Blackford PI
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
A retro styled isometric detective adventure, set in 1940s New York in the offices of a secretive engineering & design company . You play Clarence Blackford, a man tasked with unravelling the mysterious goings on at Midtown Design Bureau.
The game takes inspiration from classic 8-bit games such as MOVIE, Contact Sam Cruise & the Magic Knight series. Its puzzles are built on a traditional verb/noun structure but implemented via a menu system.
Playable demo now available!
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I enjoyed the demo. Love the isometric pixel art, it all looks really good. The puzzle was a good level of difficulty - the solution wasn't obvious, but made sense (other than a detective working with high voltage electricity). I'd be happy to see this made as a full game!
My feedback :
* As mentioned by someone else, the menu system is painful - particularly having to scroll through all the inventory items in a row to use one - a grid would be much better. Mouse interaction would be my preference rather than keys. Being able to "use" from the inventory page would also help.
I appreciate the game is going for a retro vibe, but it took enjoyment away from the game having to use the menus - particularly as there's so many things you can interact with, it gets annoying to walk up to each of them then have to manually examine them.
* The keys need to be user configurable - I kept hitting enter and space instead of X and Z
* The graphics modes would ideally have a lot more resolution options, I'm playing on a widescreen monitor and would've preferred a higher resolution
* I tried to drag something out a doorway for fun (which didn't work) but then when I tried to go back in the room it was "blocked"
* Love that you can play with all the light switches
* The lift could do with a "doorway" to show you which way the exit is (and make it consistent with the rest of the game)
* I rang the maintenance person and didn't find the solution from talking to them. I tried re-rining them later and the phone was engaged / they were too busy to talk to me. It would be good if the game told me I wouldn't get the solution from them in some way as I was thinking I'd missed something in the descriptive text on the previous call, and now couldn't get it back to see what I'd missed
* That's definately Richard Ayoade!!! :D The brown is very dark and looks like black on my monitor - I don't see a fedora sorry!
I hope you decide to continue with the project!!!
Thanks the feedback, glad you enjoyed the demo. A lot of your points are simply because it's only a demo, very unfinished in places. The "blocked" bug is a known problem, I had the same thing with Melkhior's Mansion, so I have a solution for it. Interesting about the menus, I really love them, but there's clearly some frustration to be had there. Certainly one to mull over. Oh and Richard Ayoade, LOL. :o)
Very very interesting! It's basically Ultima 7 turned into an adventure game. It has the same huge level of interaction: you can move everything, search everything, etc. I would have made it so you can search inside containers like in Ultima 7, with the drawer (or chest) that appears superimposed, with the objects inside. It would be even better, because you could have objects that cover other objects, and then you have to open the drawer and then move an object to discover some hidden object underneath. This would obviously require you to redo the entire mouse-driven interface, because it requires drag and drop.
And this brings me to the only, huge flaw of this game. Why on earth didn't you make a mouse interface based on drag & drop? All you had to do was like Ultima 7. This keyboard interface is unnecessarily cumbersome, a real pain to play. Anyway, I think I could get over it. If the game is long and the puzzles are good, I would pay A LOT for this game. :) Good luck!
That's great feedback, thanks. The game started out life as a traditional exploratory retro style isometric game, so mouse control was never even considered. The menus evolved over time, but I always had the menu system from the old 8-bit Magic Knight games in mind, I just loved how they worked. They were cumbersome at first, but over time they became intuitive. As I've developed the menus, they've become intuitive for me straight away, but as with many aspects of a game, that leaves me unable to judge how it will feel to a new player. Your feedback has planted a seed.
That said, I'm not sure where I'm taking the project yet, or even if it will turn into a full game. This short demo has taken a lot of time, and as I'm just a hobby game dev, that time is limited so it comes down to whether or not I want to spend the next few years working on it.
Anyway, thanks again, appreciate it. ;o)
Great, so I'll try to throw out a few more ideas:
off the top of my head, Ultima 7 also had the ability to stack crates or chairs on top of each other, and then climb on them. This could add even more depth to the game (and again would require redoing everything with mouse drag and drop)
In Ultima 7 the best thing was to move an object and discover a secret object behind it. For example, you moved a chair and saw a lever behind it, which opened a secret wall. How did you know that you had to move that chair among 1000 chairs? Maybe you found a hint somewhere else in the world, even far away, that said there was a secret in that house.
as I said, inside the drawers/chests you saw many objects stacked on top of each other, and you had to move one to reveal (for example) a key underneath it.
the way you set up the game has a lot of potential because, since there is a huge quantity of all objects, you could theoretically have puzzles that are both realistic AND not too easy. Which is very difficult in a normal adventure game where there are few objects and therefore it is easy to brute force.
since I understand that you don't have time to make a complete game, then why don't you just make an engine, an editor, with which you allow someone else who has more time to make a complete game? This editor could also be a commercial project!
you could also experiment with exteriors, not only interiors.
