This looks very interesting, but the Italian copy on the website is poorly translated. For instance, nobody would write an explanation of what you need to do speaking to the player in the courtesy third person (Perquisisca i luoghi, Smascheri la bugia). Other sentences are written poorly, for instance "Nel gioco, «Segnalare» sotto una battuta ce la invia direttamente.". I haven't played the game, but if the translations are not up to par, it might be worth to publish it in English only for now
Thank you so much for your feedback. To be honest, I am a solo founder and dont speak Italian natively. So I have to base on the translation by AI completely. Once I have more players and more financial backup, I'll have those texts verified by native speaker.
I’m just curious, are you old enough to have been inspired by Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? That was my first thought when reading this. I loved the computer game growing up and I wanted to be on the game show so bad.
Ha, I'm old enough but grew up in another part of the world (Vietnam) where the game show never made it there. This is the first time I've heard of it and it's interesting that my games share some ideas with it :)
The game is not bad. I tried it out and solved the Paris case. I liked the style and the locations.
I don't think I had to actually use the LLM chat at all though? It felt like suggested questions were all that was required.
There's an element of "just go everywhere and click on everything" too. For example having to return to a previous location to find someone now has a vital clue for you on how to solve a new puzzle. I'm not sure how you are supposed to know you should to back there. That kind of gameplay isn't that much fun.
Thank you for playing it through. The Paris case is the first of a five-level training pack, it's meant to guide new players with a tutorial. The free questions really matter in the real cases after that, where the suggestions don't cover what you'll need. And very good point about going back to a location, will definitely fix it in the next version.
When I was growing up there was a wonderfully made interactive “novel” game on early Macintosh called Sherlock Holmes. I’ve always wondered when we’ll get to a point where this can be done ad-hoc with any potential crime thriller. LA Noir introduced nuanced facial movements and dialog chains but I keep going back to that 1990s era Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective.
Thanks for the feedback. The case is fixed and ensured that it is solvable. I have multiple models to play it before going live. Only the conversation part is free, but it's guarded against the timeline and facts that each suspect knows. In that way, they can lie but can not change the story. By the way, I'm going to take a look at Consulting Detective
People are definitely doing "free form" interactive fiction now, though I think the one that really interests me is classic style but with an LLM interface that makes the interaction less rigid, eg
You should probably put some better examples of writing in the first trailer, especially if the game involves a lot of reading. Asides from just sounding horribly bland, there's only two sentences of dialogue shown and the character says "honestly" in BOTH of them.
Interesting idea. I was toying with a similar concept of a investigative journalist in a noirish town who's tasked with uncovering the secret identity of a vigilante.
It always struck me as absurd how obvious the fact that Clark Kent is Superman was to the whole audience. The characters in the story never seemed to understand it.
Ha, interesting, the Clark Kent problem. And your journalist idea sounds fun, I'd try it. For long term vision, I've already prepared an MCP so that people can build their own stories and start a private game, for example.
I wonder if the cases in the game are created by AI as well. From my experiments LLMs outputs are rather mediocre, without "creativity", suspenses or plot twists
Thank you for your feedback. It's a fair point, LLM stories are often flat, I totally agree. And yes, the cases are written by AI, but through a pipeline rather than from scratch. I pick the idea and the city, then we develop the pitch together via Claude (I'm alone on this for now), then, only after my validation, the engine generates the case from it. After that, it makes sure the case is solvable by having multiple models play it as the detective, simulating different player profiles.
haha very neat! Just curious how are you planning to make it free with the inference cost? Even with a luna or haiku its still a non zero cost to run per session.
Good point, I cover the inference cost myself for now, the running cost is a few thousand a year. There'll be premium features in the future, but that depends on reach and retention, and that'd be the second phase of the product.
Thank you for your feedback. You're the third person to mention it today. And to be honest, I've never heard of it before. I'm gonna check it tonight ;)
Hi, half of it already works. You can question the suspects by voice and they answer in their own voices. There are still interactions that need the screen though, for now. A voice-only mode is a really fun idea.
Hi, that's exactly what I'm working on right now. There was a technical barrier to porting the game to the web, and given the slowness of the App Store review process, I'll definitely release a web version very soon. Please stay tuned!
Thanks for the feedback. It doesn't collect the hardware ID or the advertising ID. It collects the random player id the app is given on first launch, which lets you keep your progress without an account, and the push token if you allow notifications.
I enjoy asking ai to play with me Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego. You can ask for different variations, difficult levels and ask it to add images.
Also, it seems that you and I are dinosaurs.
I don't think I had to actually use the LLM chat at all though? It felt like suggested questions were all that was required.
There's an element of "just go everywhere and click on everything" too. For example having to return to a previous location to find someone now has a vital clue for you on how to solve a new puzzle. I'm not sure how you are supposed to know you should to back there. That kind of gameplay isn't that much fun.
https://intfiction.org/t/glulxe-with-llm-based-user-input-pa...
It always struck me as absurd how obvious the fact that Clark Kent is Superman was to the whole audience. The characters in the story never seemed to understand it.
EVERYBODY LIES.