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Someone Stole a Witty Summary


Isn't everything in RM pretty much retro?

For context this game was created for Retromania one of RMN's birthday events. After getting over the scary thought process about what is now considered retro thanks to the "Did you know?" screen, I quite enjoyed someone stole a necklace. It's modelled after the the ace attorney games, having played one of the ace attorney games a long time ago I recognised a few things but I wouldn't say you needed to have played them to enjoy this game.

A quick summary of the story; you go to dinner with friends and during your time there someone breaks in and steals a priceless necklace. The plot and twists are all quite predictable but generally well written nethertheless, with the possible exception of the post-reveal when either the conclusion is rushed or deceptions are forgiven perhaps to readily for me.


By the way I didn't shrink these screenshots. They are actual size.

Gameplay wise the game consists of a few different elements, the main ones are treasure hunting for clues, speaking to people to find out what happened and sometimes gain a new clue. You can also in your inventory explores clues and combine them to deduce new information to use in your investigation. Finally during the denouncement you can present evidence and press the interrogated to reveal more information and find contradictions etc.

Graphically I think is where the game is weakest, mjshi choose to replace character sprites with coloured squares but used the default tilesets which I don't think work well together. It was probably an issue of time but I think the game would have worked better had one style been chosen to be used throughout.

On the whole though I enjoyed someone stole a necklace, it is well worth a play through. While it is a fairly short game it is of a consistently good quality through out. Happy sleuthing!

Posts

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mjshi
Jack of Most Trades
6414
Thanks for the review, Fomar! I'm glad you liked the game ^^ This whole thing grew out of a wish for there to be more detective-mystery-investigation type games on RMN xD I'm not super good at writing mysteries (...yet?) but I tried my best haha.

The character designs actually started with me wanting to make a pun xD I intended for Grey to a "square"... literally and in the super old-timey definition of it. The rest were made squares too for consistency, though maybe I should've thrown in a triangle or circle or two just for the sake of differentiation. Everything is also super small to keep up that retro, low-res vibe c:

Response to plot feedback (spoilers):

If the characters seemed to forgive Purple too quickly, I guess in my head it made more sense than the way it was executed. She attempted to use her friends to commit insurance fraud, basically. Maybe that's a more serious crime in some people's minds, but it has the idea of a "victimless crime"-- nobody was hurt and in the end the one ultimately paying for the property damage is Purple. That's not to say what she did was okay in any way but it's forgivable, to some extent? Like you'd be more concerned about their financial well-being if they felt the need to use you like that. That's just my perspective though, lemme know what you think!

also I will say to my credit the older ace attorney games had some pretty obvious villains too but of course I'll keep trying to become a better mystery writer! this time "the crime" wasn't really my focus while writing it, it was more like "hey look at all these cool mechanics, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to use them?" The story might've suffered as a result.

Glad you liked the review.

I find mysteries very hard to pull off. It probably didn't help only having four suspects and with none of the other three appearing to have any motive. Perhaps one of them could have been a bit jelous of her wealth or one of the guests held a grudge against the host.
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