RMMV Dear Edwin (An IGMC 2017 Entry)

[Gabrelik]

In participation and celebration of the IGMC 2017, Lazy Bum Studios (working name) presents to you our first title: Dear Edwin!

Follow the intrigue and exploits of our lovable hero, Edwin Vayne, as he attempts to unravel yet another mystery in a long and prestigious career. This time, however, the case may hit a little too close to home...

We hope you enjoy this title, and every little bit of feedback will help to make it even better! We look forward to hearing from all of you. Have fun!

At the height of the industrial steam revolution, a young woman's death has sparked intrigue in a small, derelict city district. Edwin Vayne, a once prominent young detective, has been called into these inner city slums by a mysterious, yet very personal letter to investigate. Follow Edwin as he unravels a mystery that runs deeper than he might have known, and help him to make decisions that will alter the course of the story for better or for worse. Will Edwin prove himself up to the task, or will this particular mystery elude even him?

Composer/Story: @futrchamp
Tiles/Sprites/Artwork/Eventing/Story: @Plueschkatze
Sprites/Eventing/Story: @hiddenone
Script/Sprites/Animations/Eventing/Story: @Gabrelik
Additional animated doodads: David Browne
Kadokawa/Degica

Plugins by:
mjshi, Galv, Himeworks, Moghunter, Orange, SumRndmDde, Yanfly, Victor Engine, Tsukitsune, Chaucer

And a special thanks to all of our playtesters!
Hiddenone's Bro, Adam Schmidt, James Thao, Abe Benson, Charles Heeneman, RJ Aungst, and Bryan Carpmail. Couldn't have gotten here without you guys!

Dear Edwin

As a fun bonus and because we had such a blast doing it, the developer's of "Dear Edwin" have hidden avatars of themselves somewhere throughout the game. In the spirit of the detective theme this game is based upon, the first person to discover and send me a screenshot of all four avatars will receive a free sprite commission of your choosing, crafted by the team! We look forward to hearing from you all, and may the keenest gumshoe win!​

 

[Mister Kent]

Looks so good!

 

[Gabrelik]

@Mister Kent , thanks!

Well, we are live, ladies and gentlemen! You are now able to download the full title from our itch.io page! Feel free to check it out and leave us some feedback below!

This has been the most amazing experience and we are all extremely thankful for the opportunity. We look forward to hearing from you! Have fun!

 

[Plueschkatze]

YAY! *gives away free hugs to everyone passing by like a total weirdo*

 

[Gabrelik]

We've just hit 70 downloads! How wonderful! And thanks to @chalkdust for the amazing review!

 

[Jesse - PVGames]

You guys did a wonderful job with your game! The atmosphere is truly gripping. It was like an old detective noir and steampunk had a love child. The visuals were great and the city very detailed! The story was good and the background of the main character and the city itself seemed very well thought-out and written. Well done!

 

[Gabrelik]

Thanks so much! We appreciate the review, and glad you enjoyed it.

200 downloads, everybody! Woo!

 

[Plueschkatze]

Thanks everyone for all the feedback and support. We're taking each bit of that into account and will learn from it! <3

(I hope I'll have some freetime to play some entries, too, soon, damn!)

 

[Llareian]

You guys did a great job with this! The music was superb, the story, characters, dialog, and visuals were all awesome.

Spoiler: SPOILERS!

The only thing I'm really struggling with is that it was an AWESOME story, but I'm still trying to decide if it was a good game. It didn't feel like there was much that I really did as the player. I did enjoy the "combat" system, as it was, but would have appreciated having the opportunity to do that to shoot the guardsman at the end rather than just watch the scene play out.

I also wonder if the choices I made had any impact...I didn't see much of one. Maybe some kind of show of community support at the end if you've made the nice choices or negative crowd reaction if you've made the mean ones would have improved this feeling. Or if there WERE things my choices affected (maybe how the cops treated me was different?) you might need to spell that out a little bit. "Well, you bought bread for my sister's family, so maybe you're not so bad..."

But seriously, very impressive work, and I'd be interested to check out any other projects you do.

