Murder for Dessert by Fupi
!! This game ended up being pretty long, expect >30 minutes of playtime, I promise it's fun though :grin:
Stuck? Get some hints here!
You're Brennan, a detective hired to investigate the murder of Phillip Bezerra in the fanciest restaurant around: The Grand Apricot. Talk to the suspects, keep their lines in mind, and point out important inconsistencies and relationships between their accounts. It's up to you to get to the bottom of this case, so dig deep, expose the culprit and bring them to Justice!
Instructions
Entering The Grand Apricot, you'll be presented with the numerous colourful suspects. Click on any one of them to initiate a conversation.
When you do, you'll see a panel on the right-hand side of your screen showing your progress extracting information from them. Click any button with a dialogue bubble to start talking.
During conversations, you'll see a little pin next to the suspect's dialogue box, if you think that line might be important, put a pin on it by clicking the Pin icon. This will put that line in your Inventory and from there you can read it, or use it during any other conversation to help you uncover the truth.
If you can no longer get any information, you'll be BRICK WALLED, and the buttons will reflect that, move on to someone else, or see if you missed anything!
Credits
Fupicat: Graphics, music, sound design, story wrangling, dialogue writing.
Kett: Programming, dialogue writing.
Full list of credits and assets here!
Updates
April 8. - Added infinite lives mode and changed mrs. to ms. (totally switched up which was which)
| Link | https://github.com/KettLovahr/murder-for-dessert |
| itch.io page | https://kett.itch.io/murder-for-dessert |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/murder-for-dessert |
Ratings
| Overall | 72th | 4.114⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 154th | 3.825⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 226th | 3.623⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 558th | 3.464⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 137th | 4.276⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 36th | 4.207⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 32th | 4.276⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 52th | 4.268⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 48🗳️ | 102🗨️ |
The bass goes hard I found myself singing the dialogue at the start with a deep voice lol.
Unfortunately I couldn't for the life of me beat the game, there is a lot of back and forth the best I could do was unlock 3 dialogues at a time. I guess my detective skills aren't as good as I thought :smiley:
Though if I was to give you feedback I would say that the game requires more commitment than the average jam game, I spend a good 20 minutes but I wasn't making as much progress as I hoped, but that may well be a skill issue. Congrats on finishing the game!
Thank you for playing ^-^
Amazing story to pull together in 72 hours~
Thank you for playing!
That's something we didn't even think of! I was in fact thinking the game was turning out too *easy* but from feedback we've gotten, I figured that's not the case at all. Something to keep in mind when either of us makes a detective game again ^-^
Anyway, this was awesome! The setting here was super cool, and the mixed use of pictures & drawings worked out incredibly well. I really enjoyed the writing here & the story was hilarious - I could definitely understand the culprit's frustration upon discovering them :) The pin mechanic was very cool as well, while it worked similar to evidence in other games, it felt more satisfying since you had to actively gather it yourself instead of being handed things automatically by the game - really clever!
Similar to some other games in the genre though, sometimes you present something adjacent to - but not quite - what the game expected, which was a bit frustrating. For example, I presented the line that Bethany was friends with Phillips to Zamora instead of the line that she knew Zamora; or I presented the *reason* that Richard was crying to Billy instead of the *fact* that he was crying. While this wasn't a huge issue, it did make me a bit overly cautious to present stuff due to the limited lives, and I actually got stuck after presenting the wrong Richard line to Billy since I thought that wasn't the intended direction. Of course, this is very understandable in a jam game, just something to keep in mind for the future :)
Lastly, while this one's purely one me for being too used to Ace Attorney, but I only realized in my second playthrough (after losing once) that you could just present pins regardless of the line they were saying. Which is great and prevented the additional room-for-error of presenting the right thing for the wrong line, but feel like it could be mentioned somewhere.
Overall though, I really, really loved this! It's so cool that you managed to make a complete murder mystery in just three days! Incredible entry!
I tried to write around the problem of needing very specific pins by making the last few sentences as clear as possible on what the characters needed. For example, in the Zamora scene, she ends with "I wonder if we've met", which means you must go find an example of Bethany saying that they have met! The Billy scene is indeed more vague, and players seem to be getting stuck on him more often. I made Brennan think "If I show him I know what he's talking about, maybe he'll tell me more", which I intended to communicate that you needed to find a character confirming what happened in the story Billy was telling. Billy was saying someone cried, so you needed to confirm that someone actually did cry, and that it was Richard. But of course, it's not uncommon for there to be a disconnect between what the dev intended VS. what the players naturally interpret, it's hard to get right unless you have a lot of playtesters, which is why insight like this is so valuable to me!
This could be easily fixed by making each scene be unlockable by multiple lines, so that the player feels like they're actually moving forward with what they know instead of being locked out of continuing because of a technicality.
I didn't want to include lives originally but we felt like we needed to have *some* fail state, in my opinion the "infinite lives" mode is the definitive experience, because, while it is easier, having lives seems to force you to be overly cautious and not experiment as much.
