Signal & Echo: Iris is Missing - DEMO OUT NOW

[Kini Games]

EDIT: I launched the demo on November 2. There's about an hour of game there. If you play, I'd love to hear your feedback!

Here are the links:

AGS page
Steam
itch.io

And here's the trailer:

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Hi everyone,

I have no idea why it's taken me so long to post here about my game, Signal & Echo: Iris is Missing. It's going to enter beta testing any day now (I've posted about that in the 'recruitment' section - if you're interested, please take a look). Well, better late than never!

Here's the copy from my website, www.kinigames.com, along with some screenshots. (EDIT: I've also now added some short videos a couple of posts down, showcasing the three main ways of using the text parser system.)

Any thoughts appreciated 



Just gimme the gist!

Informed by the developer’s past career in journalism, you play as Ollie, a wannabe reporter on his first day of work experience at the Signal & Echo newspaper, in the fictional town of Runeton, England.

Ollie thought he’d be chained to his desk all day, rewriting press releases. Instead, he’s been given a real assignment: find out what happened to missing schoolgirl Iris Wood.

Using a unique text parser system, alongside traditional point-and-click mechanics, help Ollie impress his colleagues and break the story wide open!



What’s this about a unique text parser?

Alongside the usual verb interactions and inventory puzzles, Signal and Echo: Iris is Missing uses an innovative text parser systemâ€"for conversations, searching the newspaper’s computer archive, and finding new locations on your map.

The system allows you to type any proper noun (i.e. capitalised noun, like John Smith, London, or The Beatles), so long as you’ve found it in-game. The system also accepts the name of any hotspot, from any location, including inventory items.

This means you can ask anyone about any of these things. You'll need to take notes and think for yourself! (All the puzzles use real-world logic, as opposed to cartoon or moon logic.)



I’m sold! When and where’s it coming out?

The demo is about to enter beta testing, so there’s not long to wait!

Once it’s ready, the demo will be free to download from Steam, itch.io, and (possibly) the Kini Games website.

Check back here for updates, or follow the developer,  Will Ackermann (aka Kini), on twitter games_kini

[heltenjon]

The parser and questioning method seems interesting. As an old text adventure buff I look forward to trying it out. The story premise is solid, too.

Note: You may get fewer betatesters when you want them to record on video and comment live.

[Kini Games]

Thanks heltenjon

I'm sure you're right about the video request. If I don't get enough volunteers this way, I'll update my post to make clear that I no longer need testers to do that.

[Kini Games]

For anyone interested in seeing the parser system in action, check out these short videos:

[Kini Games]

Steam and itch.io pages are now live! (Trailer will be added soon.)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2128530/Signal__Echo_Iris_is_Missing_demo/

https://kini-games.itch.io/signal-echo-iris-is-missing

[CaptainD]

Looks very interesting, as I thought from the trailer in a different post.

I just typed a long-winded question about how you would know what nouns could be used and realised that you already provided the answer by saying you would have to take your own notes!  Truly old-school.

[Kini Games]

Thanks for your continued interest, Cap'n!

Yup. Your own notes indeed (you're a reporter, after all!). In this GMTK video about detective games, there's an interesting example of a puzzle from Discworld Noir at the 10-minute mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwV_mA2cv_0 Having the player write their own notes, and then use the parser system, is my way of trying to address the problem Mark highlights in that section. Some of the nouns you'll be noting in my game aren't just handed to you; you have to deduce them.

In case you want more info about the parser, it accepts:

1. Any proper noun found in-game (the examples I use repeatedly, in both marketing copy and the tutorial section, are John Smith, London and The Beatles - the idea being to stress that proper nouns cover much more than just people's names)

2. Any hotspot name, from any location

[Kini Games]

Just dropped the trailer. Not long till the demo comes out, if all goes to plan 

[Snarky]

Having finally got around to playing the demo, I really enjoyed it. The gameplay is good, as it is fun to gradually uncover more subjects to ask about (it reminded me a good deal of Her Story, complete with hilariously bad database search functionality; though in this case I can more easily believe in it; I imagine they're using a ten-year-old+ system built by the nephew of some manager, with buggy behavior that's been getting worse over time), and at least at this stage, the note-taking requirement is not too onerous. The videotape puzzle was particularly satisfying, and well hinted if you don't immediately spot it. I did have a bit of difficulty with the shorthand, since the last letter looked quite different joined together than by itself (I took it for a '>'), perhaps due to the low-res pixel art.

I did occasionally feel that the UI/mechanic prevented me from doing or asking things that seemed like obvious investigative reporting steps, which could be frustrating. For example, IIRC, at The Chippy I could not ask Jared directly about his brother simply because I didn't get his name, and I definitely couldn't ask anybody else, even if in reality it would have been easy to ask them about "the owner of The Chippy" (though now I'm thinking maybe I should have tried to search the newspaper database for articles about the shop).

And I for one find it frustrating to type in AGS's TextBox control, what with the lack of any ability to move the cursor—among other things. So I would suggest trying out my TextField module, which offers a more fully-fledged control for text editing: it would also allow you to add undo, history (arrow up to autofill previous commands, like on many command lines), copy/paste, etc. to make it more user-friendly. (However, due to how AGS processes keypresses it has compatibility problems with some keyboard setups, so if you do use it you should probably have an option that would allow players to use the standard TextBox control instead.)

I'm also a little unclear about the tone the game is going for, and so what kind of mindset to adopt as I'm playing. Am I in for some light drama and a generally good time, or should I expect to find Iris' body in a freezer at some point? (I got a bad feeling in the back room of The Chippy, but I assume the police would have examined it?)

Although the dialog is quite limited, I thought the writing was good. I particularly enjoyed getting different perspectives on the same topics from different people. For example how Nathaniel thinks Hayfield Academy (like everything in Runeton) is posh, while Katie says the school has a dodgy reputation locally that it's been trying to shake.