Pseudonarrative Dissonance by Baby Dino Herd

A hardboiled gumshoe finds himself on a fruitless chase performing meaningless tasks.
Controls:
- WASD to move.
- Mouse move to look.
- Click to interact.
Hints:
- You're only out of leads when the story says so. There is no fail or win state. Once you've cracked the code, there's nothing left for you to do.
- When switching between movement and interaction modes in WebGL, you may need to click the mouse to give focus back to the window.
Made with Unity 5.6 (including TextMeshPro and Post Processing Stack), Blender, Gimp, Substance Designer, and Reason.
Ratings
| Overall | 263th | 3.519⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 512th | 2.981⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 473th | 3.111⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 659th | 2.63⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 147th | 3.759⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 5th | 4.37⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 177th | 3.167⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 2th | 4.481⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
Just a few comments:
- The text is really hard to read... you shouldn't use fancy fonts like that all the time, it's tiring. Use an easier-to-read font for the long bits of text, and use the fancy fonts for keywords or other small bits of text. It would greatly improve the game, especially since reading was kind of important.
- It wasn't clear at the end if I failed and had to start over, or if I simply reached the end of the game. Make your failure states clear. If the player is doomed and can't do anything more, you might as well game-over them. And don't make the failure too punishing if you can avoid it.
- Small issue: the mouse loves leaving the game area when playing in a browser. A bit annoying having to click back into the game every time some text pops up.
Keep up the amazing work!
Great mood, music, and style. Very noir.
It's hard to make different kinds of interactable objects - and make them work well - in just 72 hours. You did!
Monologue reads surprisingly well.
**CONS:**
Like the previous comment said, it's hard to tell if we've failed or finished by the end.
Not a strong web build; the mouse goes off the edges, unless we're in full-screen, where it's super-hard to control.
**OVERALL:**
Short but solid. Technical issues aside, it's a strong jam* game. Congrats!
*EDIT: It's a compo entry!? Seriously, nice job.
love the ambient of the game! 5/5
Good job, and good luck!
EDIT: I played this on stream and provide extensive feedback there, please go and have a look! [Twitch Stream](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/256065115?t=00h00m07s)
I was tempted to write my review with the noir language you were using, but I know I can't even begin to reach the *excellence* on display here. The language had me impressed and laughing for most of the game. It's beautifully camp and perfectly moody.
On top of that, you managed to back the moody language up with a phenomenal visual and audio atmosphere. The endless tunnel and abstract architecture gave me a strong Beginner's Guide vibe (probably helped by the streetlights being a dominant theme :P). I adore that aesthetic it's very rare to see that outside of Davey's work, so thank you for getting it to work so well.
The puzzles aren't the greatest mechanically. They fit in the theme, but they feel unnecessarily contrived. The first two puzzles made sense - they were simple almost tutorial-like devices that gave the player the feeling of participation without breaking the timing (again, Davey Wreden comes to mind). If all the puzzles had been in this style I would not have complained. But the latter two puzzles (the math and code) broke the immersion the rest of the game had so wonderfully kept. I had to google "sawbuck" and the code didn't seem to register the correct answer so I tried a bunch of strategies, tried to work out if SWIFT was referring to a bank, googled some more, then came back and solved it. I think more input-the-right-word puzzles would fit in with your theme, if you do want to create that challenge. Button pressing didn't do much for me.
I love the footsteps, I love the shaders, I love the writing, and I love the atmosphere. If you'd had nothing else in the game I would have been a happy camper. The puzzles added a layer of depth and purpose, and even if they didn't stand up on their own, they contributed to the game as a whole, making it that little bit deeper and more enjoyable. This is a LD gem and I hope you keep on doing stuff like this.
P.S. - all this said, I have no idea what incompatible genres you were combining here.
(but also I don't know what genres its mixing--eh, whatever, it's a bogus theme anyway)
(Edit: Oh, I guess I could see the combo being something like "adventure+puzzle" with the little QTE minigames)