And the thing about players thinking they have to present pins towards specific lines is like you said a matter of communication, since the mechanic is not explained you kinda have to fill in with what you already know from other similar games. I expected that to not be a problem since, if the player thought they had to relate pins to specific lines, and they played a correct pin, it would work anyway. But I didn't think about the other option where the player plays an incorrect pin and then is tempted to try the same pin again on different lines to see if it works lol, which will just eat away at your lives and make the game seem way more difficult than it actually is.
It reminded me of the old 'Tex Murphy' graphical fiction stories. Even a little like some of the Infocom stuff.
You have the start of a nice game there. Keep up the good work
I liked the pin mechanic, it's an interesting way yo go about making a game like this, it encourages deducting thins on your own. There were a few moments where I kinda got suck but idk if it was just me not really being able to put some things together that easily but I eventually got to the end thanks to some of the tips
I'll try, keep in mind that I am not really familiar or experienced with this genre of game
The main one where I got suck is the part where I was supposed to confront penny about the time she started her shift, I had a feeling that the time frames may be important in some way but I wasn't exactly sure how and it didn't really put 2 and 2 together. mostly because I didn't really think of what penny said as time frame related.
Maybe part of it was also that I was trying to look too deep into some lines, I kinda got caught up in the first part on finding holes in richard's story and also billy and and it wasn't really bringing me anywhere because I was supposed to progress with a different character first. that's something that kinda threw me off a few times, I was gather info that to me sounded like something i should check should immediately check because I thought it would help me advance but I was either not doing it in the right order or I was missing a character that I was supposed to check on first
I was able to get through the 2nd half a lot easier
Again I feel like a lot of it was just lots of confusion on my part, a lot of the things made a lot sense to me after I went through them
This game was really funny, and I found the main mechanic really engaging. The dialogue segments were the perfect length for me--long enough to make looking for clues interesting, but not so long that I got overwhelmed, and the pinning system was a really strong way to manage evidence.
I definitely think adding the infinite lives mode was a good move, in games like this it's usually somewhat unclear what the game is actually asking you to do so it feels unfair to punish the player for making mistakes like that.
A big thank you to you! :heart:
Still! I had a fun time with the silly little story!
Also don't worry about not having played this genre before, I haven't either and I wrote the thing lol, it's supposed to be more accessible than the average detective game.
The UI is pleasant and approachable / to the point. I like that. The sound effects are once again 👌🏻 <- perfect
Hopefully I can come back and solve this gruesome murder (I laughed out loud when the cut up pineapple was shown haha) Are those photo's you took yourself? Did you have pineapple during the jam?
(not reading all the quality-looking comments above, don't want spoilers!)
This game is so amazingly well polished, honestly so many congrats to make this gorgeous and witty a game in this short time! :3
Is it weird I feel sorry for the culprit in the end? It *does* seem like it was all an honest mistake. ^_^;
I think locking the pin feature to specific lines would defeat the point of the game, which is to make you feel that you're unraveling the story yourself with the information you gather. Same with locking "presenting" to specific lines, since in the game it's very rare that you'll be directly countering a specific thing someone said, usually you'll just be bringing up a point for them to comment on. In fact, it doesn't even matter which line you have open with a character, a correct pin will always unlock their next scene.
However I do like the idea of having a little thought bubble with the detective's last thoughts with a hint on how to unlock the next scene! The beginning of the game tends to be very difficult for players because they don't know what is most important, but as soon as they get the ball rolling they can usually get straight to the end naturally. I think a simple feature like this could aid in confusion quite a bit.
I cannot believe you've pulled this off! So much content. I will have to enjoy the great extent of this entry later. But thank you, guys!
This is an amazing entry! : ))
## Praise
@fupi and @catusfelony, big congratulations for bringing this lively masterpiece to life! I am not only impressed, I was immersed and enjoyed a lot: the story, the visual style, the absurdity of the idea for *killing a pineapple* XD, :smile: the absurdity of the *wife* being a fruit fly (also blond), the absurdity of *the pineapple having a wife in the first place*. **Maan**, you got some talent coming up with stuff like that!
**Overall**: I loved the liveliness of this, the graphics and the vivid characters with distinct traits. Also the fact that you got the theme really REALLY well. Unfolding and getting deeper with the clues is bingo on the theme!
But you know what? Another amazing fact is that you, guys, were able to put all of this into a complete creation in such a tight window! **Bravo**!
Fupi, I have to consult with you, **how do you develop your writing skills**? I am interested :D There were at least 4 times which were quite funny! I even took notes:
> [the chain-smoking or the seek of a thrill] in the beginning XD
> [initial presentation of the pineapple]
> What was the murder weapon... it was a **knife** XD
> [the detective zipping his mouth and throwing the key]
> [convenient pillar] XD
> [the CRAYON image of the monster-slicing-a-pineapple] WAS A BLAST XDDDDD
Oh boy! There was so much life into this!
