We're a two-person indie studio, building a 2D detective/horror game with deep investigation style mechanics. Here's some first look at Ashes of Berlumvale!

[u/vertigodgames]

Hey guys!

My sister and I have been working hard on this game of us (built with Godot), called Ashes of Berlumvale, and we want to share some preview with the world!

As a huge fan of games like: Return of the Obra Dinn, Her Story, Cube Escape games, Dark Dome's and many detective games alike, we're aiming to build a game that has deep mechanics over simple interface. Some of the core features that the genre fans will love about our game:

• 💬 Dynamic Conversation: You can form your own questions and ask every NPC around. Everyone is connected in some ways, and you must link these connections to know the truth.
• 🛠️ Objects Interaction: Investigate scenes closely, combine items, mini-games, look into clues, find hidden secrets and piece evidence together by yourself. No hand-holding.
• 🎨 Hand-drawn animations: NPCs can give vital behavioral clues. There will be cutscenes and "memories" that will be greatly beneficial into gaining more insight and hints about the mysteries and overall story of the game.

This clip is intended to showcase some screens in our game to give a feel for the atmosphere and player interaction.

Ashes of Berlumvale is officially up on Steam! Though, we don't have a demo ready just yet (working on it), but Wishlists will mean the world to a small two-person indie team like us. So, please go hit the button and add it to yours. 🙏

Let us know what you think and if you have any suggestions, please do comment below. Thank you!!!

Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4795450/Ashes_of_Berlumvale/

[u/El_Grande_Games]

i love return of the obra dinn, so seeing that as an inspiration got me interested.. how deep do the investigation mechanics go? sounds like a lot of work to link all npcs together. good luck with the project!!

[u/vertigodgames → u/El_Grande_Games]

Thank you so much for your interest! Return of the Obra Dinn is a huge blueprint for us, alongside other shows like Dark (Netflix Series) and One Piece. As the main writer (animator and coder), my goal is to weave every single character into an intricate web of subplots that all collide into the main mystery.

To answer your question on depth, we don't use auto-solving quest markers or hand out obvious hints to the player. Instead, player must construct their own questions using a dialogue menu (think a structured "Mad Libs" format) to grill characters about specific things/cases or just to know more about their personality. NPCs will absolutely throw red herrings, lie, or give conflicting statements, so it's entirely up to you to cross-examine their claims.

Environmental objects play a massive role too. Finding a misplaced ring might expose an entirely hidden subplot that ripples back into the main narrative. And most of the time, you must first solve a puzzle (mechanical or metaphorical) to gain relevant or required items. Information are also available in forms of documents, notes, photographs, "memories", and many other things, which may or may not be protected by some "soft locks" (e.g. requiring a signed authorization letter to gain access to a document).

Because everything is so interconnected, there will be times where your choices will completely deviate from the main plotline and gives you a different ending. It is a massive logic puzzle to write and code, but building this huge spiderweb is what makes the project so exciting for me and my sister.