[M][CE] Champion of Turnabouts ★●

[eerew]

Spoiler : :

hi beaitrice hi tenyo

[AshuraMage]

I don't exactly know the protocol for this, as this is a featured trial and I don't believe you're allowed to add chapters to featured trials. But for a long time now (pretty much since I completed this), I have been working on a follow-up story of sorts. What I will most likely do is make a new thread for it once it's released.

In the meantime, here is a rather cryptic teaser image for what I'm currently calling "Champion's Tea Party". I hope to get it released by the end of the year.

Spoiler : :

Sick hypeshot ngl, we making it outta of borscht bowl club with this one

[SuperAj3]

I don't exactly know the protocol for this, as this is a featured trial and I don't believe you're allowed to add chapters to featured trials. But for a long time now (pretty much since I completed this), I have been working on a follow-up story of sorts. What I will most likely do is make a new thread for it once it's released.

In the meantime, here is a rather cryptic teaser image for what I'm currently calling "Champion's Tea Party". I hope to get it released by the end of the year.

Spoiler : :

Ooh this is awesome!

Spoiler : :

I see four silhouettes! Is the one on the far-right Apollo?

[Dylan Dog]

I don't exactly know the protocol for this, as this is a featured trial and I don't believe you're allowed to add chapters to featured trials. But for a long time now (pretty much since I completed this), I have been working on a follow-up story of sorts. What I will most likely do is make a new thread for it once it's released.

In the meantime, here is a rather cryptic teaser image for what I'm currently calling "Champion's Tea Party". I hope to get it released by the end of the year.

Spoiler : :

Ooh this is awesome!

Spoiler : :

I see four silhouettes! Is the one on the far-right Apollo?

Spoiler : :

I'm pretty sure it's not. It seems to be the witch Tenyo talked to earlier in Champion, using Umineko Beatrice's sprite

[Dylan Dog]

Ooh this is awesome!

Spoiler : :

I see four silhouettes! Is the one on the far-right Apollo?

Spoiler : :

I'm pretty sure it's not. It seems to be the witch Tenyo talked to earlier in Champion, using Umineko Beatrice's sprite

....

I-Is this a spambot? It just joined

[TimeAxis]

when your case attracts more spambots than players

feelsbadman

[DeathByAutoscroll]

The spambots go to where the people go: Good, high-effort, quality work. One of these days I'll finally beat Phoenix Wright and see the rest of the case...

[TimeAxis]

As promised, the brief epilogue to Champion of Turnabouts has now been released. I didn't feel like it needed its own thread, so here it is. I honestly have no idea how this will be received, so fair warning: It's bizarre and has virtually no target audience. Still, I hope people can find some enjoyment out of it.

Champion's Tea Party

Spoiler : Synopsis :

What if Collin Faust had accepted Kisshou-Tenyo's help? This short epilogue explores that scenario.

Spoiler : Content Warnings :

This case is bizarre, and contains mild nudity (Moderation was consulted already).

Spoiler : Walkthrough :

There is no gameplay, so no walkthrough is needed.

Spoiler : Credits (Spoilers) :

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free-human-base-mesh-animations-3d-model/1049650#
Human mesh base by CG_Luke
Chibi Bodies from Maple Story
2D Mahjong tiles from Jansei Gakuen Chrono * Magic

Music from
Kaiji
Umineko
Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa

Bernkastel, Beatrice, Lamdadelta sprites from Umineko
Some Backgrounds from Umineko

Thanks to eerew for playtesting

Tea Party
Warning: This is an Epilogue. It's recommended to have gotten at least one ending of CoT first. There are minor character spoilers from the following property:

Spoiler : Character spoilers :

Umineko

[Dylan Dog]

As promised, the brief epilogue to Champion of Turnabouts has now been released. I didn't feel like it needed its own thread, so here it is. I honestly have no idea how this will be received, so fair warning: It's bizarre and has virtually no target audience. Still, I hope people can find some enjoyment out of it.

Champion's Tea Party

Spoiler : Synopsis :

What if Collin Faust had accepted Kisshou-Tenyo's help? This short epilogue explores that scenario.

