This Loop (TM) by CJGladback

[raw]
made by CJGladback for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

Enjoy the soothing visual novel activities of participating in an interdepartmental meeting at Clockwork Inc, the leaders in their field. Strengthen friendships, learn your coworkers' names, and try to figure out which one of them is a murderer.

Good luck!

CW: Cartoon depiction of blood and mentions of death

gameplayscreenshot02.png gameplayscreenshot01.png


This is officially my second-and-a-half playable submission for a game jam. We got images WITH story this time, and better-noted code that feels like I might actually be able to use it again. I'm pretty hyped.

I used Ink and Unity, implementing a lot more (and surprisingly a lot less copy-pasta) in both engines than the last interactive fiction I made. There were still plenty of points where I realized I was being an idiot and had to just do the code the inefficient way after struggling to fix the efficient one for several hours. But learning was had nonetheless.

Only wish I'd gotten more of the story and some music.


Already uploaded a bug-fix after discovering a chunk of the Ink went missing, leading to several very unintended loops.

Ratings

Overall 729th 3.553⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1244th 2.947⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1291th 2.842⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 294th 4.053⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 900th 3.447⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 238th 3.647⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 928th 3.265⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Given 18🗳️ 12🗨️

Feedback

Baconeta
10. Oct 2020 · 04:47 UTC
Is the loop, the fact that the game is never loading :(? I waited 10 minutes so far :s
🎤 CJGladback
10. Oct 2020 · 04:55 UTC
@baconeta Thank you for trying! I just checked and it still loads immediately for me; you might have to refresh the page if it failed to connect something in first place. It's pretty light on assets since the visuals are just a few sprites with very little post-processing.
Baconeta
10. Oct 2020 · 05:39 UTC
@cjgladback I just reloaded it again and it loaded instantly. Cheers! :D
LazyAlarm
10. Oct 2020 · 06:03 UTC
Impressive that you wrote a murder mystery in just a few days! I'm atrocious with names so I did struggle to get through it at points. As entertaining as some of the lines for the unwritten characters are, I found that on repeats I would click my way down the list out of habit and have to reread the same lines over again which lead to me eventually skimming through new lines without realizing it. Again though, the story seemed well done, the characters lines seemed refined and generally was well written.
elysiagriffin
11. Oct 2020 · 21:06 UTC
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767497194?t=10h08m26s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
matthewi
15. Oct 2020 · 05:41 UTC
Definitely has a lot of potential but I think that a whole murder mystery story and its implementation into a game might be too much for a weekend! I loved the concept and how you incorporated the theme. It got a little hard to follow at times, but I still enjoyed it!
Invixel
17. Oct 2020 · 22:02 UTC
This is the most humorous game I've played, and I really enjoyed it. It got a bit confusing with who was speaking at what time, but it wasn't too bad. Loved the artstyle, it's a really good way to get good graphics without having to spend too much time designing all the details.

Loved the sideplot of starting a fight and getting caught by the police!

GG WP (Great game, well programmed!)
LeReveur
18. Oct 2020 · 15:10 UTC
If I was stuck in that kind of loop, I think I would be the murderer after few loops :laughing:
Good job!
byazzle
20. Oct 2020 · 02:08 UTC
Great entry! You captured the theme perfectly. The frustration of the repitition was balanced well against the satisfaction of breaking the loop, so good job! :D
Satolas
20. Oct 2020 · 14:20 UTC
Poor ms.Loop XD died ...x... times
Really liked the clarity of the graphics.
The people highlighted when they speaks its a nice solution

Like the dialogs
![pvOiQnCBiY.png](///raw/8ca/53/z/3a4f9.png)