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diegoJdawg445

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New demos that I have tried

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There are a lot of adventure game demos being released right now, here are the ones I tried and my thoughts. Feel free to add yalls two cents on any of them, or ones you have tried

NINE NOIR LIVES
This is a detective game, staring cats, so something like blacksad. It is a comedy adventure game.

Positives
-Great voice acting, and pretty funny dialogue. The only character that sounded a bit off was the police chief
-Graphics were nice, nothing mind blowing but gets the job done
-The UI was good. the cursor moved flawlessly, the game has a hotspot marker and I like that the right mouse button cycles through all your options.
-Since this is a game that stars cats, you have the option to try and lick everything, with some funny and charming responses.

Negatives
-Demo is real short, with not much gameplay. 90 percent of the demo is watching the characters talk. There really is only one sort of puzzle to solve.
-I also thought some of the audio mixing was off a little.
-There needs to be more animations. When you do something in the game it skips over several animations that should be there

Overall I was impressed and will keep my eye out on this game.

Here is the like to the steam page

https://store.steampowered.com/app/914890/Nine_Noir_Lives/

     
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Great idea, was thinking of something like that as well!
I’ve tried a ton, here are quick snippets:

Nine Noir Lives - I liked it in general, seems like it’s going to be a well-rounded classic point-n’click. Really liked the art style, but it was really hard to say about the story since the set-up didn’t show anything super exciting. Might be a run-of-the-mill one, might turn out great. I’m looking forward to this one.

I agree, Jdawg445, on that the demo was mostly intro of the story, so lots of talking and not much playing, and I think that devs realized that as well based on the answers in the forum. Although, I’d say the only thing in common it has with Blacksad (which I’m currently playing) is cat detective as a lead. This is a cutesy, “I-am-adorable-and-I-know-it” cat PI with cat jokes for days in cartoon comic style, Blacksad is your textbook noir story with all the ups and downs of the style, well fleshed out serious script and a hard-boiled private eye in the center.

Chinatown Detective Agency - I wasn’t really expecting a real-life research part to this game (which seem to divide people who played it in half), but I liked it. I really appreciate the aesthetics in this game, it’s beautiful. The only thing that I could pick on would be a very linear approach and minimum interactions with environment which give you little control over the investigator. There are also stats you have to keep up - sleep and food, and a plane ticket purchasing system which was unique to say the least, and although it didn’t really have that much value in demo, it’s supposed to be greatly expanded on in full game. This is such a strange in-between genres adventure (inspired by Carmen Sandiego games, according to devs) that I’d be really curious to hear what others think about it. I’m looking forward to this one as well.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172190/Chinatown_Detective_Agency/

LOVE - A Puzzle Box Filled with Stories. Highly recommend this demo for all the puzzle lovers. Which I’m not, by the way. I only go for those kind of games occasionally, but this little demo managed to make me feel all emotional in its 15 minutes (I’m not crying - you crying), so I can only imagine what the whole game will pull off. I’m not much for highly emotional stories either, and I still recommend to try this out. Very unique concept.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1239490/LOVE__A_Puzzle_Box_Filled_with_Stories/


Cyanide and Happiness: Freakpocalypse - if you know what that is, you’ll know exactly what to find here. Great vibes. If you don’t - this is a classic p’n'c based in high-school, bit raunchy, bit controversial with a specific sense of humor, encompassing all of the above. Liked it very much, will be getting it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/869880/Cyanide__Happiness__Freakpocalypse_Part_1_Hall_Pass_To_Hell/

Children of Silentown - this was a lot more “cozy”,for the lack of better word, than I expected based off the screen shots. I thought it would be in the horror field, but it turned out to have a spooky vibe in the cute adventure world, as oppose to flat out creepiness of horror adventures. Nice mysterious set-up, sweet kid protagonist and some ominous things happening. I’ll keep an eye on it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1108000/Children_of_Silentown/

Welcome to Elk - this was a nice surprise, because I didn’t expect how “realistic” this would be. Lots of human behavior portrayed in a very down-to-earth manner. Very eye-catching art style too. I had a laugh, but I think things will turn serious in this game later on. Will be definitely getting this one.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1015940/Welcome_to_Elk/

Ok,that’s part 1. I plan on trying a few more. I’m also interesting in what everyone found interesting/worth noting.

 

     

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Framing Dawes
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1130820/Framing_Dawes_Episode_1_Thyme_

Seems like a small project and it’s notable. Some small technical glitches, some of the art I found a bit hit or mess - although I do overall like it. Kinda classic look to the backgrounds in particular.
Writing I found unfortunately a bit suspect which is a bit of an issue when it doesn’t look like there’ll be too much gameplay. It is however a reasonably intriguing story - well, as the title implies the heroine might be framed for murder - so could be okay.