Spoiler : Content Warnings :

This case is bizarre, and contains mild nudity (Moderation was consulted already).

Spoiler : Walkthrough :

There is no gameplay, so no walkthrough is needed.

Spoiler : Credits (Spoilers) :

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free-human-base-mesh-animations-3d-model/1049650#
Human mesh base by CG_Luke
Chibi Bodies from Maple Story
2D Mahjong tiles from Jansei Gakuen Chrono * Magic

Music from
Kaiji
Umineko
Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa

Bernkastel, Beatrice, Lamdadelta sprites from Umineko
Some Backgrounds from Umineko

Tea Party
Warning: This is an Epilogue. It's recommended to have gotten at least one ending of CoT first. There are minor character spoilers from the following property:

Spoiler : Character spoilers :

Umineko

Wacky. I liked it a lot.

Spoiler : :

I liked how this put the highlight on an oft-forgotten aspect of Umineko, the way it portrays game theory. The idea of a mahjong game made more complex by the tiles being people is actually way cool. If only it wasn't far too difficult to write due to the complexity of such a game (I assume), what was shown really made me invested in how it would go down; I won't lie I was a little melancholic when the classic Umineko-style credits rolled.

[risefromtheashes]

As promised, the brief epilogue to Champion of Turnabouts has now been released. I didn't feel like it needed its own thread, so here it is. I honestly have no idea how this will be received, so fair warning: It's bizarre and has virtually no target audience. Still, I hope people can find some enjoyment out of it.

Champion's Tea Party

Spoiler : Synopsis :

What if Collin Faust had accepted Kisshou-Tenyo's help? This short epilogue explores that scenario.

Spoiler : Content Warnings :

This case is bizarre, and contains mild nudity (Moderation was consulted already).

Spoiler : Walkthrough :

There is no gameplay, so no walkthrough is needed.

Spoiler : Credits (Spoilers) :

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free-human-base-mesh-animations-3d-model/1049650#
Human mesh base by CG_Luke
Chibi Bodies from Maple Story
2D Mahjong tiles from Jansei Gakuen Chrono * Magic

Music from
Kaiji
Umineko
Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa

Bernkastel, Beatrice, Lamdadelta sprites from Umineko
Some Backgrounds from Umineko

Tea Party
Warning: This is an Epilogue. It's recommended to have gotten at least one ending of CoT first. There are minor character spoilers from the following property:

Spoiler : Character spoilers :

Umineko

(Kel, he/they)

So uh. What the %&$# was THAT.
(/pos)

[TimeAxis]

As promised, the brief epilogue to Champion of Turnabouts has now been released. I didn't feel like it needed its own thread, so here it is. I honestly have no idea how this will be received, so fair warning: It's bizarre and has virtually no target audience. Still, I hope people can find some enjoyment out of it.

Champion's Tea Party

Spoiler : Synopsis :

What if Collin Faust had accepted Kisshou-Tenyo's help? This short epilogue explores that scenario.

Spoiler : Content Warnings :

This case is bizarre, and contains mild nudity (Moderation was consulted already).

Spoiler : Walkthrough :

There is no gameplay, so no walkthrough is needed.

Spoiler : Credits (Spoilers) :

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free-human-base-mesh-animations-3d-model/1049650#
Human mesh base by CG_Luke
Chibi Bodies from Maple Story
2D Mahjong tiles from Jansei Gakuen Chrono * Magic

Music from
Kaiji
Umineko
Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa

Bernkastel, Beatrice, Lamdadelta sprites from Umineko
Some Backgrounds from Umineko

Tea Party
Warning: This is an Epilogue. It's recommended to have gotten at least one ending of CoT first. There are minor character spoilers from the following property:

Spoiler : Character spoilers :

Umineko

Wacky. I liked it a lot.

Spoiler : :

I liked how this put the highlight on an oft-forgotten aspect of Umineko, the way it portrays game theory. The idea of a mahjong game made more complex by the tiles being people is actually way cool. If only it wasn't far too difficult to write due to the complexity of such a game (I assume), what was shown really made me invested in how it would go down; I won't lie I was a little melancholic when the classic Umineko-style credits rolled.

