A Puzzling Thriller inspired by the Zero Escape and Danganronpa series.
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Latest Updates from Our Project:
Recent Progress Rundown
over 3 years ago
– Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 03:17:23 PM
This will be a pretty short update. Much of what I've been working on isn't something that I'd like to show, so I will just talk about it.
Since the last update I've been working primarily on non-challenge room environments. For example: what you see before you ever begin Thief's Roulette (Lady Luck's game), the facility as a whole, and the Dreams. Regarding those Dreams, if you've played or seen the recent Backer Demo, you will have gotten a glimpse of the dream visuals or at least my approach, but they do not represent the game's actual dreams. In case anyone is wondering, they are an important part of the game. The dreams have a reason and you will discover that when you play. ;)
Another thing you may have seen in the demo is the Dining Room within the facility. I stripped much of that section down visually for the demo. It's going to look much nicer of course, even beyond what I've removed.
There are spoilers and little things that I'd rather save for the full release that will be there. Additionally, all of the devices and monitors that you'll see around the facility will be useable and display things. One of those are in the room just outside of this one:
The bulky machine on the counter is how the Thieves order their food. It gets dispensed from the slot on the other end. Lady Luck wants them to be comfortable during the breaks between challenges and eliminations. If I got anyone's hopes up for eating minigames I apologize. You cannot eat in this game, but to make this place feel realistic, there has to be a way to get food! You can play around with the menus on the machine, though. I will say that you were going to have a hunger meter in the very early stages of this game's planning. There were even little side missions where you would need to get certain foods for another character before they would talk to you. That's sadly not going to be in this game...
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Besides environment work, I've been working on more of the game's writing and smaller scenes to bring it all together. One piece of feedback that I feel is very important is to create a much stronger feeling of being in the Challenge Rooms with other people. You are not alone during the challenges, but it certainly feels that way. The thing about having 2D Sprites represent the characters is it's hard to make them feel alive. This is especially the case during challenges where you're literally doing everything and they're just standing around. My idea to bring this all together is adding in short lines from the other characters when you examine things in the environment. So, I'll add more things to Look/Zoom at. There will be an examine button on the screen that will cause you and another character to remark on what you're looking at.
I will make this look nicer...
Along with this, I am adding quick scenes during the Challenge Rooms as well. It is important to me that Challenge Rooms rarely ever take control away from you, but I still want to place very quick scenes at the start, and during transition points where your team converses. There's a moment in Challenge Room 1 where speaking with Morgan will have her request something of you. I'll turn moments like that into a legitimate cutscene (a quick one, though).
On the topic of the Demo; the Publisher and I have decided to release a final public demo during Steam's Game Festival in June. A couple bugs screwed my chances for getting in on time for this past festival, but now that the demo is complete, that won't be a problem in June. It will also be a much more polished demo considering the game will likely be finished by then...
The June demo will be the last demo, and come alongside a trailer with the game's release date. I am confident that the game itself will be complete when the final demo is released, but that doesn't account for the console ports, additional testing and bug fixes, potential localization, etc. The game will release when those things are settled, which means it will land some time after the June demo.
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Here's some of the latest screenshots to end the update:
February recap and March plans
over 3 years ago
– Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 03:24:37 PM
This month there was a lot of work done on getting the game presentable on all fronts. I've made improvements to character art, UI/menus, and many environments. There was technically a demo release this month as well, but I had to keep it backer only. That turned out to not be the worst thing, however, because backers had some very good feedback for me that greatly improved the game. So in the end it worked out, but I still would like to get a public demo released sooner rather than later.
There was a lot of new stuff in this demo, and there's so much more than I haven't shown. It is definitely an understatement to say that Thief's Roulette is it's own game at this point. It began as a pretty simple Zero Escape fan's attempt at making something similar, and at this point I believe it could totally stand on its own. There will inevitably be comparisons (I did that to myself), but I'm confident that this game will stand out when it's complete.
It's not perfect, but I believe I'm on the right track here.
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To make this an actual Update, I did this:
It could use some slight speed/timing adjustments, but this is so much better than instantly jumping back after looking at something. I use this camera move so much, so it's definitely going to make the game feel better (and look nicer to watch).
It's been a while since I got new music, so here's a new track:
These previous months have been dedicated to getting everything in place for me to go all out and get things finalized one after the other. At this point, I can say that the gameplay is final, the menus (although lacking maybe a couple features) is final, the story and writing is also final (but will be proofread). I've done the 3d layout of every location in the game as well. March is going to consist of putting everything together and in a sense "finishing" the game. It won't actually be finished in that I could release it, but I'll be able to play from start to finish, filling in the blanks, adjusting scenes, etc.
