Rain by T C
A point and click adventure game. In Rain, play as Inquisitor Stergrane, investigating a strange occurrence in Kingfisher manor. A servant hangs from the balcony of an upstairs room. Lifeless, yet somehow hanging on. The Kingfishers themselves aren't cooperating with the local Officer Fraley, so he's asked you for assistance. The circumstances appear strange enough that it warrants a visit from the Inquisition.... yes?
However, you're not just any member of the Inquisition. You have a keen investigative tool under your belt: you can collect the essence of living things. Collecting their essence allows you to Astral Project them as they were, but requires you to have some deep level knowledge of them. The more complex the person or animal, the more work you'll have to do. But, it's worth it. After all, what better way to get information out of people... than to be someone else?
Play through the introduction. Get to the bottom of what happened that evening, and see what you can do about the ... "servant situation."
SINCE THIS IS A POINT AND CLICK ADVENTURE if you ever get stuck, here's a spoiler log of what you have to do to progress. (SPOILERS, obviously, so read this at your own discretion :laughing: )
!>Talk to Officer Fraley, ask about the body.
!>Observe the kingfisher bird.
!>Observe Thoroughly - the cricket!
!>Collect Essence of Cricket.
!>Astral Project Cricket to bird. Then Collect Kingfisher essence.
!>Astral Project Kingfisher on the gate. Enter the gate.
!>Talk to Pearl, ask her about "The Others"
!>Talk to the Doctor, ask him about "The Others"
!>Talk to Lorenzo, tell him what Pearl and The Doctor said about him.
!>A new dialog opens up, "No Respect!" - select it.
!>You can now collect essence of Lorenzo. Do so, and he leaves.
!>Astral Project Lorenzo to Pearl. Then, collect Pearl's Essence.
!>Go back outside.
!>Astral Project Pearl to Karl Stone.
!>While outside, talk to Officer Fraley about Coraline. Then, collect his essence.
!>Go back inside, talk to The Doctor about The Mummer. You can now collect his essence.
!>Astral Project The Doctor on the upstairs door, go inside.
!>Go through every conversation option with Margaret, you can now visit the balcony.
!>Astral Project Officer Fraley to Coraline.!
Ratings
| Overall | 242th | 3.708⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 411th | 3.3⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 354th | 3.314⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 386th | 3.686⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 348th | 3.771⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 350th | 3.279⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 380th | 3.03⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 166th | 3.929⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 59🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
I hope you do continue this, good job!
Thanks! We hoped the kingfisher puzzle would be a good introduction to how the mechanics work.
The scenes were constructed by me, from collage-ing together pictures found on the internet to create like a Frankenstein reference picture, then drawn and colored with a mouse in Gimp.
Then, @t-c went through in Unity and added dynamic lighting and rain, which really kicked the visuals up a notch I think.
I did the pixel art in Aseprite, no references.
Glad you enjoyed it! The things being on the thing is the hook that reels you into a conspiracy so deep and vast, the fish that live there swallow curious Inquisitors whole.
And that's the secret - the person put the things on the thing, and they used the stuff to do it, in the place.
Actually if you have any spoilery questions feel free to ask.
@toppervideogames Yeah, we tried to, specifically for the theme "Collector" - make it a single thing you collected, that had some effect on gameplay/progression, so having a category of things that grew as you collected them was what we were going for. I was actually a bit worried we put too many locks and keys in, so glad you found some freedom in when you could collect things. The Interrogation in the manor was really fun to design/write. Thanks for playing and the kind words!
@katastudios We actually do have a decent amount more of the general plot already mapped out, from an idea had years ago, that we adjusted a decent bit to make this game work for the jam. So technically, part 2's can be on the way :laughing: - I don't quite understand your question. I'd gladly answer it if I knew what you were asking!
@syphorce Thanks! Gotta love spooky season! We tried a lot this time around to work on atmosphere, as it tends to be on the backburner when we do Ludum Dares in the past. Glad it was noticeable!
@braulio-jg Congrats on finishing the game! When you're designing the puzzles, you have no idea how straightforward or difficult things end up being, so I'm glad they didn't end up too obscure!
