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My old, unfinished detective game
🕑 Added 2023-07-04 15:04:36 +0000 UTCHello!
Back in a very early episode of Developing, I talked about how I had previously tried to make some games, long before starting GMTK. Like a Picross-based RPG called Carter's Curse, and a film noir point-and-click adventure called City of Angels.
I still had lots of images, sprites, and screenshots of the first game - so I could show that off in the video. But City of Angels was, I thought, lost to time. I managed to find one screenshot through Google to use in the video, but the rest was gone.
Until today... when I found an old hard drive at my parent's house. It was a backup of an old iMac from around 2015. So this was when I was just starting Game Maker's Toolkit. And, lo and behold, the entire archive of City of Angels (which I was working on circa 2012) was sitting right there!
I started to trawl through it - hundreds of sprites, depicting characters, buildings, objects, UI pieces, and more.
It was incredibly nostalgic. I remembered how I spent hours and hours on this stuff, dutifully recreating old buildings, cars and outfits of post-war Los Angeles, based on archival photographs and film noir movies.
The game itself was... well there wasn't much to it. I was making it in Adventure Game Studio, but never got too far with the actual design or development.
I had plans to craft murder cases for the player solve, and maybe even use procedural generation to create a whole city of people to talk to. I wanted to make the player think and feel like a detective - using some of the ideas I would eventually talk about on GMTK.
But I fell into the common game dev trap: I focused on art and story, and didn't think to design prototypes or get feedback on the ideas. And so, naturally, the project was never completed.
To be honest - I don't really mind. I just had such fun drawing all of this stuff and imagining the game in my head. I wasn't sad the game was never finished - the process itself was fun.
But, I do vividly remember thinking about how one day... people would get to play this game and see all my hard work. That thought kept me going... kept me placing down pixels! And so it's a bit of a shame that literally nobody except my family ever saw this stuff.
So, as a gift to my past self. My wide-eyed, hard-working, endlessly-ambitious past self. Here you go, Mark. Here's your hard work, being shown to the world (or, at least, your Patrons).
Thanks for your support. It means the world.
Comments
G J
Dude you are insanely talented! With this I’m absolutely sure that your magnet game will turn out super awesome!
Dominik Bartsch
This looks stunning!! And the idea sounds great. Detective stories are timeless!
Tim
This is unbelievably sick! So much love and attention to detail.
Chris Rothove
Mark I literally am just now revitalizing a project I was making around the same time and was able to repurpose some old assets I found on an old hard drive in my closet! It's funny how life echoes, isn't it. I'd love to see you do something with this eventually, even if it's just a jam game or prototype.
Tom Stuart
Even though I understand that this game does not & will never exist, these images make me really want to play it. Great work!
Matthew Reynolds
I remember you talking about this! Still looks great. Thanks for sharing.
asbo
Sounds like you should team up and finish City of Angels.
Liliana
Now you've unlocked a secret power of game development: re-using assets from small/unfinished games! These are really lovely sprites! Lots of pixel art character
Alexandr Vakhitov
It looks amazing, really! Thanks for sharing!
mhogar
Wow this art is really impressive! I personally fall into the other side of the game dev trap: focusing too hard on prototyping and feature creep so the game never really gets polished with art or music and I end up losing interest.
Pedro Latro
Hahaha loved it! As a board game designer, it resonates greatly with how I feel – we really make these to show them to the world. And in the end, although finish lines are awesome too, it's not all about them. Loved to see you sharing it here!
Dalen W. Brauner
Also- I like that "Back Down" was a button adjacent to "Press"- the idea that There's A Time And Place to press a witness isn't usually explored as a game mechanic.
