The Case of the Dungeon Descent
š Investigate the princess's fate
The princess has disappeared in the dungeon! Scry on magical events to deduce what spells were cast when, piece together the stories of multiple adventurers, and uncover the princessās fate.
š Inspired by games like Type Help, The Roottrees Are Dead, and Her Story.
ā³ Playtime to discover the whole story is around an hour.
š How to play
- When you see new heroes, dungeon floors, or the names of spells or magical items, click them to collect scry targets.
- Chose one or more targets and click Scry to search for a scene.
- To unlock the details of a scene, you must find the combination of targets that identify exactly one scene.
- Click the Record Fate button to enter what happened to each hero.
- Your entries are saved as you go. Click the check button on the right to verify each entry.
- Your progress will be automatically saved to browser storage.
š If you run into a bug, please post a comment describing what happened. Usually refreshing the page should fix it.
š Credits
The initial version of the game was made for Ludum Dare 57 for the theme "Depths". This is an updated version.
- Celia: design, writing, code
- Rose: art, code
- Music by Audionautix.com
Development log
Comments
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Amazing game, I think it was a very intricate style of storytelling with the scrying and all. It was kinda sad for the lich to be the princess all along but a very good story. :) if you expanded that into an actual game with different stories like this. I think it would be a major hit because there aren't many good deduction and storytelling games out there
spoilers
I really enjoyed playing this game! Came here after seeing your comment on the Type Help page, actually. Keep up the good work!
Spoilers past the Read More for future readers!
Speaking of Chrome bugs, just got my Dragon's Lair and this glitched. My guess: Trying to hit a tile while it's being put in the inventory.
*But that's just a theory!*
At least it fixes itself after clicking on the location tile.
Anyway, got a second (Chrome?) bug after that.
I tried to avoid the Orange people as long as I could, and here I'm 7/8, but it doesn't say that, acting like I have everything from the scene, even though it's one of the two-ish ways to get into the orange timeline.
Thanks for the report, much appreciated!
Not sure about the lingering tile. As you mentioned it will get cleaned up when clicking on a different tile, and it doesn't break anything, I think I'll leave it unless anyone stumbles on a really clear "this causes it every time" repro.
Good catch on the second one! There was a bug where the revenant wasn't being counted correctly. Fixed now!
Woo fixes! Never noticed how the "cover art" is timeline-striped 'til now! Awesome!
One of the fates is glitched.
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Thank you for reporting! I havenāt been able to repro this one. š Do you remember anything more about what you did? Did you fill out all the fates in order? Did you change any of the dropdowns on that one before putting in the final answer?
Closing out of the Record Fates popup and then refreshing the page should fix it.
> Closing out of the Record Fates popup and then refreshing the page should fix it.
It does not. It has been like that for 3 days now.
Also, no, I think this is the first one I got. If not the first, then one of the first. Actually Kara, who iirc I got last, had the same issue, but then turned into what it becomes after you get the final scene. (Not sure if that last part was due to me getting it or if it was caused by some sort of an update, I don't remember if it turned normal at that point.)
Also the one in the image wasn't broken when I got it, it broke at some point afterwards.
Are you playing in the browser or in the itch.io app? I can play this in the app...
chrome
Thank you someone1065 for the details! I've been looking at this and I still never figured out how this happens. š¤
What I did instead was fix up the fate tester code to be more robust overall. I'm hoping this will squash any remaining bugs. It can also recover from a bad state that got previously saved now (the player might have to re-enter or re-check some fates.)
It turned into this.
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Not broken as far as I can tell, just sending it here in case it's useful somehow.
Also Felicity appears correctly.
(Ignore the edit, was trying to do the thing that hides it properly.)
Impressions of game (spoiler warning)
Awesome game! The story and the realization of the charactersā true identites was great.
One problem is that I clicked āreturn to castleā before I filled in the Princessā fate and it showed dialogue from the King which sort of spoiled the ending. Yet I needed to read that dialogue at the same time to get the orb of identity keyword and discover her fate?
I think the difficulty is solid and could actually be more complex. For example, not auto-filling in the portraits, having the player name each room based on the dialogue, and having the player fill in the chronological order that the rooms were visited.
Ack, the button showing up early is a bug! š¤¦āāļø Just fixed it, thank you for letting me know.
Thanks for your thoughts!
It just updated? What changed?
Fate options reduced, hopefully? Maybe we shouldn't be able to pick from every name right from the jump?
Just some bug fixes!
Tell me more about what makes you ask about the options. The spell and room dropdowns are based on what youāve unlocked, but if the name dropdown were based on who youāve seen, wouldnāt that actually be a hint to which character goes to which name?
