Hi everyone,

I'm a solo developer, and I've been working on a game I'd love this community's eyes on. It's my love letter to Gabriel Knight and Beneath a Steel Sky: a rain-soaked noir point & click with painted backgrounds, a full inventory and proper puzzles.

The Stray's Plea

B. Mason used to be a detective in Cat Town, until a warehouse fire nine years ago took his partner and his career. Now he's a private eye who photographs cheating husbands and chases insurance cheats, three months behind on rent, with a landlord camped at the bottom of his stairs.

Then a woman named Mei walks into his office. Her husband Jun went off his night shift at the Cat Town wharf and never came home. The police say he walked out on her. Mei says he didn't. And Mason has no intention of going back into Cat Town...

Play the demo free in your browser:
https://ergs707.itch.io/the-strays-plea
(It takes about [20] minutes, no download needed.)

Trailer:



A few things I'm trying to do:
- Classic inventory puzzles: combining items, trading favours, and talking your way past people who don't want to talk.
- Choices that matter: whether you take the case, who you trust and how you present yourself all change how people treat you.
- A "heat" system later in Act I: ask the wrong questions in Cat Town and people notice. There's always a quieter way to get the same answer.
- Comic-panel flashbacks that fill in Mason's past, and a "How You Played" summary at the end of the act showing how your choices played out.

I'd really value your feedback, especially:
- Were any puzzles too obscure, or too obvious?
- Did the story hook you enough to want to know what happened to Jun?
- How did it run in your browser?

I'll be reading and replying to everything here, and I'll keep this thread updated as the game grows. Thanks for taking a look!

Ergs707

Color me intrigued! I'll keep watching the thread.

I really like the artwork. Nice and gritty.

Gameplay-wise, it worked okay on my Firefox browser (on PC) but a couple nits:

1) The game hung during my first interaction with Barnaby. I was talking with him (the convo window was still open) when I right-clicked an item in the inventory and the game froze. I had to exit to the main menu thinking I'd have to restart, but fortunately you thought to include a "Resume" button and it worked.
2) Don't know if it's possible to "fix", but Mason sure likes to follow the cursor around! It'd be less jarring if he stayed put unless you're trying to direct him somewhere with your mouse-click. Just clicking through hotspots (active or not) sends him there/somewhere, as does clicking outside the dialog box.

Looking forward to watching your progress!

I really hate how the current state of things is making me paranoid about this stuff, but things like the spelling in the screenshot with the mirrored writing on the office door give me serious doubts about the "hand painted art" claim.

And I don't want to start another debate about AI generated art usage, I consider myself more tolerant than average, but I feel it should be done transparently at least.

I apologize if this is baseless, again I don't intend it as an accusation, but the artwork does give off an AI vibe that clashes with the claim that it's hand painted.

@pemulis, I completely missed the spelling in the screenshot, and in-game (it's the same). However, is it possibly due to (non) editing from the dev's native language? I'm certainly not an expert but it almost looks like some type of "mirrored" non-English alphabet.

Check out the sign on the apothecary in the bottom screenshot of the online game page. Anyone here read Traditional Chinese? At least I think that's what it is...

It definitely uses AI for graphics and sound. It says so on the itch.io page (under “More information”). As does the trailer on the YouTube channel.

Ergs707, you’re certainly welcome here, but fair warning that generative AI use won’t get your game many fans in this community.