The Murder of You

[ixfuru]

Hello Miharu! Nice to meet ya. I'm kinda new around here, and I decided I'd playtest a game. So I did. And I chose yours. I wrote everything down as I played. So, here it is:

Content Hidden

MURDER OF YOU : Playthrough Review
a game made with RPGMaker VX Ace, by Miharu from
save-point.org

TITLE SCENE:

The Title Scene is plenty creepy enough. I like the music. It sets a rather
somber mood, and that appears to be the feeling you're going for. I think maybe
you should change the first command line from 'Murder!' to something else, I
would suggest 'New Case', so that it will work well with the second command.
Maybe the idea was for it to be catchy or attention grabbing. But it just
feels a little forced and besides, the name of the game is 'The Murder of You',
so there's no use in double-using the word on this scene.

STARTING OUT:

First off, I like the setting here, visually. It's an organized little room
where you can imagine the presumed-protagonist spends a lot of his days and
nights. One thing I noticed is that the scene fades in, then fades out, then
fades in again. I think I have a script that can help you with this. You
just need something to start the game 'faded out' so you don't have that
double fade in thing going on.

When the text starts, it shows a text box for the ringing of the phone. This is
something that can be easily implemented through sound effects. I would
suggest that you find a suitable effect and put it in there. Reading
'ring, ring, ring' forces the player away from the setting to read for
a moment. And it may help here to add some surprise the scene. Maybe
you could implement some 'writing sounds' here to before the phone rings.
Maybe a 'tired' balloon. Something to demonstrate that the guy isn't
just sitting there, but doing some work.

The next thing, was that the text box was used to display '!!!' at the shock
of hearing about the murder of the famous painter. Again, it may be better
to use an exclamation balloon. Also, accompany the balloon with another
sound effect! I have a script for this too, if you would like. As a rule,
balloons can create visible, real-time emotion without having to force
the emotion by making the player read. Especially when it's something
like '!!!'.

Okay, I started off when the conversation was over, and I found that I was able
to walk over the table. That shouldn't be possible, should it? Some passage
settings should be altered to make this impossible. I think maybe the scattered
paper on the table is set to 'below character'.

When I left the office room and headed out to the left. I found the bedroom.
Here, once again, there is some faulty passage stuff going on, as I was
able to walk onto the bed. Then, in the right-most window, you have it
set up to narrate a bit about how the protagonist can almost see inside the
neighbor's house from there. But here, you can face the right dresser and
it still says the bit about seeing into the neighbor's house. This
should not be, as when facing the dresser, the player is no longer peering
out the window.

OUTSIDE:

Okay, when I left the house, I found myself outside in a quaint little
wall-encompassed town. You should add some trees here. Some exterior
decorations probably. Maybe some small bushes between the houses. It
would add some detail to the atmosphere. And atmosphere is Great!
Also, you announce here, before I can even move, that I should go back
into the house and find a 'gem'. You also, inform the me that it will
open up a bonus at the end of the game if I can find them all. (Which I will!)
But here, you should not interrupt the game with this information. If
you want to show this, maybe make a little 'menu window' that tells
you about the gems and tracks the progress, like a 'quest' or something.
Never direct the player to where to find stuff, and never tell them what will
happen when they do. That kind of takes away the 'reward' of doing it. :)
Anyway, if you are absolutely determined to show this kind of developer to
player discussion, then you should do so with a different

Next, I also found that when you walk near your door, while outside, you are
forced into a transition, even if you are not facing the door. Here, you
should set the transition to the space with the door, and set the event to
trigger with 'action button'. This will make it so that the player has
to be facing the door and 'want' to go in before they are transferred.

Lightposts, south of your house, near the statue have passability issues.
It's cool that you can walk behind the lightpost, but you should make it so
the passability is 'same as character' at the base of the post and 'above
character' where the lights are. It seems odd that you can walk behind
and even 'through' the base, even when moving north and south, yet, you
can't walk through or behind the lights. You could also set those trees
near the statue with having 'above character' top halfs, so you can
walk behind those as well.

Having walked around the entire town, I now notice that there is no people.
No pets. Nothing really going on. Love the music. Even like the
'districts' in the town, but there's just nothing much to interact with.
Try adding an npc or two....er...wait a minute. Maybe everyone has vanished!
I should keep playing.

INSIDE THE MANOR:

Okay. I like the house where the murder happened. I also like the meeting
between protagonist and the guy just inside the door. He is startled and
jumps. It's really cool. But you should add a sound effect or a balloon
to the jump.

Now, just because I forgot to check the passability of the activation of
the door before I entered the place, I left the body laying there, undisturbed
and headed outside as soon as I was released from the conversation about
talking to the suspects. Well, two things occurred. Number one, the door
outside acts the same as the one near the protagonist's house. And two, when
I re-entered, the guy who led me to the body was standing just inside the door.
That's cool. I guess he could've left his position in order to be there
when I returned inside. But something odd occurred. I left him there
just inside the doorway and headed back to where the artist was laying dead.
Then, upon inspecting the knife, our hero starts having a conversation
with the guy who had led him there and who was now standing just inside
the doorway. This means, that he was talking to hero-guy without
even being anywhere near him.

