearing the end. Originally we planned on having the interrogation be a fixed length and this could be part of the background music. Due to the differing number of suspects and complexity of the cases, that wasn't an option.
The name of the mysteries not being readable is intentional. You're a detective after all and have to investigate. Having the Missing Pie case be visible is both because the menu screen has keyboard navigation and because it's the tutorial case so people should pick it first.
Synchronizing subtitles with spoken audio is a very time consuming process. We decided to not bother and went for having the text reveal itself at a constant pace. Worked out well enough in the end. Most of the time its reasonably well synchronized.
We thought about building in some indication to show what lines you've already heard, but did not have time to implement it.
I do have a concern about the way the round ends at 100 seconds. It does not feel rewarding to be asked to guess the culprit only to guess correctly based on 0 tangible evidence, as I did with 2 of the mysteries. I believe the game's experience would be improved if instead of guessing the culprit you could collect "clues" from the dialogue, and once the player found the correct set of "clues" they could be asked to make a choice. Essentially, a hidden tally could be kept of the important messages that players have encountered, and the round would only end after they've found all of the required messages. I understand the constraints of a game jam, but that's something I hope you consider if you continue working on this game.
I solved all the cases but I can't say I understand why my guess was right for all of them haha.
I feel like it would make more sense if the answers to questions were at max 10 seconds long so you could move on to the next suspect without having to cut off the previous one.

Great work on the game!
Also: "Mr Montgomery has three sons, all twins" - the impossibility of that simple statement made me roll with laughter :laughing:
The cases were different enough to be interesting, and I liked the diferent themes and crimes. The characters were all different, memorable and well styled. I loved the music as well, and the little intro to each case was a really lovely touch.
The mechanic itself of having 10 seconds to interogate didn't land particularly well for me though, unfortunately. I liked the idea of having to cut people off and use your time wisely, but I also found that because you had to listen right to the end and only a particular question unlocked the next question, it meant I just took a brute force approach to listening to everything to see what unlocked what. When I was doing that, the whole 10 seconds thing and total time to solve the case just became a bit annoying as I restarted the case over and over to find out what everyone had to say. Which was sad, because the cases themselves were actually really good!
I also wasn't completely sure why the answer for the second case was as it was. There was no smoking gun that I could find, just some small hunches and things that didn't add up. Potentially that was all there was, but it didn't really feel like I solved the case - instead that I had just had my suspicions confirmed.
It's a really well polished and well done entry - just potentially feels like the theme has been shoe-horned in a little too hard and doesn't quite fit with the detective genre.
as a fan of ace attorney I love this interrogation style of game, my only gripe was that the vocal lines were longer than 10 seconds so I would have to withhold from asking the next person a question. Thankfully I was able to enlargen my cranium and book em all on the first go around. I really hope you guys do a full version with a more generous time limit without the pressure of a jam.
Others have mentioned that the third case seems too easy compared to the second one, but if you changed the order, then fewer people might decide to play the fantastic museum one. I don't have any real solution for this except completely reworking the third puzzle to be harder or have more gimmicks, but that's obviously not a useful suggestion.
-Often lines would continue playing even though I had moved on to another suspect.
-The aforementioned lack of a "played" indicator on the dialogue prompts led to some minor friction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZUSMshNXCw