[CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

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kwando1313
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[CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by kwando1313 »

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Click here to play!
Spoiler : Brief Synopsis :
Madoka and her friends are normal girls who attend Mitakihara middle school. When their best friend Mami goes missing, they decide to go to the school in the middle of the night to search for answers.

(Thanks NN for writing the synopsis for me!)
Spoiler : Notes :
  • Please play this in Firefox! I use a lot of APNGs, so it just won't look as good if you play on a browser that doesn't support APNGs.
  • If you don't hear music, that probably is on purpose - I'm going quite heavily on ambient sound effects rather than music.
  • This game was made for the Ace Everything Else Online case competition.
Spoiler : Credits :
Writing: kwando1313
Story Assistance: NihilisticNinja
Beta-Testing: Alnar, gotMLK7, NihilisticNinja
Assistance will be provided upon request.
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by cesar26100 »

I just played this and that was...very short, actually. I guess that this trial is still incomplete...?
Spoiler : :
Unless there is a way to get a different ending than the one where you find a secret room or something like that in the library private room and I just didn't find it? Still this made me kinda confused...it just feels like there has to be more to it, considering how I completed the whole part and the time limit thing wasn't that much of a challenge.
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by kwando1313 »

It's currently incomplete, yes. That's why it's an open circle...
Spoiler : :
The time limit is on purposely quite generous - mostly because it's setting up for the next part, where... It won't be very generous for time at all... xD
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by cesar26100 »

Ah, alright then. I honestly hadn't noticed the circle in the title of the thread...for some reason I had gotten the impression this would be complete from the posts I had seen in the competition thread.
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by Reecer6 »

MiM's got a lot of potential, but this first chapter is PRETTY bare-bones, although I can definitely overlook that because the mechanic you're going with seems fairly complicated. Although, a couple issues.
Spoiler : it was literally a couple but then i added a third :
  • First, the timer's pretty broken. The first part of this is that, when you check the watch and the minutes are in the single digits, it will just display as single digits, as opposed to putting a leading zero. It's a minor style issue, but like, it's supremely noticeable. Also, there's the small fact that the timer actually doesn't work at all? I got to negative five minutes left and moving around did nothing. However, if it's actually just because you forgot to program for this one location, I spent all my time in the private library room.
  • Second, the puzzle's kind of unclear. It doesn't explain the fact that a 3x3 magic square ONLY uses the digits 1-9, and each only once, which is a pretty vital fact and confused me. Less importantly, it doesn't explain that you have to input the numbers from left to right first, and THEN up to down. I mean, such can be assumed, but clarification is very helpful there.
  • Finally, no talking sounds? What's up with that? Those are fundamental for getting me involved in conversations! And EVEN WORSE, NO PROFESSOR LAYTON-STYLE MADOKA-GETS-CLOSER-TO-YOU-AND-THEN-POINTS-WHEN-SHE-GETS-THE-RIGHT-ANSWER? For shame.
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by DWaM »

Alrighty, finished it:
Spoiler : Thoughts :
Okay so I played this with hersh and figured the best way to approach this, like anything I do in company, was read the dialogue out loud. Now, for ease of differentiating between characters, I applied different voices for them:

Sayaka - Christian Bale Batman
Madoka - Whimpy Voice
Mami - Angry Texan
Kyouko - Frat Boy
Homura - Hersh
Lady teacher - I just sung her lines

- "If she were outside of the school, in the midst of this large-ass city, she would've totally been found by now! Which means that the only logical assumption is that she's at the school, where we have literally hundreds of people walking down every hall."

- Everyone is food. Why is there so much foooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood.

- Generator's out. We can't move the curtains so everything is dark and you can't be thought, classes dismissed.

- how does kyouko know all this stuff about the sewers

- oh i guess its a story for another time

- SEWER SCENE FOUR LINER NEVER FORGIVE NEVER FORGET

- It seems that the judges forgot to point out a central feature. Waiting for Kyouko in the sewers to check the coast is clear in real time

- The investigation section, while pretty short and straightforward if you visit the right location from the beginning, was pretty entertaining. (Thankfully, hersh managed to solve dat magical box puzzle in her head because she's a genius or whatever pft).

- Also I like how the thing on the office door is like: "If you need to go into my office, then you should know where it is. But if you don't, this is where it is." Why even hide it in a book then? If a student sees it, they'll find the book and have the exact same trouble of getting to the key as a worker would in solving the puzzle.