I've begun to get more active on social media, and finally started posting on Instagram again. I'll try to stay consistent with it, but no promises...
There are still a couple things that I mentioned in the past that I haven't followed up on. The two big ones are the promo art and the Thief Device. I still haven't finished either one, but they're coming. The promo art will be finished this month now that all of the characters' designs are finished. It wouldn't really work to make promo art if the characters could suddenly look different the next month. The thief device was put on pause while I figured out the game's UI/UX designs. All of the UX changed dramatically from where it was back when I introduced the thief device. Now that I've got a solid idea of how I want to do my UX and menus, I can keep moving forward with the device. I want its visuals to mesh with the rest of the game. All of its functions are the same, but it's going to go through a major visual overhaul in March.
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That's all I got for this Update. The next one will probably have some new screenshots, I'm thinking Challenge Room 3 and maybe more of the dreams...
Demo Status
almost 4 years ago
– Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 08:42:22 AM
Through a discussion with my Publisher, I have been advised not to publicly release the Demo at this time. We want to maximize the effectiveness of all of the game's releases. So that means finding the best time to release a demo, trailer, and the game itself.
That being said, I will be releasing the demo to backers right now.
If you backed the game, you will receive a message through Kickstarter with a link to the demo.
I wanted to release it to the public, but that's not going to happen just yet. I know that many of the people following the game as of now did not contribute to the kickstarter campaign. This means not everyone reading this update will be sent the demo, and that sucks. One day everyone will be able to play it (before the release), but unfortunately that can't be today.
Development will continue as usual, but this was a pretty lame ending to all of my demo talk.
That's all for now. The next update will be on the 27th.
Short Update & Demo Incoming
almost 4 years ago
– Sun, Feb 14, 2021 at 03:50:15 PM
I was working on the demo all day today, and it took me until nighttime to realize that even though I finished the demo (it's done now), I still have to wait for Steam to review and accept it. That shouldn't take very long, but unfortunately I can't release it today. I'm hoping it will be live as early as possible for Sunday. It will be on Itch and Steam, btw. I just want to have them launch at the same time, so I have to wait for Steam to accept it.
I should have made an update here earlier, but it slipped my mind as I had been making "updates" in the discord group about the demo's status. Sorry about that.
The demo has some new music, new art and more. Once the demo is finally out, I'll make another update here. It's not perfect, but I think it does a good job of showing the feel of Thief's Roulette.
At this point it's all the little things that need the most attention. Like way more character expressions, CGs, way more sound effects and tighter sound design. Some of the transitions from scene to scene could be smoothed out to make the experience better. That's what I'm going to be focusing on post demo release. Still, I believe the bigpicture is there.
So if all goes well, demo day is tomorrow!
Character Art, New Screenshots & More
almost 4 years ago
– Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 05:57:10 PM
I was going to space this one out a bit, but let's try to keep it compact.
I added Alise to the characters that needed to be worked on. Honestly this is getting silly! I really need to just stop, but every time I take a step back (especially when I post it here), I see all the things that can be improved. So, although today should be my "phew I'm done" moment, I doubt it will be. I'll just have to be smart with my time so that it doesn't become a problem that holds back the rest of the game.
That's the art for today, maybe there will be more another day.
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You'll get to see these places in the Demo and a little bit more.
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For those of you that have played one of the very first demos, you might remember that I used a moving camera during cutscenes. There was a cutscene where you and your team go down the elevator into the first Challenge Room. The camera would swing around from person to person, it was a bit much. At that time I had heard that the camera was not very smooth and that the motion wasn't very nice to look at. I ended up removing it, and since then have been trying to figure out a unique way to handle cutscenes. Unfortunately, I didn't figure one out in time for this new demo. That's the big feature I had wanted to show for this update, but things didn't work out. So the cutscenes as of now play out like a typical VN. I'll still keep working on it though, I want to do something interesting.
Along with that, I was going to show some Dreamy stuff, but I've decided to just let you see it for yourself in the Demo. The Demo will be up on February 3rd. I'll make a mini Update on that date to remind everyone.
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This turned out to not be that long of an update. Maybe I should have spread out those characters! A ton of work has been done this month. I'd say the one thing I'm behind on is Controller support. I'm mad at myself for not getting it done on time, but I'll update this new demo as soon as it's working. The background systems are looking good and the game runs pretty well. When the demo is out I'll finally get some real playtests, though. I'd like to see how it performs for people.
When it comes to the story, the challenge rooms, dreams, and all those things, I'm really far along. I'll likely get that all playable (but not pretty) by the end of March. I still don't want to give an exact release date because you never know what will happen, but it's approaching.
I feel like I'm forgetting something, but I don't know what... so... talk to you all on the 3rd.
