In Development

Playable Character

Whenever a city is mired in the fog of lies and impending misfortune, The Detective, the cosmic embodiment of Truth, appears. As objectivity incarnate, The Detective does not have the capability of discerning between human faces and voices. In turn, The Detective has the power to exist beyond the absolute truth that is the flow of time, with the ability to stop, fast forward, and rewind time for any particular person.

Narrative

Under the watchful eye of an expansive eternal night sky and the gentle embrace of perpetual rain, a quiet city stands in serenity, yet afflicted with looming tragedy brought on by four young street musicians. The Detective is tasked with uncovering the truth of their fates, in order to reset the timeline and prevent any of those events from ever happening.

Mechanics

Upon the presence of The Detective, a city becomes scattered in time across several timeframes that converge onto one truth. As you explore this city's streets, you will see several characters  that you can inspect. Upon inspecting characters, you have the option to take them outside the flow of time which stops time, and gives you the ability to view their prior actions and the future actions they are going to take in isolation. You must connect all of these individual pasts and futures, in order to piece together this case.

Showcase/Exhibition Features

This game has a special showcase variant, featuring several additional set pieces to accentuate the experience of play. The manipulation of time will be carried out using an alternative controller taking the shape of a Pocket Watch, built with an Arduino and alternative buttons. The exhibition version of the game will also feature a 2nd interactable touch screen that will be used to showcase the world map, a laminated map of the city, physical components to annotate that map with, and several aesthetic set-pieces to supplement the experience.

Build Details

The build below is  a prototype of the game's demo case. It is fully playable from start to finish, however, does not reflect what the final shape and feel of the game will be. This build version is controlled with J, K, and L as well as the mouse.

Controls: You are restricted to forwards movement, which you do by holding down the left mouse button, and for time manipulation, press J to stop time when an icon appears over an NPC's head, and during stopped time you can hold K to rewind or hold L to fast forward. If you press J again, you go back to controlling the detective. You can pull up the Case Timeline with right click, and close it again with right click. The Case Timeline is fully operated by mouse input.