I expect this to be a niche title that won’t get too much attention going by how little it currently seems to get, but I also expect it to be a solid enough experience.

     
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Aurora- The lost medallion

A cute little adventure game about kids being kept safe underground by robots. The whole premise of the demo is you are playing hide and seek and have to find 8 friends

Positives
-graphics are pretty nice
-good voicework, very charming
-interesting world
-puzzles were simple yet fun when you stop trying to overthink things

Negatives
-Not sure really what the story is about
-No hotspot marker, although there really is not too much to interact with
-Not very much to interact with
- UI is fine but not the way I prefer to play

Overall im excited to see where this could go

link
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1088610/Aurora_The_Lost_Medallion_Episode_I/

     
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The wild case

This is a game about some supernatural beasts terrorizing a town

Positives
None

Negatives
-very static animations
- no voice acting at all
- no real puzzles, just one fetch quest after another
- very unlikable characters
- just a very ugly game to me
- it is just a demo but you dont even get a real taste of what the story is

I have zero interest in this game going forward

link

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1178230/The_Wild_Case/

     

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Ghost on the Shore
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Demo consisted in a Walk simulator on a uninhabited island. Your path is leaded by a ghost/spirit that seems to live in your head and wants you to uncover a mistery. The dialogue system is good as it allows you to choose lines while walking, so you don’t feel completely passive. The variety of things happening (uncover clues, walk, talk, changes of scenarios, and ghosts) keeps you involved, even if there aren’t any characters to interact with or puzzle to solve. The graphics are good in the art direction, but sometimes it feels a little bit washed out or repetitive.

Positives
- Wonderful atmosphere
- Well written dialogues
- Nice voice acting
- Keeps you interested

Negatives
- assets seems reused a bit
- low-poly/paint-art style feel a bit flat
- lack/poor animations on foliage and characters

link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1211930/Ghost_on_the_Shore/

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When The Past Was Around
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Demo consisted in a series of rooms, each one is a segment of a love story fairy tale between a girl and a owl. Each room needs inventory items to be used/combined to proceed to the next one.  Handmade graphic art is beautiful, and so are the musics. Feels a bit too much of a casual game and many puzzles are not inherent to the story told. The puzzles themself are fair, but some of them comes out of nowhere. There are also Florence-style easy minigames that should progress the introspection and story.

Positives
- Wonderful handmade graphics
- Great audio
- Nice puzzle difficulty

Negatives
- Puzzles are not integrated within the story
- Sometimes the emotional content doesn’t deliver

link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1164050/When_The_Past_Was_Around/

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Genesis Noir
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Demo consisted in a series of events leading a sax player to search for a contrabass player, often following its sound and playing with him. The game is presented in a very cinematic way, with a unique and well executed art style, and there are many wow moments expecially when the gameplay entwines with the sound design and music. Gameplay relies on light minigames and pointing/dragging on the right spot to proceed into the narrative.

Positives
- Unique art style
- Fantastic sound design integrated in game
- Inventive experience and wow moments

Negatives
- Art prevails on challenge
- Light narrative

link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/735290/Genesis_Noir/

     

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Joined 2010-03-22

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The Dreamcatcher

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The demo consist in a 1st person perspective walking simulator where you are a man who gets into dream worlds. A rich and eerie atmosphere, together with detailed interiors (sometimes exteriors are a little empty) will make you wonder what happened to his wife, following her presence into man’s dreams. Dreams and levels seems to mantain you quite involved, but sometimes the supernatural happenings and weird behaviours (who would go to sleep with an open window during a tempest?) overstay its welcome a bit, making you go through scenarios without a proper reason or motivation to do it. Walking speed is also slow so probably you’ll want to run all the time.

Positives
- Very good 3d graphics
- Decent variety of locations to explore

Negatives
- Excessive use of unexplainable supernatural elements deter involvement
- Slow walking speed
- Some locations lack anything to do.

