YouDunnit Deluxe Study

Squidcor

Sooooo, as part of one of my honours modules I've been tasked with redeveloping an old game using it as part of a user experience study. Some of you may remember the original YouDunnit from the 2010 GGJ, an interesting backwards-time-murder-mystery-turn-based-stealth game. Well, YouDunnit has always been one of my favourite game ideas, and it was a natural choice seeing as it could certainly use a bit of redesigning.

The result is YouDunnit Deluxe; the same idea, but hopefully a more usable execution:



So obviously seeing this is supposed to be a study of sorts, I need participants. If you play the game for any decent period of time (10 minutes or so), it would be greatly appreciated if you could fill out a quick, one page, multiple choice questionnaire on your experience of the game play. This should take less than a minute.

Whether you complete the questionnaire or not I would still love feedback on the actual game itself.

Download

Online Questionnaire

Thanks, you guys are awesome.

dislekcia

Oh sweet, a YouDunnit reboot :)

Ok, quick feedback, given that I know the original inside out (obvs).
-The cutscene-style story framing is much more effective, I like it. Not sure if I like Lemming not being an android anymore tho, that had humor to it. Toast! Bwahaha :)
-The spacebar interaction thing feels a little superfluous, I'm not sure how great the additional interactions are and if they're worth always having that popup menu for. You could have made the garlic be something you stand on and then hit space to eat, but the character just tells you that it doesn't seem very fresh at all, hit spacebar if your SURE you want to eat it... etc.
-It's hard finding where your character is when a level starts, we had this same problem with the original and I'm not sure the particlesplosion solved it well there. Maybe a zoom out from the character?
-Similarly, spotting objectives to know where to go is equally difficult.
-But having the objective in the top right is win!
-The larger level feels like it has less places to hide in, sometimes you can get stuck without a way to avoid other passengers at all. That could happen in the smaller map too, but it was less likely.
-I really like the dialogues with the detective that frame the characters better. Really really.
-What happened to the sounds? ("Ullo")

... I have no idea where Nackle's shoes are. Wha? I may be getting more sold on the extra examining events, having laughed quite a bit more than the original. But I'm pretty sure you could have another way to get to that content that doesn't get in the way of gameplay as much. Also, hiding is impenetrable? Can they still come stand on me and find me?

It took me a while to get Betty's name. Ouch.

Eep! Crash:

___________________________________________
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object TextBox:

############################################################################################
VMError!! Occurred - Push :: Execution Error - Variable Get -6.portraitSprite(100131, 0)
 at gml_Object_TextBox_Draw_0 (line -1) - <unknown source line>
############################################################################################
Self Variables : 
key(100034) = "level5"
portrait(100035) = 19
portraitSide(100036) = 0
selected(100117) = 0
textTime(100118) = 1
sep(100119) = 18
gutter(100120) = 22
width(100121) = 400
bgColor(100122) = 0
shadowColor(100123) = 6857666
activeLength(100125) = 0
textLength(100126) = 166
nextChar(100127) = "I"
px(100132) = 124
py(100133) = 200
pheight(100134) = 66
pwidth(100135) = 66
cornerSize(100136) = 4
nextBox(100022) = 100619
active(100023) = 1
height(100024) = 72
activeText(100025) = "I"
text(100026) = "If my framing attempt is going to be successful, then I need to make sure that other crew members aren't in the same room as each other when I trigger the detonation."
remainingChars(100027) = "If my framing attempt is going to be successful, then I need to make sure that other crew members aren't in the same room as each other when I trigger the detonation."
numOptions(100031) = 0

Squidcor

dislekcia said:

The cutscene-style story framing is much more effective, I like it.

dislekcia said:

I really like the dialogues with the detective that frame the characters better. Really really.

Yar. I spent a fair amount of time dissecting the original and trying to figure out exactly what made the original so hard to actually play the first time around. I realised that a lot more work needed to happen to the pacing of the game, particularly early in the game to stop players being thrown in the deep end before they know what is going on.

It also wasn't extremely obvious who the characters were, or how to distinguish between them. That's what motivated the move away from sepia and the more recognisable portraits.

dislekcia said:

The spacebar interaction thing feels a little superfluous, I'm not sure how great the additional interactions are and if they're worth always having that popup menu for. You could have made the garlic be something you stand on and then hit space to eat, but the character just tells you that it doesn't seem very fresh at all, hit spacebar if your SURE you want to eat it... etc.

I thought the original felt very much you were just going from point A to point B. The choices are there to try and make it more engaging, to make the player feel like they are actually doing something more than just going from A to B without getting caught. It also adds to the narrative and makes the game seem less lifeless?

However, I think I've realised that the real issue with the game is the stealth element. I now the best way to explore the topic would be in more of a pure problem solving fashion, a la Monkey Island. With inventories and proper puzzles, and without the pressure of getting caught. This would also give the player more time to explore and understand the story at their own pace.

Whaddaya think? YouDunnit the adventure puzzle game?

dislekcia said:

The larger level feels like it has less places to hide in, sometimes you can get stuck without a way to avoid other passengers at all. That could happen in the smaller map too, but it was less likely.

Yeah, sometimes you can get stuck. But I also think the larger level lend itself to planning routes more, as there are more empty rooms. Perhaps tweaking the spawning algorithm would suffice?

dislekcia said:

Similarly, spotting objectives to know where to go is equally difficult.

dislekcia said:

I have no idea where Nackle's shoes are. Wha?