You could fix that in several ways. Number one, you could get a 'save
event locations' script ( I wrote one for VX, but I'm sure someone wrote
one for Ace, too) Or, you could create two events to represent the
guy that leads you to the body. The first event would then disappear,
via a switch and a blank second page the moment he arrives at the
corpse with the player's hero--then, the second event, which
has a blank first page, could activate the second page off the same
switch and suddenly appear there. So it would look like the
same event and so that if some jerk like me plays the game and
tests for bugs, he or she wouldn't find his or her self standing
there having a conversation with the face of an invisible dude. Lastly,
you set a switch which activates the second page of the knife event.
Activate it when the player leaves the house and make it say something
like 'Gotta find out whose fingerprints are on this knife!' That way,
it would just be our protagonist thinking out loud if the other guy
isn't in the room.

I loved the way you go through that door in the hallway into the kitchen!
I went back and forth a few times just for the heck of it. I don't
think I've ever seen it implemented that way. Really cool!

Okay, I went and took the cook's fingerprints. Then, since I wasn't
alerted to the fact that they were given to me, I checked the menu
just to be sure htey were there. And they were. I also had the
dagger! Bonus! But..er...the dagger's description states 'The
Victim's fingerprints are on it'. That's not right is it? Why would
the 'victim' have his fingerprints on it. Should be 'The Suspects
fingerprints are on it' or 'There's some fingerprints on it'.

Did I mention that I like the menu system? Well I do. It's cool.
Not a lot of extra options that will presumably be of no use to
the player. Great!

Left the kitchen. Went back and forth through that awesome door
again a few times! :)

Having taken all the fingerprints, I then checked to see if the
dagger was still near the piano. And it was! But how could
this be? I have the dagger in my inventory! So, after you
pick up the dagger, the dagger needs to disappear from
the map. Also, revisiting the dagger also helped me to see
something else. All that jazz I said about the dagger before,
about whose fingerprints should be on it. . .disregard that.
As I had a second conversation with the invisible guy and
he told me that the fingerprints were of the victim. So it
was a suicide? But why am I collecting fingerprints? Hmm?
Play on. . .

The cook, under interrogation, claims that the murder victim
looked a little worried about something, but then says,
'Maybe I was just imaging' it. Now, technically speaking,
this could be true. Using 'image' as the verb here could
work. But I think you meant 'imagining it'. So you may want
to fix that.

OVERNIGHT IN THE MANOR:

Well, I did exactly what I was told to do and retired to the
manor's guest bedroom. I found the note. But how would
they have known I was going to spend the night? Plus, I
just live a few blocks away. All that said, I guess you
should probably make leaving the manor impossible, after all,
someone could leave and go back outside at this point. There,
they would see that it isn't night at all. (unless you made it
that way!) So, perhaps if the player goes to leave, you should
make a text box appear with the hero telling himself, 'I shouldn't
just yet. I still need to do some more snooping.' or something
like that.

Music changes, lights dim. This is good.

When I left the guest bedroom, I didn't go straight for where I
was supposed to meet the 'Murderer of You'. Instead,
I went into the butler's room and plundered. There,
I found the gloves. But was I really supposed to find that
yet? Apparently, my guy has it all figured out already.
If I'm not supposed to find the gloves this early, then you
should make sure that the door to the butler's room can't be
opened right away.

Another possible MAJOR mistake was the fact that I kept being
able to 'search for' the gloves even though I had already
found them. Plus, I found the gem. Then I pushed the
action button again and found another gem. And another. . .
This should certainly make finding the 30 gems easy. Just
keep revisiting the dresser in the butler's room. There's
an endless supply of gems there. You need to prevent this
from happening by using a self-switch so that the event goes
to a new page!

I could dash in the manor prior to the sleep-over. Why should
I not be able to dash now? Hmm. . .

I went into the dining room and got the bad ending when I didn't
agree to play the butler's games. So I loaded up again. I hadn't
saved for a while and had to start over from where I spoke to the
cook prior to the sleep-over. That's when I found a bug. When you
'cancel' out of the discussion with the cook, without choosing
to take fingerprints or interrogate, you are hit with a 'You already
have my fingerprints!' text box. This shouldn't be. So, you
should disallow cancel from the choice, or make a third choice which
is just 'Cancel', then make the act of canceling the choice box
revert to 'Cancel' option, so that nothing happens and the guy isn't
harping on how he already surrendered the prints.

Anyway, I didn't feel like continuing just yet. So I'm going to
end this here. I may go back and try again at a later date.
It was a fun experience doing the playthrough. You have some issues
to fix and all, but it shouldn't be too bad. Hope you enjoyed
my efforts. Keep at it, my friend.