---
## Feedback
Now, for the feedback part :smile:
It seems **I got stuck 4 times** / that's the number of times I didn't really know what to do (I took notes on this too):
**1**: for some reason *what time the murder was* I wasn't able to present to Penny - **why**? Maybe because I expected what Zamora gave as answers around "being in the restaurant - and when her husband arrived" to have been enough. E.g. in my mind I expected Penny to be satisfied with an answer like "somewhere between.. .."; thus my mind completely ignored the fact that *it happened around quarter past midnight*
**2**: after the old lady gave the clues around the knife - it seems I missed using the *right* one; to my mind ALL/any of them should have worked to get the dialogue (it could be frustrating to not allow this)
**3**: round noise - this must have been the toughest one, since I was constantly thinking of a *knife scratching a surface in circles* (maybe my deranged brain here) but I would have *never* thought that this was Bettany - I know exactly why:
- the *brick-walling* feature made me *stay away* of Bettany after the fact - I did not even think to *make use* of her lines after I was "finished" there, thus missing the round sound altogether : ))
**4**: The "red purple monster" from Billy; maybe in my head *bravado* happens right after this - since this was a clear arrow pointing towards the staff member; but that didn't work and I got confused
- I totally didn't come up with the idea Billy had to be told MORE about it to reveal.. well.. more :D (usually it felt like I go somewhere else after such interaction, another character); "she may have touched the murder weapon" unlocked the game further, but that was not super intuitive maybe
**A few more ideas** / minor UX points that come to my mind (but again, the game was PERFECT for the time frame it was produced in, congrats!!):
- I would have loved an indicator to tell me if a pin was already used - also in the dialogues (maybe also in the bar above)
- is this a bug?: I couldn't un-pin stuff when a new scene was just unlocked and I was going through the dialogue
- (only if the game is developed for a big release) Hints would make sense in-game / e.g. maybe infinite hints, which reload after usage for 30-60-120 sec) - example: **Round noise -> old legs**
## Folks, that's all I had
**Thank you for this masterpiece**!! Peace!
1. Zamora tells you many different times, but most of them are irrelevant and only one of them tells you when approximately the murder actually happened, so I think it's pretty clear that's what you need to present to Penny if you pay close attention :sweat_smile: Maybe, since this is right in the start of the game, you don't yet know how much lee-way the game gives you so using the incorrect pins might be frustrating, but this puzzle in particular there is no ambiguity what you need to present I think.
2. This is a legitimate problem of clarity I think. Most characters are very clear on what single line is most important, but since Bethany has the tendency to talk in circles around a subject, she spends quite some time to get to the point and it's less clear what single line is meant to be used. You're not the only friend I've seen have this problem with Bethany x)
3. This is both a problem of UX and pacing. I intended this line by Bethany to only appear after you already know you're looking for a "round sound" for Billy, but there aren't any artificial gates preventing you from finding this line before, so you might not make the connection immediately, and as you said, the Brickwall feature kind of implies that you're done with that character and you won't have to come back. This could be solved maybe with a single line of dialogue by Brennan, or by designing an easier puzzle at the start that makes use of a brickwalled character's pin, so that the player knows this is an option.
4. The fact that you can't bring up the purple monster holding a knife, especially after telling Richard about when Billy saw him crying, is pretty weird! Even though that line by itself isn't incriminating because Penny is just from the restaurant staff, you'd expect her to respond with something at least. Ideally, characters would have different lines for when you use a pin that's *not quite there* but in the right direction, instead of the generic "what are you talking about" response. This would serve as the in-universe hints system, encouraging you to try more pins to find more clues. (I would also do away with the lives system entirely)
5. An indicator that the pin has already been used would conflict with the fact that you can use a pin more than once! I originally wanted the pins to get deleted as soon as you used them correctly, but then I made one of Zamora's lines unlock two different puzzles. Perhaps getting rid of this feature and making each pin only unlock one puzzle would allow me to make that change.
6. Not being able to un-pin stuff when you're on a new cutscene is not a bug, but a hacky solution to something that was! Basically, if you used a pin while on a new cutscene, you would get the "what are you talking about" response and then get stuck, since the cutscene was never allowed to finish. So I just disabled the popups during them. I figures it was fine since you could still pin new stuff, but I totally didn't account for the situation where your inventory was full, my bad!
7. Like I said previously, instead of a hints system, I'd like to make it more in-universe by making the characters give you pointers when you use a pin that's *almost* right, serving as the hints!
Thank you so much for the compliments on the writing as well ^D^ Ever since making The Rock I've been reading and writing a lot more, so I guess it's just practice. This non-linear game was the toughest thing I ever wrote, and my friend helped with the dialogues as well!
Agree with your reasoning! Yep, that thing with a different character response for a "wrong" pin is spot on! For example: my confusion would have been cleared with sth like "Couldn't you be more specific??" from Penny :D about the time of the murder if I pointed "other" times. But anyway, the game is *perfect* for 3 days, so @fupi, @catusfelony, you guys know how to do stuff : )))
Cheers! Enjoy the rest of LD :heart:
No comments on the technical part. 5 for everything!
Congratulations and thank you very much for the experience. :heart: :heart: :heart:
Super polished, congrats. I could literally point out anything and say that it was great. Dialogs, art, music, mechanics and all that. It was a litle bit confusing for me which way the related lines should go (from whom to whom) and I died on the first try, even though I used some hints. Oh yeah, hints, what a great feature to add to your game, thank you very much. I got stuck a few times, but I liked the difficulty anyway.
Hats off.