Link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1056590/_The_Dreamcatcher/

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Lust from Beyond: PROLOGUE
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The demo consist in a 1st person psychological horror adventure game with occult and erotic themes. The locations of the prologue consists in two settings: the Victorian mansion where the Cult of Ecstasy lives and Lusst’ghaa - the Land of Ecstasy - an erotic version of H.R.Giger universe mixed with E.A.Poe elements. The game blends its canvas between an adventure game, including inventory objects, puzzles and characters to talk with, and horror sections where you’ve to run or avoid enemy creatures. The former part is interesting, with a wonderful atmosphere and exquisite detail in sound and modeling, with exploration of the manor encouraged by some tasks (not so difficult and nicely guided) that need you to find and use inventory items, along with some minigames to solve. The latter section in the Lusst’ghaa world is instead a little bit clunky, and you’ll often wonder what hit you to death, and why the last autosave is so distant. In both of worlds you’ll encounter a very wide range of explicit sexual content, often without any real motivation to be there.

Positives:
- Gorgeous and detailed visual
- Polished and nicely guided
- Intriguing H.R.Giger / Lovecraftian atmosphere

Negatives:
- Frustrating deaths in Lusst’ghaa world
- Abuse of barely-in-context sexual content

Link:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1035120/Lust_from_Beyond/

     
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I’ve tried a few demos but declined from trying a lot of them due to a trend for what I’ve perceived as animal characters taking the place of humans.  Laughing

1 The Wild Case 

Jdawg445 - 22 June 2020 12:53 AM

The wild case

This is a game about some supernatural beasts terrorizing a town

Positives
None

Negatives
-very static animations
- no voice acting at all
- no real puzzles, just one fetch quest after another
- very unlikable characters
- just a very ugly game to me
- it is just a demo but you dont even get a real taste of what the story is

I have zero interest in this game going forward

link

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1178230/The_Wild_Case/

I can’t disagree with this appraisal but the background artwork was pretty nice & should have been a positive. My overall impression from the artwork, navigation etc is that the game lends itself more to a Casual game with the current dialogue needing to be addressed as it comes across as hostile.

A Painter’s Tale
I wouldn’t have gone near this game If I’d paid more attention to screenshots showing the big blocky protagonist who seems to be a far uglier version of Spongebob Squarepants - there’s nothing in the demo to compensate for that.

The Crimson Crown - I never finished the demo but I may buy the game on release.
I’m really not that au fait with text adventures but I do like there to be some visuals & I think this game seems to offer some fun with messing around with a text parser. I’m not overly crazy about the pixellation of the characters but the backgrounds are more pleasing. I


Framing Dawes
Thanks Pyro - I tried this after reading your post:

Pyoro-2 - 21 June 2020 03:43 PM

Seems like a small project and it’s notable. Some small technical glitches, some of the art I found a bit hit or mess - although I do overall like it. Kinda classic look to the backgrounds in particular.
Writing I found unfortunately a bit suspect which is a bit of an issue when it doesn’t look like there’ll be too much gameplay. It is however a reasonably intriguing story - well, as the title implies the heroine might be framed for murder - so could be okay.

I expect this to be a niche title that won’t get too much attention going by how little it currently seems to get, but I also expect it to be a solid enough experience.

I liked this a lot but felt there wasn’t enough just yet to see how the potentially interesting mechanics would play out? Thanks for drawing attention to it.  Thumbs Up
  Smile


Willy Morgan: Light-hearted, visually competent with good voice-acting. Nice demo! I will buy the rest of the game. Thumbs Up 
 
Crowns & Pawns: I personally didn’t mind the interface to do with looking/acting & how to use the items. Even without the voice-acting I thought that there was enough intrigue to want me to play more!  Smile

     
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Pyoro-2 - 21 June 2020 03:43 PM

Framing Dawes
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1130820/Framing_Dawes_Episode_1_Thyme_

Seems like a small project and it’s notable. Some small technical glitches, some of the art I found a bit hit or mess - although I do overall like it. Kinda classic look to the backgrounds in particular.
Writing I found unfortunately a bit suspect which is a bit of an issue when it doesn’t look like there’ll be too much gameplay. It is however a reasonably intriguing story - well, as the title implies the heroine might be framed for murder - so could be okay.

I expect this to be a niche title that won’t get too much attention going by how little it currently seems to get, but I also expect it to be a solid enough experience.

Tried it way before summer festival, so for anyone interested - the demo is available for this game at all times, I believe (it is, as of right now).I’d say it was a bit too on the wordy side, as of the amount of exposition presented at the very beginning goes against the situation main heroine finds herself in. (And A LOT happens) Feels like she needs to be taking some more urgent steps, but she stops and produces TONS of text: from her dialogues to house painting observations.Even wondering if this should be labeled as part- VN. Overall, agree with you on the issue.

The look of the game is attractive and the emerging story seemed to be intriguing as long as the overall game won’t drown under its own meta-message.