For the names thing, it makes sense for the reader to only know so many names, since there's the "?" images for yet-unknown characters when the "What were their fates?" checklist happens. You can't say the fate of an unseen person, and especially can't know their name?
At the start, where you only have Belt of Strength, the seer shouldn't even know the names of Meriel or Luna, for instance. Lily and Vane, though, well, that's more worldbuilding on whether the sorta-common folk know their rulers' first names.
Then, a reader who wasn't rushing through things would already know the names of "the Artificer" and "the Warrior" from the "Belt of Strength" scene alone, and from there, just need to find the spell at the Dungeon Entrance, which comes from the only other place Fireball can get at that point.
Thankfully, Private Browsing the game is an easy way to replay it and rediscover details like that. heh.
Yeah that makes sense, thanks for your thoughts! I think the Record Fates step is more of a test for the player than directly representing the seerās in game knowledge. The seer can just tell the king what they found, but for the player, dropdowns are the input mechanism, so having all the options there from the start is part of the (minor) challenge of picking the right one for each character.
Also makes it more connecting to the characters, having to at least remember whose name is who, not just a profession, but a name!
You're welcome! Have a good time!
this game is so good
Absolutely a solid entry in the...Her-Story-like? This was really excellent, both narratively and in its gameplay. Fantastic.
Hi! I like this improved version of the game, but unfortunately, a bunch of pictures have broken links:
That's not good! I can see the width of the sidepane is also off. What browser are you using?
It's in Chrome. The side panel might be off bc I'm not in fullscreen?
Hmm, this is a weird one. The width is supposed to work in the game as displayed on the itch page as well as fullscreen. I just checked and gave it a teeny bit more space just in case.
The missing images is also weird since all the images are bundled with the game. Were they still missing when you refreshed, or if you reopen the game?
I just reopened the game and everything is ok now!
Thanks for checking. Weāll write this one off as a fluke unless someone else runs into it, but sorry about that!
Somehow managed to lose Fireball and have it permanently be in the Item slot for scrying. Probably from spamming spells, instead of clicking to remove them.
Interesting Epilogue! I wonder what the Queen's doing...
Ack, I'll look into that.Okay, I was able to repro by quickly switching between characters. Will get a fix in tomorrow.For what it's worth, if anyone else sees something similar - since the game is autosaved, you can always refresh the page to reset things.
There are some clues telling you about the Queen! :)
Fixed the behavior when quickly clicking multiple targets and added a safety check on the Scry button to clean up any weirdness, hopefully it should be good now. Thanks for reporting that!
Yay for quick fix! Gonna play a third time! heh.
Or not. Forgot I played this version on this computer!
Fun how "No hints remain" can be randomly tilted!
If you did want to play again from the start, you can delete your save by unchecking the autosave box under settings and then refreshing. (Maybe Iāll make a āDelete saveā button in a future update to make that more obvious?)
Sad story, good game.
I don't really like the post-jam update, still a good game.
Thanks for trying it! What did you prefer about the jam version?
I would say the jam version interface was... cleaner? easier to understand? This one is a little more messy. I liked the report feature.
Thanks for the feedback. I can definitely see that the jam version UI was cleaner. One thing we were thinking about with the redesign was we wanted to make sure that the process of collecting new scry targets and combining them to scry was intuitive for players checking out the game, since some people felt it was unclear before. I'm hoping showing the targets as tokens helps with that.
It's always helpful to hear how it's actually working for players, so thanks for sharing!
Oh wow, this is SO clever and fantastic! I love the way you uncover new scenes, and how you can then view each of the scenes in order. The way the art shows each scene looks like a flipbook!
I've enjoyed your previous Ludum Dare games a lot, and this is absolutely not an exception. One of my favorites this jam for sure!
- āØBeth
The game is very interesting. I found myself wishing to know what would end up happening and after I was done with the story I really wished for there to be more. The visuals are very pleasant with the old timey 8-bit style. The music is pleasant and the story is very interesting. The gameplay is also quite fun I wish there were more games like these.
A great concept and impressive execution in such a short time. I really enjoyed it. I hope you make more investigation games!
Thanks! And since you mention it - it's more a straight puzzle game rather than an investigative game, but if you're itching for more dungeon action, feel free to try my puzzle Twine game, The Hall of the Sorcerer King! š
Good music! Cool interface! Woo detective fun!
Somehow managed to see all Scene list by Scrying for emptiness. Not that it helps when everything's ??? heh.
Twisty! Good use of colors! Nice and short so even though it doesn't save, I can easily replay!
I played this with my gf and it was a joy. Love the scene discovery mechanic and the way you can linearize the story by character etc. Also the pixel art scenes were a great way to add some visual uniqueness to each scene (Trogdor!) and writing was great too. Thanks!