Spoiler : :

I wouldn’t say it’s that hard to write since I’ve consumed a ton of mahjong related anime and manga. Although it’s true that the more I commit to that aspect, the more I alienate people with no idea about mahjong. The real challenge is less the writing and more the presentation. For one, as the table state changes, I need to keep pre-rendering new backgrounds to fit the current game state, updating things like wall positions or the scoreboards. And then for every pose I want to add, I need to pre-render and resize like 300+ new images for that pose for every possible tile to have it available.

If I ever continue this story, it’ll be in a realtime 3D engine so I can avoid those pitfalls. But as a followup to CoT, I feel fine with leaving it here.

[Averia]

Spoiler : :

I wonder where you got the idea for Mutual Mahjong ?
One Poker is from a Kaiji arc but is it an original idea or does it come from another work ? (I don't think it exists in Kaiji)

[TimeAxis]

Spoiler : :

I wonder where you got the idea for Mutual Mahjong ?
One Poker is from a Kaiji arc but is it an original idea or does it come from another work ? (I don't think it exists in Kaiji)

Spoiler : :

There was one joke bit in Tonegawa-san (a Kaiji spinoff) where something kinda like it was proposed, which inspired me a bit, but it wasn’t very in-depth, so most of it ended up being original.

[TimeAxis]

So, while Champion of Turnabouts kind of speaks for itself and doesn't really require a whole lot of extra explanation, I figured I'd write up some author's notes (all the rage these days) for Champion's Tea Party at least (with maybe a couple things about CoT sprinkled in there as well).

Spoiler : Author Notes :

I'll start by talking about Collin. He was very hard to write for me, because his personality is very different from my own. He initially wasn't fleshed out very well, with me just envisioning him as the kind of person who frequented casinos, which led to how I wrote all his flavor dialogue in CoT. I was kinda thinking like how it would feel to be playing as an NPC, since Phoenix is the protagonist that we all know. But some playtester feedback for CoT said that Collin was unlikable, which made me feel like I'd gone a bit too far with it, so I kind of tacked on a backstory for him to make him a bit more sympathetic. His backstory was also a little bit out of my comfort zone, but it was based on real events. That was where I got the idea.

Now for Champion's Tea Party, there were a lot of inspirations. I didn't write CoT with a full idea of all of Tea Party, but I did have a vague idea that it would be something mahjong related. I had a couple of ideas floating around, one of which being what I went with, and the other being something I may use for something else in the future. The biggest inspiration was probably the game Catherine, as you might be able to tell by how all the characters look. The point of them being dressed that way was to show that they've been dehumanized, since clothing is kind of a symbol of being human (which is something that's also touched on in Umineko). The idea of having the players themselves be the pieces was also something that came to me from Catherine, not in any specific referential way, but as an aesthetic, with all the men in Catherine having sheep heads. The actual structure of the game came from, as previously mentioned, me watching Tonegawa-san and seeing that one 30 second joke bit about human mahjong and thinking "actually, that's not a bad idea". But fleshing out the actual rules and everything took a lot of thought. I had to consider things like whether to use a voting system for the teams, or have team captains, or the solution I ultimately ended up with, having random representatives.

One of the most striking visuals I had in my head from the beginning was the idea of a discarded tile basically having to walk the plank and jump into the lava, and tiles just doing that one by one like lemmings. I know that sounds messed up, but the head of an artist is weird, okay? In the end, I never got to really use that visual to the extent that I wanted (it's possible that I'll explore this concept more in the future). As for why all the characters were men, and all had the same skin tone, while I played around a bit with some different ones, it created some problems since Mahjong is played with tiles, which you're not supposed to be able to tell apart when they're face down. Randomly distributing a few different body types or skin tones was something I could have done, but it would have led to the walls having identifiable pieces, and would prevent me from re-using previous images of the walls whenever they're supposed to be arranged differently or shuffled. Same goes for the players' hands. By having all the pieces look the same, it makes it a lot easier to re-use things. As for why there were no female pieces, aside from the aforementioned reason which still applied, there was also the added layer of them all being in their underwear. And when a man's in his underwear and is dehumanized, that's A-OK and goofy, but when you put a woman in that same circumstance (especially when surrounded by men), it just has a... different vibe to it, and that wasn't the kind of vibe I was going for. Plus I'm not sure that would have passed the threshold of what would be allowed on AAO. There was actually an in-universe reason for why all the tiles were men as well, which I had intended to have a character ask, with someone throwing out a few possibilities, one of which being the correct one, but there didn't end up being a good time to have anyone bring it up, so it never came up. Suffice to say that those who've played Umineko might be able to think of some possible reasons why a certain someone might have issues with men in particular. You could imagine that somewhere else, simultaneously, there was another game like that happening and it was all women.