 

[Gabrelik]

Thanks so much! And yes, the choices you make will affect the ending you get, but we will do much better with the next installment. Unfortunately, the time restrictions did limit quite a bit of what we wanted to add, but we'll certainly be sure to remedy this. Planning for the second Edwin title is already underway, and we can guarantee an even more rewarding experience.

Thank you for playing! We appreciate it very much, and are glad you enjoyed it for what it was.

 

[Plueschkatze]

What Gabrelik said +1!

@Llareian thank you very much fortaking the time to play and give feedback. That's super helpful for us!

 

[Gabrelik]

We've officially hit 300 downloads, ladies and gentlemen! Super excited, and ridiculously grateful to see the response this project has received. If you haven't checked it out, head on over! If you have, feel free to drop us some feedback on things we can improve for the next installment! We wouldn't mind a vote, either.

Thanks so much!!

 

[SwiftIllusion]

Especially as a fan of detective stories (e.g. love the phoenix wright series) I really loved this.
Though it was overall a short story more than a game, I'm more than happy to see and play those when they have an enjoyable plot and characters, which is what this had. Especially important to me is a good ending, and detective stories are the most frequent to end disappointingly with awful loop holes or incomplete strong subplots, etc. Though it wrapped up quickly and we didn't get to see what future the characters may have as a result, it was still a cute and warm ending that I was happy to see, so great work with that !
Also of course the pixel art/characters and overall aesthetic is awesome!

A few negative things though:
The 'C' menu icon really should have been up in the corner the whole time, only having it at the beginning-especially when its such an uncommon key for that could confuse players, and that's if they see it at all. I watched a great LP of it, but regrettably they missed that and thought for the whole time that they couldn't save your game.
Additionally, I feel like the choices you added went against the characters backstory/motivation. It didn't really fit his character to do something outright bad, and it felt like something that existed only to serve as 'gameplay', even though I felt it worked against the nice character you managed to develop and the tone of the story. Especially when it's likely not enough to satisfy people wanting gameplay, short of reaching a visual novel amount of choices-which people still frequently criticize anyway. Personally this only really works for 'blank slate' characters, unless it's light variations of how the character would likely act and it more just varies the path to the static end goal, or cuts you off from it like https://rpgmaker.net/games/8722/
There really should have been an easier way for you to keep note of what your next objective is, especially within a detective project. Even a popup message with what you needed to do next and if it was on the east/west side of the area would have helped.
All my other concerns though are described incredibly well by hadecynn here - https://itch.io/post/307008

But regardless, overall it was a brilliant entry, congratulations on submitting an awesome game !

 

[futrchamp]

We hit 400 downloads this morning! Overjoyed at the response to our project and the helpful criticism we've received. Can't wait to begin showing you guys what we have in store for Edwin in the next few months!

 

[Gabrelik]

Rapidly approaching 600 downloads and we're not even two weeks in! Can't believe the amount of support, love, and feedback we've gotten back on this project. So much, in fact, that we've decided to go full in on a full length feature! We will be presenting this as a prequel to the Dear Edwin story, but we promise it to be absolutely rich in all of the wonderful elements you've contributed through your feedback and playthroughs!

Here are just a few of the playthroughs we've seen so far, and they have been amazing. Seeing people react to this world we've created has been the most rewarding experience any of us could have asked for, and we are all extremely thankful to this contest opportunity for providing that. We hope you will enjoy a few of these as well:

BreezyM's Playthrough

Just1Witness's Playthrough

Zeo Play's Playthrough

 

[Gabrelik]

800 downloads?! We can hardly believe it. Still extremely exciting. We even made pcgamer.com's Free Game of the Week list!

If you haven't already given Dear Edwin a try, head on over and check it out! We encourage you to leave us a review and let us know what we could improve upon! We can promise that we're already hard at work on the next installment, and busy implementing all of the wonderful suggestions we've already received.

We're looking forward to showing you what we come up with!

 

[Gabrelik]

Coming up on 900 downloads, and we had a wonderful opportunity to be a part of @psenough 's live stream! It was really great to be able to answer some of the questions floating around about Dear Edwin, and to draw some attention to RPG Maker.

If you missed it, you can check it out here:

 

[Dezue]

Congratulations!

 

[Gabrelik]

@Dezue , I haven't forgotten your game! Checking it out tonight.

 

[Dezue]

Have fun playing!