Thanks, interesting ideas. Even making an editor that's fit for release is a huge undertaking, so that doesn't really get around the time constraints issue. It's probably just as much work. I'll continue to mull over the future of this project. :o)
This has so much potential, love the demo! Even though I never got that far in it, MOVIE was one game I kept going back to as I just loved the style and presentation, and this captures it but improves on it in so many ways!
In my one playthrough so far, I dropped one of the fuses underneath the fusebox which meant I couldn't pick it back up, but I'll be restarting this demo to try to get further.
p.s. I just saw that you're working on a version of Space Invaders for the Playdate, please release it soon as it looks awesome too :D
Thanks for the feedback, that bug about the fuse was a good spot. Not sure what the future of the project is at the moment. At the moment it's all about the Playdate, that Space Invaders game is nearly done. ;o)
I really enjoyed the demo as far as I made it (I got stuck finding which fuse I should use to fix the elevator) and would love to see a full game.
As to the comparisons to Richard Ayoade, I think having Blackford's Fedora so dark is making it visually read as an afro. That and the tall thin character design is probably reminding people of Moss in the animated into to The IT Crowd.
Thanks for the feedback. As much as I stare at that hat, I can't get it to turn into an afro, but maybe I should change it's colour regardless :o)
Admittedly I tend to have my display brightness turned down low. I think it is a combination of that, the in game lighting effects and the filters darkening the hat and losing detail. The screenshot with the parrot is the best example.
Yeh some of the shadier areas do get quite dark. I like that though, I find it quite atmospheric.
That's exactly where I got stuck!
It's what I always thought M.O.V.I.E should have been: very atmospheric! Well done! I'm properly stuck though: (possible spoiler: I think I need blueprints, but can't find them anywhere! I'll keep searchin'.)
Thanks. There are no blueprints in this demo version, so that's a bit of a red herring :o)
Oh, wise guy, eh? Why I aughta....
Why do I get the feeling you're sat playing this game, dressed as Columbo? :o)
Brilliant game to just chill out to and admire the graphics, love the parrot and the mix of gameplay and reward was perfect. Full version will be ace.
Cheers Davie ;o)
I've really enjoyed the demo, puzzles were nice and the graphics are gorgeous, congratulations!
Played in Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon, 64bits, X11, every option worked fine except the F12 fullscreen toggle, that made it crash with this message:
X Error of failed request: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)
Major opcode of failed request: 40 (X_TranslateCoords)
Resource id in failed request: 0x2800457
Serial number of failed request: 453
Current serial number in output stream: 453
AL lib: (EE) alc_cleanup: 1 device not closed
Can't wait to play the whole game, great work! Thanks!
Thanks, glad to hear you enjoyed it. That's an odd crash, although I don't recall testing full screen on Linux, I'll have to try it out here. Cheers for the info.
Beautiful piece of work, Richard. Love the period detail, the lighting, the feel of the game - both retro and contemporary. The menu system is sharp and the game is effortlessly playable. I think I uncovered some glitch/bug in that (spoiler alert) I worked out I needed 20 amp fuse for lift mechanism. To insert I needed to pull switch in maintenance room to turn lights out. However, once I inserted it into switch, I could not get back in maintenance room and received the message 'blocked', even though it was unlocked. Anyway, that aside, it looks like being another great addition to your body of work. Can't wait to see it finished.
Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it. At the moment, there is the risk that you can leave an object or furniture in a position that means the player can't spawn in the room when you try to enter it, resulting in the "Blocked" message. I suspect this is what you did. If I continue the project, this problem will be sorted out somehow. :o)
The demo was just the right length to let you get to grips with the mechanics and what is expected of the game. This is truly superb and had me hooked. I can't wait for the full version.
Cheers Kingy ;o)
ooooh. luvly. Another gem in the making. Great demo, looking forward to the full release.
Thanks :o)
Dude that's Richard Ayoade
Haha, you're not the first person to say that. It's getting a bit weird. :o)
love it, great atmosphere and feel to it
Thanks, look out for the demo coming soon.
Looks fab!
:o)
Looks amazing! I love Movie game.
Thanks :o)
So nice!
Thanks
This looks totally awesome. Can't wait to play it.
Thanks, demo coming soon.