Dream Team: Mindbreak Demo
Vreena and Joe are back and they have tried to bring actual gameplay with them this time!
Will they be able to overcome the nefarious Detective D and his unreasonably convincing tree costume? Or will they be the ones being mindbroken instead? Does that mean there will also be a mindmending demo? And does your health care plan cover being mindbroken? As you see there are a lot of mindbreaking questions to be found... in THE MINDBREAK DEMO!
Controls:
- Advance Text/Select - A
- Select Question/Option/Keyword/Last Stand Elemental Attack - Arrow keys
- Hacking - W
- Fast forward through text - Hold enter
- Fullscreen - CTRL + ENTER (Windows) / F8 (Web)
So yeah, it's not a full case this time, just an attempt of what I've been thinking about in terms of gameplay. It still feels pretty underwhelming, but I feel I might be onto something. Kind of want something more exciting than just walking around talking to people like in Phoenix Wright's investigation mode, but also not completely detached like most Danganronpa minigames. If you have any feelings or thoughts on the mindbreak system, please let me know. I think it could be something, or maybe I'm completely off the mark, alas.
Miscellaneous:
- Original release date: 03/01/2024
- Placeholder music is from https://musmus.main.jp/
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Comments
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nice. nice use of demo day too, having just a small gameplay snippet for testing. I really liked it a lot, up until about when he put up the wall with the stay out tape, it just became kind of stale at that point. I was expecting that either statements would be lost when first used (whether effective or not) or would be lost once used effectively (maybe a difficulty thing like in easy mode they stick around until effective) but as soon as vreena said the same thing more than once it took the magic away so to speak. I think if you are going to do this it should definitely be like for boss battles. I really liked cyberpunk 2077 braindance detective segments and also arkham asylum detective mode segments, and especially for cyberpunk 2077 I feel that the game suffered for having so few of them. If think that a similar thing can happen here like to do it well you need to write a lot of content so that it is properly fleshed out and each line is use once. But then if you shy away from doing it frequently enough throughout the game then that can lead to disappointment like having a taste but not a meal. So I'd say if you going to put this in the game then I'd like to see it as a fairly frequent mechanic like maybe each area finish with a boss battle using keywords you found within that area or something i dont know. Now, the last stand part, that didn't come across very well. Based on vreenas explanation I understood that the grey text was masters words against us and then we "Blew his statements away" with fire or wind reaction etc. But, I kept second guessing like "no, is this grey text what we are saying to him? No its him saying to us right?" and using the elements was a bit empty that they just zapped or burnt his statements. I think those things would be a REALLY nice "touch" if it was in addition to a comeback from vreena, but skipping the comeback and just having the elemental.... lame, seems like a cop out. Besides that really nice I always liked this dream team but with this latest snippet I feel it even better.
Thanks for the in-depth feedback!
You're right, reusing texts in that scenario kinda ruins it, it's really something that needs a lot more writing to hide the cracks. I originally planned to use this mindbreak system to replace the original questioning mechanic (to make it less boring than just asking question after question), so I would try to use it a lot, probably once per person, with a big boss at the end of the chapter. Collecting keywords in the field is a great idea, I also want to have items/evidence in there for Joe to present, maybe they can fill that role. I hadn't checked out Cyberpunk and the Arkham series yet, but it sounds like I should take a look at the brain dance and detective mode sequences respectively. Thanks for the tip!
Regarding the last stand, you're right, that was not the super cool climax it was supposed it to be. The whole elemental thing does not lend itself to a detective game, I think I will drop that going forward and replace it with something more fitting and cooler. Or maybe as an additional touch like you mentioned, but as the main focus it's just confusing (and not fun). I should also make it clearer that the boss is saying the text, that was a clear oversight from me in retrospect.
Again, thanks a lot for taking the time to test it and writing the in-depth comment! Lots of great ideas and suggestions in there in there, I took a lot from it!
Fuck yes, been waiting for something like this since the conventiondemo.