Intrepid Inspector

[Pokémaniac]

 
From the person who brought you Parallel, Think Outside the Box, and Ellipsus, comes..

A most wretched crime has occurred in a small town. It is your job as the honorable Inspector Ivan Bowler to find the offending party to justice! Find evidence by investigating the crime scene and use it to win debates and establish new facts. Find the criminal and bring them to justice!

-A gripping plot of crime and justice, love and hate, murder and kidnapping.

-Amazing characters with vivid personalities.

-Fully original graphics and audio! ...save the font. Lots of faces to show the various emotions of the characters, large icons for the evidence, character sets, tile sets, and big images that you can inspect!

-Gripping gameplay involving sleuthing and arguing loudly and obnoxiously.

-You play as an eyeball. Surely that has its merits!

Pretty pictures

Debating with a mop.

Fish say the darnedest things!

Barry Enith.

The plot thickens!

Characters

Inspector Ivan Bowler, an inspector on his first "big" case. He is highly intelligent and thoroughly methodical, but also a bit secluded, with his only friend being a painting of a fish. He is also a giant eyeball.

Inspector Batey is Ivan's "mentor", although the only thing he teaches is the plainly obvious. Although incompetent, he's at least a just member of society... right?

Inspector Toppler is Ivan's mentor's mentor. Unfortunately, he is less competent again, and his age has taken its toll on his manners and behavior. Basically, he is a tired old man.

...and more!

Coming soon!

 

[regi]

I'm a little curious how the gameplay works; the short showy blurbs don't give us much detail. Is it your regular go around town, find clues and items, and end in a court case a la Phoenix Wright? Or perhaps a nice interactive adventure/novel with puzzles?

Now, I've said this before, but here's a little commentary on the graphics. I'm glad for the effort, and don't take this the wrong way, but please, take some time to learn actual pixel art. It's great that you take the time to make 'em, but you have to go the extra mile and learn everything the right way: lineart, choosing color palettes, shading, etc. Not only will you build up good habits, you can get more than just a "creative" award (and I see a lot of potential here!). You'll be doing everyone a favor, for decent graphics will make a game so much more enjoyable.

 

[Pokémaniac]

Hey, thanks for posting regi!

Sorry about the ambiguity; I've never been good at writing game pages. The gameplay is probably closer to that in AAI: Miles Edgeworth. You search for clues and items, with the actual arguing and debating occurring throughout the games informally rather than in a court at the end. The actual debating is slightly different, as it is made to fit in with the RPG Maker style, so instead of picking out statements to object to, the game kind of leads you to a certain point to find a contradiction with. It's very simple, but a bit hard to describe.

While I agree that the graphics could be improved, I've kind of learnt from past experiences that if I try to make custom graphics for my game and try to be too fancy about it, I'm pretty much dooming my project then and there. I actually do have a fair grasp of how to shade, but I have three options as far as shading goes;

1. I do a good job, but as I'm a slow spriter, the game gets bogged down and never comes out.

2. I half-ass it, and the game looks terrible.

3. I don't shade, and the game just looks meh.

As can see, it's kind of an odd place to be in, but personally I prefer unshaded graphics to badly shaded ones.

Thanks for the feedback!

P.S. The game is now in testing. Is anyone interested in giving it a whirl in this unfinished and potentially buggy form?

 

[Pokémaniac]

Also, if anyone cares, here's a blog I posted on rpgmaker.net that I never bothered to post here. It clarifies a few things I guess.

Spoiler: Blog

Hey guys! So, well, welcome to the game page for Intrepid Inspector. Have a look around at what's here, comment on a picture or something(you'd do it if you're cool) and do whatever else you like to do on a gamepage.

So, what's this all about?

Basically, Intrepid Inspector is a "rip-off" of the Ace Attorney series. I say "rip-off" in inverted commas because this is obviously a very different experience to those games. The characters, in case you didn't notice, aren't things that are generally too lively, (ranging from mops to hotdogs) but also the style of play is more tailored to the engine I'm working in(unlike the interface hell that was Think Outside the Box). Some of the other big differences are that rather than being "locked" into a debate at predetermined points in time, then being shoved into investigation again, in this game you can quit out of "Debates" at any point in time, and sometimes enter debates you may not have the evidence for yet so you know what you're looking for(when it's appropriate).

As for the graphical choices, well, I like easy-to-make graphics with style, as they are easy to make and have style. This game is hopefully, you'll agree, a big step up graphically from Think Outside the Box. For one, the colors aren't eew default Paint. Secondly, and most importantly, the characters have outlines. A good move from not outlined, I'm sure you'll agree. The audio is, at least, more bearable, although many agreed the music in Think Outside the Box was oddly fitting. Still, the music in this is equally simple, but all just variations on the one jingle-esque thing.

So, that's it. I'll drop a blog every now or then!

EDIT: Also, I forgot to mention that the reason this ever got started was because I was scribbling characters in Paint one day and decided to make a game with them.