Dead Ringer is Out!

"You have (7) undead messages, detective."

Recently I had the privilege of working with Team Necronine, an incredibly talented group making a visual novel for the Spooktober 7th Visual Novel Jam. The result of this partnership is Dead Ringer, a dark comedy murder mystery. Here's the pitch:

It begins with a phone plugged into a faulty socket and an electric malfunction, it ends with seven dead and one missing...

Detective Maxwell is called to investigate what seems to be, by all accounts, an impossible murder. In all of his years, he has never seen a crime this gruesome perpetrated in such a puzzling way. All he has are the testimonies of three known survivors — socialite and lobbyist Meredith Eloise, her stoic butler Richard Torres, and the one surviving guest, Alexander Florence. There's also the matter of the missing person, Felix McCain, Meredith's good-for-nothing and embittered employee...

He must solve the case under a deadline; if he cannot catch the culprit by dawn, the place will be swarming with reporters, ruining his client's dear reputation. And Meredith values her good name more than her own life.

What's already an impossible crime gets dialed up when Maxwell finds an unexplainable oddity: a telephone that did not belong to any of the people at the party. Perhaps it was waiting for its next owner...

This was my first time participating on a game jam as a developer (which is funny considering that I have organized one before!), and it was such a great experience. And Dead Ringer was a new experience in a few other ways. Usually I'm in a position of relative power in projects, which comes with a great deal of responsibility and stress. This time I was in the much calmer role of editor, acting in a supporter role to Drowsy Drake Studio/Domalomn and alongside very familiar faces.

Another departure was the story's tone and genre. I am no stranger to writing mysteries, but dark comedies? I like dry, dark humour, but it's not every day I get to focus entirely on the comedy. Moreover, Dead Ringer puts an emphasis on dialogue and animations over narration, so the length of text dedicated to narration is not as big as what I'm used to. This allowed me to try and focus on polishing each dialogue line. Hopefully I did a good job!

Now, taking a step back from my role as team member to talk from the POV of someone who organized a game jam, it's not everyday a game jam project comes out so complete and well-polished. I really hope others can appreciate that, and all the work it took.

So, please, check out Dead Ringer and consider rating it!