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Thief's Roulette

Created by hiromu656

A Puzzling Thriller inspired by the Zero Escape and Danganronpa series. All purchases help support the development of the game.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Update Time
over 2 years ago – Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 02:02:42 AM

I usually post these in the morning (my time), but I'm up late working so update time is now.

What I've done these last two weeks:

  • All Challenge Rooms complete, both visual polish and gameplay.
  • Finishing Options and Menus - It's all functionally complete, but some of them just look/feel very basic. Trying to make everything have a little style to it. Can't go all out with fancy UI at this point, but I still want things to look nice.
  • Final Touches on the "Thief Device" - I haven't shown this in a long time since I've been changing the visuals so much. I will finally post it once it's done! Likely next update.
  • Trailer is done... now I just need that release date...

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Lastly, here's a couple visuals:

That's all for now. Good night!

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LINKS:

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 Steam Page 

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Gameplay Updates, Art and a Screenshot
over 2 years ago – Tue, Nov 09, 2021 at 12:42:01 AM

Quick one.

Here's what I've done these last two weeks:

  • Finishing up CGs - The CG Art for the game and the trailer. Trying to give them a certain cinematic look since so much of the game will be actively moving around and doing things. The breaks in gameplay need to have some quality to them.
  • More Lore - I definitely said this in a previous update, but seriously a lot of lore has been made. I've always had a pretty complete idea of how the world will be, but the problem was finding interesting ways to flesh out the world without having a character directly say things to you in an unnatural way. So I've been going back to early challenge rooms and sprinkling in little visual hints and things to find. In Challenge Room 2, which has the email puzzles, I've added more emails and pictures that also expand on the world outside. Little things like that are everywhere now, and will provide enough information to get you interested, but still keep some things mysterious.  
  • Mysterious Doors
  • New Interaction - In all the demos and gameplay so far, you can only really interact with something in 2 ways: you press the interact button and it does a thing, or you press interact and it zooms into that point of interest. From there you use your mouse/cursor to interact. I've added a third way, that's pretty much those 2 combined. You use the crosshair as a mouse/cursor and interact directly with things without zooming in. I even went back and changed a couple things you previously zoomed in on, to be directly interactive. This only works in certain places, since forcing controller users to be super precise would be annoying. So when interacting with big "Buttons" you don't need to zoom in anymore, you can interact directly with the screen as you are. 

So with this example, I previously would have made you press interact, zoom into the thing, then click it with the mouse/cursor. Now, you just walk up to it, aim and interact. This is just a Testing Room btw, so ignore the barebones look.

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Woops forgot to give him his arrow marking!

Funnily enough this shot was meant to go into the previous trailer like a standoff with the Lady Luck monitor, but I couldn't get the look right. I'm liking this so far, so just a little more time on it and it's done. This is the last piece of art I need to finish for the Trailer. There's a couple more like it that I haven't shown, that you'll see in the trailer as well.

I'm going to end it there. Thank you everyone for your patience and support!

Update Time
over 2 years ago – Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 02:13:22 AM

What I've worked on the last two weeks:

  • Finalizing Challenge Rooms 4 and 5 - Both are done on the gameplay front, but they can be prettier. One thing I've realized a long time ago, but is becoming a bit of a funny problem now, is that I have to be very careful with how I furnish rooms. I can't exactly fill the rooms with clutter and props because this is a game where you collect items, so that would lead to confusion. At the same time I wouldn't want every Item to be glowing or have an indicator because then you wouldn't need to look for anything. I have to play on that line of just enough detail to not feel empty, but not too much so the player won't be confused by what they can and cannot interact with.
  • Setting up Keybind Options - I forgot to do this, so I have to get to it now! Requires going back in and redoing a bit of code, but you can't really put out a game without the option to change keybindings these days.
  • Adding more Examine targets - Just more things in the environment to zoom into and get a bit of flavor text.

Been working on this, so I'll show it:

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To quickly talk about release; all of this turned out to be way more complicated than I thought. Not only is this my first "official game," but I'm largely doing it all solo. Testing, polish, performance, on different computers and OS and the additional consoles (which come with their own set of challenges), there's still more to do in and outside of the game. The game will be "complete" next month, but that doesn't mean it can be released. There's a lot to do, so I can't give precise dates as I'm still very inexperienced. Understandably, people do get nervous when it comes to Kickstarter games, so all I can do is stay active and transparent. I like responding to messages, and I've been consistent with the update schedule for over a year (maybe 2). One day it'll all be done, and the game will be in your hands. Progress has been going very well, so for now it's just a matter of time.

That's all I got for today, have a nice week.

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LINKS:

 Twitter 

 Youtube 

 Soundcloud 

 Backerkit Preorders 

 Steam Page 

 Itch.io Page 

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Update Time
over 2 years ago – Sat, Oct 09, 2021 at 04:04:40 PM

I'm just going to go over what I've worked on these last 2 weeks.