@anderson-job-loeffler Thanks for the kind words! The conversation sound effects I ended up making from scratch :laughing: All from recordings of sounds I made. It was fun to learn how to do, even though other things got cut for it. I wish I had more time to clean them up/do more/do another for narration text, but alas, only so much time to get the game out! Thanks for playing.
@blazerker Yep, of course! That's the main inspiration (minus the extremely obtuse puzzles) - there's actually a niche community still making them professionally, if you enjoyed them back in the day, there are plenty of "new" ones that I think are quite fantastic!
@slurp Glad you found the way we tried incorporating the theme interesting! We were initially going to have you Collect sounds that you could mimic, but the way we wanted to progress made that concept a bit too obtuse, so we swapped it halfway through.
@borealteuthidia Thanks for the kind words! We actually had a decent amount of the story idea in our heads from some jam sessions beforehand, but putting it in a game and seeing it realized was a super satisfying thing for this jam! There are plenty of places to go and things to learn about in this world :smile:
@liumeishan Thanks! The sound effects were really enjoyable to make! I watched a bunch of tutorials on sound effect creation in general over a year ago, and it was nice to see how much I remembered, and how I could put those things into practice. It's super fun, I love making them. Thanks for playing!
"Pint and Click" is a great name for an in-game pub.
@eugenik Thanks! Appreicate the kind words.
@bobap A fantastic idea! I know a lot of point and click games have that, but I had it initially as a 'nice to have' - the further in the game you go, though, the more it's obvious how much it's needed for quality of life!
@theparticularpixel Thanks for playing! We worked hard (relative to our other games) on atmosphere and mood this time around, glad it showed.
@ira-baciu definitely! I was in a panic trying to scrap the game together during the submission period, then afterwards.... I just forgot. :laughing: whoops!
@gonulgaye Thanks for the kind words! Glad you liked it.
@floata3 :laughing: yep, the voice sounds are pretty goofy. Had a good time making them. Glad you liked em, and the game!
@rol Thanks! Luckily, the genre not being super code-intensive gives me a lot of room to work/care about polish. Something I don't usually get to do, and has always been one of our biggest weaknesses. I totally flubbed the UI, though. For some reason, I didn't think to actually anchor and scale it to the camera :face_palm: - so I think that's why some people have issues with it. Whoops!
I found the projection mechanic fascinating, I haven't seen that before :o
There were some quality of life improvements, in particular being able to see what options you had taken, and the interaction options not triggering if you already had your mouse pointer in the right place when they become active. I also found the game very silent and didn't even realize there was any rain sound! So mastering everything so I wouldn't have to put volume dangerously high for other sounds would have been nice.
All in all a very good entry.
Playthrough with more feedback:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c84oYrs4KRI
PS:
!> Starting a paragraph with `!>` makes it a spoiler. So you should probably update your game description making each step of the walk-through it's own spoiler.
Oh thanks for that spoiler explanation! We fixed it. Thanks also for a full play-through video, that's incredibly valuable data. Just really grateful you took the time!
@ira-baciu
While I was in there I added a little title card as well, per your suggestion.
@liu-qinying Glad you enjoyed it!
@phoenix-fireflower Nice, I'm happy people are generally able to make it to the end without much help. I've designed a few games where it's been way too easy for me, because I'm making the game, but it's very difficult for people rating the game, so I wanted to at least try to make this one so people don't get stuck. The cricket is just a little too far out of the way, though, so it is hard to spot!
@kazuren Thanks! Definitely glad the guide wasn't needed. Playing a bunch of point and clicks myself, I know how easy it can be to get stuck on certain puzzles. The projection mechanic was a way we found we could tie in the story and your role, with the theme this time around. It was initially going to be collecting sounds you can mimic, but we ran into too many issues with that making sense, so we switched it to projection. Thanks for playing!
@local-minimum Great video! The feedback in video playthroughs is invaluable. I found it telling, just how quickly you were able to pick up on basically everything we didn't implement due to time: handling audio better, forgetting to show which dialog options you already chose, not having fun astral project responses for the goofy combinations, the door not actually opening in the final scene. And it's apparent JUST how impactful the 'showing already chosen options' was in your playthrough. How it's easy to skip past an option thinking you already selected it, and not seeing new ones as they pop up. ALSO, I tried so many random things for spoiler tagging before I realized I was going to be late hitting submit, so I just gave up :laughing: - thanks for letting me know. Really appreciate you going through the time to record yourself playing!