     
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Slender Threads - I really liked this humorous/spooky point’n'click from the developers of Kelvin and the Infamous Machine. Really intriguing, mysterious set-up of down-on-the-luck writer who stumbles into the odd town and strange events, very eye-pleasing graphics and what felt like a good balance of humor/creepiness. Puzzles seemed to be logical and just the overall impression was a very positive one. I’ll be getting this one right away. 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1116480/Slender_Threads/

A Space for the Unbound - came across this point’n'click/exploration mix accidentally and was positively blown away by the end of their set-up (the Prologue - which is what a demo was - is available on Steam now). It has deep story/exploration/relationship emphasis and the point’n'click interactions were pretty straightforward and of easier variety, but it all came through as a very polished, interesting experience. Beautiful pixel art and fantastic music included. This is for story lovers. Didn’t expect to like it as much as I did, and that’s always a plus to me.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1201270/A_Space_For_The_Unbound/

Lord Winklebottom Investigates - was on my wishlist since it was announced and will remain so after demo. An affable giraffe as Holmes and somewhat more sassy hippo as Watson solving a murder case in a poin’n'click manner. Lots of banter in the British dry wit manner, and I liked what I’ve seen from the puzzles. There’s just something about the characters who were on their way somewhere, but then managed to get worked up over stuff and in need of immediate tea time to calm themselves down.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1024160/Lord_Winklebottom_Investigates/

     
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bloody_eugene - 22 June 2020 11:44 AM

————————
The Dreamcatcher

————————
The demo consist in a 1st person perspective walking simulator where you are a man who gets into dream worlds. A rich and eerie atmosphere, together with detailed interiors (sometimes exteriors are a little empty) will make you wonder what happened to his wife, following her presence into man’s dreams. Dreams and levels seems to mantain you quite involved, but sometimes the supernatural happenings and weird behaviours (who would go to sleep with an open window during a tempest?) overstay its welcome a bit, making you go through scenarios without a proper reason or motivation to do it. Walking speed is also slow so probably you’ll want to run all the time.

Positives
- Very good 3d graphics
- Decent variety of locations to explore

Negatives
- Excessive use of unexplainable supernatural elements deter involvement
- Slow walking speed
- Some locations lack anything to do.

Thanks for the write-up! I was curious about this one and this description tells me a lot. Doesn’t sound too exciting.

My computer refused to run Lust for Darkness. Well, it started to run and then blacked out on me, so I had to watch some let’s plays and found it intriguing, for the lack of better word. I hope there will be a fix for an issue, so I can experience the world for myself. Could go either the way total absurdity or be right on the fine line of provocative/contemplative, as long as it doesn’t slide into “edgy for the sake of being edgy” category.

     
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DCast - 23 June 2020 10:49 AM

Lord Winklebottom Investigates - was on my wishlist since it was announced and will remain so after demo. An affable giraffe as Holmes and somewhat more sassy hippo as Watson solving a murder case in a poin’n'click manner. Lots of banter in the British dry wit manner, and I liked what I’ve seen from the puzzles. There’s just something about the characters who were on their way somewhere, but then managed to get worked up over stuff and in need of immediate tea time to calm themselves down.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1024160/Lord_Winklebottom_Investigates/

Oh yeah I played this when the Kickstarter campaign was live. Not sure if the current demo is longer, that one back then at least was terribly short. But very funny. It seemed so simple though (gameplay wise) and I was pretty broke that I ended up not backing since it was getting through anyway. Instead I decided to wait around for it come out properly. Will need to add it to wishlist now so I can check it out when it’s ready.

     

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Chinatown Detective Agency
Festival is over but this demo is still on itch.io.

Frankly I could pretty much just quote DCast and sign off on the post Wink

It looks nice, the idea seems interesting, with some interesting mechanics, but the demo was incredibly linear and it’s hard to tell whether the finished game will be interesting with its mechanics or just annoying.

For myself I’m skeptical. But I’d also say there’s a possibility of surprise.

     
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on my quest to find a new detective adventure game to play I tried the demo for detective grimoire and the tangle tower. Instead of doing positives and negatives im going to just give my thoughts, bc this is a game that is not for me at all, but I would understand 100 percent why some would like it. The Voice acting is really quite amazing with some solid dialogue, but the art style is not for me, it reminds be of something tim burton would do and im no fan of tim burton anymore, especially after charlie and the chocolate factory. I also didnt like the UI and not really having an interactive inventory, it all just seemed rather cumbersome to me. Also the setting is all a bit too surreal for my taste. But like I said I understand some gamers loving this title. It is a skip for me however.

     

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