  • Lots of LORE - If you've ever played any of the Shock games (bio, system) or the Deus Ex games, you'll know just how much story and lore is packed into optional content. It can be emails, audio logs, or many other ways meant to distribute information to players that are interested in it. Since you're trapped in this facility, I want to have emails and notes for you to find, on top of the optional conversations you'll have with the other characters, that help you understand the world around you. That should add a nice layer of depth to the game world.
  • Graphical Improvements
  • Optimizing Code & Performance Improvement

Beyond that I've just been doing general development stuff. Refining puzzles that need attention, and making the environments look nicer.

In Challenge Room 2 (1/3rd of it is playable in the demo) you use an item called the Letter Converter. It essentially assigns a number to every letter in the English alphabet. This made for some cool puzzles I'd say, but using it can be quite clunky and unintuitive. So I've made some changes to that here:

The visuals here are going to change, but the new functions are a Quick Use button, and a way to store numbers from within the Converter screen. That "Q - USE!" in the bottom left is just a way to remind me to make it look prettier eventually, but it works! Press Q and pull up the letter converter without having to open your inventory. The store numbers function is meant to let you go from letter to letter saving the ones you wish to know the number of. I probably didn't present it in the best way, but I'm just pressing E, or whatever the interact button is, to save the number for that letter. So if I know that I need to convert the word LUCK, I will go to L, press the interact button, then to U, C, K (pressing interact button on each one). That will store the 4 digits, and you'll have it right there to review when you need it. When I playtested before, I would write down the numbers on a piece of IRL paper, so this is much more convenient. 

That's all I have for now. Have a nice weekend.

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LINKS:

 Twitter 

 Youtube 

 Soundcloud 

 Backerkit Preorders 

 Steam Page 

 Itch.io Page 

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Tiny Update + Trailer Talk
over 2 years ago – Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 04:46:44 PM

This time I really don't have anything to show. Gonna rant about trailers since I don't have anything else right now!

What I've been working on since the last update:

  • Finishing the remaining Challenge Rooms (just visual polish at this point)
  • Working on alternate character art for some unique moments in the game. Very vague, I know.
  • More CG art
  • Still working on the trailer

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I would love to show more of what I've been working on, but with the trailer coming, and the release of the game shortly after, there's only so much I can show without feeling like some players will go into the game knowing too much. I know personally, many times when I go to watch a movie trailer, halfway through I end up regretting having seen the trailer at all. Just that small feeling of "I wish I didn't know/see that" is enough to change the way you inevitably view the final product. I just always find myself thinking about the two "timelines", if you will, where you play a game or watch a movie, without seeing a trailer, compared to doing that same thing after seeing the trailer. When you go into that game/movie with little knowledge, the tiniest of things turn into a series of surprises. That's something that you're essentially robbed of just from watching one trailer; and I'm guilty of making 3, going on 4. Since this marketing material is important to selling your creation, you definitely have to make them, so what needs to change is the approach.

Thief's Roulette is in a fortunate spot where much of what you see in those first 3 trailers have either been removed, changed, or repurposed. Still, there's a lot of surprises that could have been, that are gone now. This 4th trailer is going to add to that list, but I have to make it so that the current state of the game is represented in some way. I couldn't sell Thief's Roulette using Trailers 1-3 because the game has changed in so many ways since then. It would be both misleading, and an unflattering representation of the game. 

Getting back to the "approach" that I think needs to change; I haven't fully figured out what to do, but I think I'm doing some things with this new trailer (and even the demos) that are in the right direction. Speaking of demos, each demo that I made, was sure to never show how the main character got to Lady Luck's facility (one example). There's even demo exclusive parts that are meant to keep you a little bit unsure of what to expect from the final version. The Stanley Parable notably made a demo that was completely separate from the real game. Its purpose was to simulate the feeling of the game, without letting you play through the actual moments of the real game. I can't say that this is the "correct" approach, but I do think it's in the right direction. In my mind, demos and trailers should strive to evoke the feeling of the finished product while exposing as little as possible of the actual creation. The problem with that is it begins to get dangerously close to being "misleading." I don't think its good to mislead people, so you have to be really careful there. So for me, that grey area between misleading, and allowing the consumer to let their imagination run wild is about where I'd like to have my demos and trailers going forward. I wouldn't want a player to feel cheated or tricked, I would want them to feel like they don't know exactly what to expect, but are sure that they want to find out. Now, I've watched plenty of trailers, so this idea is not something I came up with, but I would love to see it become the norm. And of course it depends on the kind of game/movie/thing you're making. So lots of factors to consider. At the very least, it will become the norm for games I create. In other words, look forward to Trailer 4, or skip it!?

I could probably keep rambling about this subject but I'll stop there. Go watch that new trailer for Splatoon 3, the second half of it totally hits on what I'm talking about. That's just the most recent example I could think of, it's got some cool stuff. If you've seen that, watch any trailer for the Silver Case games.

Anyway, that's all I got. Have a nice day.

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LINKS:

 Twitter 

 Youtube 

 Soundcloud 

 Backerkit Preorders 

 Steam Page 

 Itch.io Page 

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