- also dat porn joke

- also you gotta love the principal that has a fingerprint lock in his comp, it's supr important guys

- In my opinion, the cliffhanger could've been a bit better. While it's interesting and I'm pretty sure I have an idea of where it's going, I feel like there could've been a bit more for the player to be like "oh snap where is this gonna gooooooo???" instead of just "oh, well that's weird" that we have now. Still, I suppose you couldn't have very well had a monster pop out or anything, so this is good enough.

Overall, I liked it. Obviously, I can't exactly comment on much since the mystery part is only really beginning (I think at least). So, yeah, I'll see how this plays out. Hopefully it gets finished, because enigma was quite right - this suffers none of the problems BondS did. You could understand the relationship of the characters relatively well from their interactions alone. One thing that did irk me that their personalities aren't fully fleshed out (to me, at least). Madoka would be the normal one, I guess, Sayaka the smart one, Mayouka the adventurous one, Homura the quiet one and Mami... well, iunno much about her, to be honest. Yet the dynamic of the group I think I still don't fully get. (For example hersh mentioned off-hand that in the show Sayaka is "mean" - not literally of course - to Mayouka or something to that like or someone is mean to someone in that relationship). That sort of thing in terms of dynamics. Still, I don't actually mind it all that much. If it keeps the needless exposition out and has a chance to be established later on, then I'm completely fine with it, really.


There were also parts in the dialogue - specifically, when it comes to explanations, important plot-relevant threads or some such things - where I felt like the voice of the character would be replaced with yours, just so you could be certain that the player gets it. Iunno, just stuck out to me a bit.

Also

sooooo much foooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood talk
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by NihilisticNinja »

DWaM wrote:
Spoiler : Thoughts :
Hopefully it gets finished, because enigma was quite right - this suffers none of the problems BondS did.
Spoiler : Response to Thoughts :
I do think it's worth noting that in essence, this is the inverse of BondS- in that I did all the scripting and kwand just helped with story stuff, and in this case kwand did the scripting and I did a bit of brainstorming and the like. (And a few of Homura's lines, before kwand got a feel for the character he wanted to do.) So comparing to BondS really isn't that good an idea, given the different writers. (Though I'd like to think I've improved since then ^_^)
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by DWaM »

Well, true, but when dealing with anything that takes place in a universe or features characters of another franchise in general, the set-up is really important. I was aware this was an inverse, but considering you two worked on BondS, it was the closest comparison I could think of to illustrate that point. I should've made that a bit more clear, admittedly.
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by Enthalpy »

I'll be streaming this in a few minutes, for anybody who wants to watch! You can consider this my substitute for a review, though I'll post the key points here.
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by kwando1313 »

@Reecer:

I'll fix the bugs as soon as the unfreeze on editing happens for comp.

@DWaM:

Glad to hear you enjoyed it ^^
Spoiler : :
wait what porn joke
@Enthalpy:

Sorry I missed the stream. ^^

Hope you enjoyed it though?
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by DWaM »

Spoiler : :
Janitor's laptop
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by Enthalpy »

Spoiler : Regarding DWaM's Comment :
I'm assuming DWaM means the joke about the internet history being purged.
As for my thoughts on the case, now that I've played through it...
Spoiler : :
I'm just not qualified to speak in detail to this one.

It was decent; I didn't care for the case that much, but this has more to do with me than the case. This case is quite firmly in the "slice-of-life (SoL) group of friends investigating a mystery at school," and I just don't care for SoL. The main draw of the case, at least in part one, comes from the group dynamics of Madoka and her friends, and if you're indifferent to that, the case can't operate at full strength. Still, the conversations looked good, and things promise to escalate in part two, and I'm much more interested in that. But if you are more amenable to SoL... Definitely give this case a try.

The puzzle and investigation system, I thought, worked well as an introduction to the mechanic, though I hope it gets tougher in Part Two! The time limit was pretty generous, and the hints were so direct that after we got to the Principal's Office, I was basically being told where to go. Something more freeform in future, now that we're both more familiar with the system, would be very nice to see! The magic squares was fairly simple for me, but it was a fun puzzle.

The biggest issue with the case is a glitch I encountered that seemed to prevent me from plugging the USB into the computer until after going through the talk conversations in the supply room. I'd very much like to see that fixed.
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by kwando1313 »

ohey this is a thing i made

I'll hopefully be doing work on this again soon!
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by DWaM »

who are you again
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Re: [CE][M] Mystery in Mitakihara ○

Post by kwando1313 »

i don't know just some guy i guess
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