I never needed the guide to progress to the end of the game, and all of the puzzles felt like they had a very logical progression to them (as opposed to some '90s point and click adventure games I could think of 😂), so really well done!
I know other folks have mentioned a few quality of life improvements, and seeing which options you've already taken definitely would be welcome, but even more than that I think it would be great to change the "Capture Essence" button in some way (color, add a symbol next to it, etc) when you can capture a creature's essence. Right at the start, I had somehow missed that I had learned enough about Fatigan to capture his essence, and went around in circles talking with everyone again and again before finally just trying to capture his essence out of desperation. Changing the button in some way to indicate that you were now able to capture their essence would be a good failsafe for dummies like me who may have missed the dialog event saying that you could now do so 😅
My only other suggestion would be that the art would really be complimented by a retro pixel font - Seeing such a high resolution UI over the sweet pixel art felt a little bit incongruous (but that is such a nitpick!)
Overall though, really well done! I loved the art, the writing, and the gameplay :) This was great! I think this might be my favorite of your games that I've played so far!
Oh, also, I genuinely laughed out loud at "She's nonplussed. Not plussed in the slightest". The writing really tickled me :)
Graphics gave nice retro feeling and the minimal soundscape with the never ending quiet rain in the background made the mood nicely!
I liked the story alot. Now I must follow you 'till the next Ludum to see next part after the cliffhanger :sweat_smile:
I loved the story, very intriguing. So did the art and atmosphere.
Hope u really will continue this game after the jam. Good luck, guys!
By the way, if you like weird atmospheres, you might want to check out our game too 🥴
@koolruz Appreciate you playing the game all the way through! We've had.... difficulty issues in the past, where it's either no challenge at all or way harder than expected, so I'm glad this one wasn't too frustrating. DEFINITELY on the capture essence! I was even thinking of some kind of idea where there's an indicator of "how much" information you have on the thing to essence capture, so you can see if you're close or not. You actually don't learn enough about the officer early on to capture his essence, though! You have to learn more about him from your conversation with Pearl before. So maybe also adding visual tidbits of knowledge gained when you're reading dialog, so you can see that you learned more about him from a certain dialog option.
However, even just changing the button to show you have enough information is a great solution that could have been completely reasonable for the game jam time frame.
Ahh man, I've wanted to make/use different fonts for awhile now. I never get around to doing it :cry: I guess on a point and click, that becomes far more of a pain point.
Thanks for the comment and taking the time to play the game, much appreciated!
@tomssuli Uh oh.... pressure's on to make a sequel now! :laughing: Thanks for playing and for the kind words.
@ginger-kyoko To be honest, we felt like this one might not have had enough! We tend to get bogged down in really complicated things that don't really show to the player in our jams, this one was much simpler than what we tend to do programming wise, but was definitely a lot for art/writing! Glad you enjoyed that aspect. We actually have had ideas/expansions for this story before the jam happened, so there is plenty more! But we had to do a lot of repurposing of what we had to get this to fit in the game jam setting. Glad you liked it. And you definitely nailed the atmosphere in your game, it's great!
In terms of getting things set up in Unity correctly, I mostly followed [this tutorial](https://pavcreations.com/pixel-perfect-fonts-in-unity-the-practical-guide/), but it seems to recommend a few strange settings during import (for example, "Leave “Get Kerning Pairs” unticked" - I *think* I needed to tick that checkbox in order for kerning pairs to import correctly, but I can't remember with 100% certainty). I was definitely playing around with import settings for a bit to get everything working correctly
The biggest thing I remember that tripped me up was that I had a mismatch between my font sizes at one point during the import process, causing crazy kerning issues at low resolutions. I think I had imported my font at 8pt, and then set up my font atlas at 16pt, which looked correct at first glance, but the characters were imperceptibly misaligned (presumably due to floating point math when Unity was scaling between those two font sizes to render the text), which was amplified when rendering at low resolutions and looked *awful*