This is another decision I'm starting to question. Because the game is a detective story, I wanted there to be some deduction involved. For example, the player must deduce which computer is the security server based on which one was a ball of flame in the future. Or, I wanted players to figure out which room belongs to which crewmember based on the books in their bookshelf. However, there are plenty of situations where this doesn't work as intended and just leaves the player frustrated. Again, these kind of deduction things are probably more suited to a puzzle. And the player needs to know that their supposed to be figuring it out from evidence, rather than just feeling like they weren't given enough information.

dislekcia said:

It's hard finding where your character is when a level starts, we had this same problem with the original and I'm not sure the particlesplosion solved it well there. Maybe a zoom out from the character?

Some kind of attractor is on the list of things that never made it in. Not used to having a deadline for these kinds of projects :P

dislekcia

@Squidcor said:

Yar. I spent a fair amount of time dissecting the original and trying to figure out exactly what made the original so hard to actually play the first time around. I realised that a lot more work needed to happen to the pacing of the game, particularly early in the game to stop players being thrown in the deep end before they know what is going on.

It also wasn't extremely obvious who the characters were, or how to distinguish between them. That's what motivated the move away from sepia and the more recognisable portraits.

Yeah, that's a really strong change and it helps the game a lot. The sepia thing was literally just a game jam time-limit/rules thing, I don't think it has to stay that way. I'd love to see different takes on art-style depending on who's doing the telling of the story, for example ;)

Actually, I'd love to have the current story-teller narrate the in-game events a little. Like Nackle would be going on and on about toast and their progress, but he'd mention that someone had told him that you gave them back their coat if you happened to run into someone right at that point, etc. I don't know how doable that is, but it might be interesting.

@Squidcor said:

However, I think I've realised that the real issue with the game is the stealth element. I now the best way to explore the topic would be in more of a pure problem solving fashion, a la Monkey Island. With inventories and proper puzzles, and without the pressure of getting caught. This would also give the player more time to explore and understand the story at their own pace.

Whaddaya think? YouDunnit the adventure puzzle game?

I've re-imagined YouDunnit as a ton of different genres in my head, including a hunt-the-pixel item-gathering game ;)

I think the big thing with the stealth element is that it's a little too simplistic right now, you're not really hiding in complex ways and you can't interact with the residents at all. I think it would be rad if that system was a little more complicated and maybe you had sneakier and sneakier abilities (like turning off the lights in a room, or dropping little noise-making devices to lure people towards them, etc) as you got closer to the murder having happened. Basically - the stealth stuff is sort of just dropped onto a simple movement system, there's nothing else going on there, so it feels shallow because it is. It could be any number of gameplay styles and still work with the way the story goes.

@Squidcor said:

This is another decision I'm starting to question. Because the game is a detective story, I wanted there to be some deduction involved. For example, the player must deduce which computer is the security server based on which one was a ball of flame in the future. Or, I wanted players to figure out which room belongs to which crewmember based on the books in their bookshelf. However, there are plenty of situations where this doesn't work as intended and just leaves the player frustrated. Again, these kind of deduction things are probably more suited to a puzzle. And the player needs to know that their supposed to be figuring it out from evidence, rather than just feeling like they weren't given enough information.

I think you're onto a really neat idea there. I just think that the primary thing you need to do each hour should be relatively obvious, but there should be more emergent things that you can accomplish as long as you pay attention to those sorts of clues. I enjoyed the detail about the bookshelves, for instance, but I only started checking them AFTER I'd found the shoes. If there was some sort of reward for linking people to their rooms, like being able to drop an item where someone might see it so they pick it up and head back to their room (making them predictable/avoidable) that emerged from you paying that sort of attention, I think that would be cool. It could even be a sort of exp-upgrade mechanic where you're rewarded with chances to improve your character skills ("You're a better person after having this crisis of conscience, what activity will you swear to never do again?" - and then that activity is available in previous hours - writing this stuff is head-hurty) from doing neat stuff with the coherence of the game.

One day I want to build a series of games out of YouDunnit. Different heists all over the world, for instance.

Karuji

I got the same error as dis :(

But I am loving the narrative that the game now build up.

I kind of feel that there is this weird schism in the gameplay. You are asking the player to avoid interacting with other characters, but at the same time you want to learn enough about the characters so that you can determine the owner of the room. I mean there aren't vents to crawl around in so you can conveniently eavesdrop on conversations.

Also the survey was slightly weird. When it asked about gaming experience: I wasn't sure how to provide a useful answer.

The questions in the survey itself felt like they didn't relate to the game.

"I was completely focus on the task at hand" does this imply that I was focused on the objective that I had to do, or the general playing of the game?

Also "I found the experience extremely rewarding" is a bit weird due to the extremity of the statement. So if it was simply rewarding I would strongly agree, but I can't agree or disagree with extremely rewarding.

EvanGreenwood

Saw this and it made me think of YouDunnit...



Obviously a very different game (and I'm not certain its a very good game at that), but I love the concept of having to fulfill tasks in order to maintain causality... So it could be said to be similar in its player motivation. And of course having to maintain the story of Hamlet is quite a clever touch.

I wonder if there is a Doctor Who game yet that does this?