The main inspiration for the actual game itself, in terms of how it was presented, was a lot of Mahjong Manga, such as "Akagi" and "Ten". My experience reading Kaiji was interesting because there was one arc that was all about mahjong, and the scanlations would have translation notes that explained all the mahjong terminology that came up, so I was kind of learning mahjong as I read, like figuring out the power systems in a battle shonen. This continued to be true in Akagi and Ten as well, when I got to those, with every new Yaku or mahjong hand or play being like some new special move in a martial arts manga. And that experience was something I kind of wanted to replicate, hence the glossary. But unfortunately, we don't even get to see one full game play out, so I'm not sure I accomplished being a gateway into mahjong very effectively.

I actually did come up with who the other 3 champions were (it was one of the first things I decided), and some people might be able to guess them if they're familiar enough with mahjong media. But ultimately only one of them ended up actually having their identity revealed, in the after-credits (although all were shown). Incidentally, some people have questioned whether someone being discarded actually means they're gone for good, and all I can say to that is that there is enough information in the story to arrive at an answer to that. Maybe if I ever continue this story properly, you'll find out the answer to that more definitively. But if I do, it won't be in AAO.

The reason the story ends so quickly is due to a couple of things. For one, I wanted it to be a short epilogue from the beginning. But two, it was very difficult to tell this kind of story in AAO. I had actually considered letting it be more interactive, and actually simulating the mahjong game, letting the player make decisions on who to discard and stuff, but it would have been way too complicated to do in AAO, and would have required way more renders and logic than I was willing to do for just a short epilogue that is not only niche in that it's a sequel to another AAO case, but that it's also crossover with both Kaiji and Umineko, two things that are already relatively niche. I was never going to be looking at a huge audience for this project. In fact, I'd say the biggest, most limiting factor in AAO that prevented me from taking this concept further was the screen size. I was really pushing it in terms of keeping the renders small enough to fit in AAO while having all the things I wanted in them, but also having enough detail that the player can tell what they're looking at. Even just a mahjong hand, I couldn't do in a single row and have the tiles still be readable to the player, which was very limiting. The scenes where you see the team's tile makeup are really cluttered and I wouldn't be surprised if players don't remember them very well. Ideally, I'd have preferred to have them all on screen at all times.

Anyway, the story concludes with a bit of anticlimax, but I'm satisfied with that as a representation of how this iteration of Collin would turn out. This was ultimately something like an extended bad ending, with the True Ending not actually leading to Tea Party, and being the true fate of Collin. It would be interesting if someone got the normal ending of Champion of Turnabouts, then played Tea Party, and then went back to get the true end.

I have no plans to try to get Tea Party featured, because it's weird, and kind of unnecessary, it was just something I wanted to make.

[Averia]

Spoiler : :

Yeah, when I played it and saw all the various rules and evidence being added, I started entertaining the idea of "Is it actually going to be a playable game" but I kept thinking rationally I couldn't imagine a fully interactive mahjong game being created with the AAO editor.

I'm far from knowledgable with it (I just tinkered a bit) and I know people have made things that broke the mold (well CoT itself is such an exemple) but it still seemed beyond daunting.

But yeah it's the first Kaiji X Umineko crossover I have ever seen.
Umineko might be niche but so is Kaiji (and in some way, I'd say Kaiji might be even more niche since Umineko at least has the Mystery fandom propping it. I have seen a lot of Umineko reference on AAO, not so much for Kaiji).