Court of Crowns DEMO

[PlaceHolder Name]

Project Introduction

We at PlaceHolder Name Studio are asking for feedback to recently translated demo version of our costume drama mystery Visual Novel – Court of Crowns. We have created our game in Game Maker Studio 2, and the demo is released on Windows and HTML5. Soon it will be released on Android as well.

In our Ace Attorney inspired game, you play as Princess Adela de Rex, a young heiress to the throne, and you are tasked with presiding over Crown Court. Similarly to AA games, you are involved in questioning witnesses, but you also restore order during heated debates, and compare opposing parties’ versions of events.

Aside from general feedback, we are interested in hearing if you did find the story and premise interesting. We also want to hear your thoughts about graphics and music.

Features

• Ace Attorney inspired gameplay, but from the perspective of a judge
• Voiced acted recurring lines 
• Costume drama set in fictional world based on late XVIII/early XIX century
• Personality Quiz that determines one of 8 possible believes sets for the main protagonists, which influences her lines and inner narration

In the future we also intend to have following features

• Story influencing choices 
• Multiple endings for each episodes, involving various outcomes of its cases
• Actions from past episodes having consequences in next ones
• Ability to influence your relationship with different characters, making them either reliable allies or fierce enemies

Progress

We have a finished and translated around one hour demo, that covers about 40% of Episode 1. We plan on making 5 separate episodes. 

Extra relevant information

You can play or download our demo here: https://placeholder-name-studio.itch.io/coc-demo

You can visit our main page here: https://courtofcrowns.com/

You can follow us on twitter here 

 

 

Feedback form that you can optionally use – link 

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by PlaceHolder Name

[PlaceHolder Name]

Based on the feedback so far, we have released a new version with following improvements:

• Now you can return to your last checkpoint, after getting a game over
• Clash of Arguments has been improved. Now, during the second phase, you hold lines to memorize them, then click on contradictory ones. The narrator will also help you remember what you are supposed to do. Voice Bar shakes when you try to attack a line without it being full. Chaos Bar advances slower during the second phase. Lionel also has altered his explanation for the mechanic, due to its changes.
• You can advance text by pressing anywhere in the game.
• You can advance New Knowledge popup by clicking anywhere in the game.
• Fixed the bug where New Knowledge popup could sometimes not allow to advance the text for a while, despite being already gone.
• Fixed the bug where you could crash the game, during Clash of Arguments, by causing a game over by attacking wrong line.
• Some spelling errors were fixed

There are also HTML5-only improvements :

• Fixed the bug  that freezes the game, if you return to the game after returning to the main menu from the game.
• Export option now also exports JSON of your last checkpoint, even if you didn't save the game.

There also also further improvements that are planned, but are postponed for the next release, due to them being more time-consuming

• We plan to improve shading on the characters. You can see how it is going to look like here https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1479554244806156290
• We plan to revamp the GUI

[PlaceHolder Name]

We happily announce version 1.7 of our demo, which is, excluding theoretically possible future minor bugfixes, the final version of it. With this version being released, we shift our focus on making Steam, Android and Linux releases of our demo. Then, we will make our trailer and start the crowdfunding campaign.

This version focuses on a massive graphical overhaul. We have improved our character art, backgrounds, and also GUI. With this, we trust our game will look aesthetically pleasing, as it was always meant to be. But you don’t have to take our word for it, as you can just look at those attached screenshots!

Due to the visual changes, our main page has been improved as well. Check it out and sign up to our newsletter, to not miss on any major update.

On the technical level, there also has been some performance improvements here and there. Due to the game being a Visual Novel, this probably will be unnoticeable without diagnostic tools. Still, it’s always worth to improve performance whenever you can.

We give our thanks to everyone that has been following our project so far. We happily welcome any newcomer that gains interest in it. We hope you will continue to travel alongside us, during our journey from hobbyists to professional game developers, and we wish you to remain pleased during the entirety of it.

[PlaceHolder Name]

We are happily announcing preview of our Kickstarter Campaign! The campaign will start at November 11 and will run for 30 days, with a humble goal of €3000. Follow our campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/phns/court-of-crowns-a-historical-drama-visual-novel

We are also updating our demo to version 1.8.1. Based on feedback and observations of playing it content creators, we have made following improvements:

• Demonstrate button’s placement has been changed, for better visibility.
• Clarification for second phase of Clash of Arguments’ tutorial.
• We have added an indicator, when you are supposed to click an area on the map.

We also have added a link to our Kickstarter Campaign.

[HataVNI]

Oh, saw this on twitter and r/visualnovels before. I wasn't even aware you have a thread in our forum! Welcome here~
Looking forward to this, the more ace attorney-inspired games the better. Last Ace Attorney inspired title was Detective Kobayashi

I'll give you a RT on the fuwatwitter.