Erebus: The Crime Project - A Murder-Mystery Visual Novel in the style of Danganronpa (Completed Prologue Released)

[+ Novem 344]

 
Hello everybody! I'm Novem, also known here as Obrusnine or The Nine. I have been developing Erebus: The Crime Project for the past six months, a Danganronpa-inspired mystery visual novel set in the far future (though, to be honest, it doesn't feel like it most of the time). After hundreds of hours (about 300 I think by now, I've lost count) of work writing, developing, and testing... I'm finally ready to show off the completed prologue here in my old favorite community. Because this time, instead of disappearing randomly, I'm going to finish something! That's why I made sure to finish this entire 2-3 hour slice of the game before I posted here, though luckily I've been able to solicit help from the Danganronpa subreddit for a few things (though, this time around, I've tried mostly to rely on myself). But that's enough about me and the journey to get this far, let's get into the game!

 

NOTE: At current, the game is ~11.1 percent complete.

 

NOTE 2: The game will be released in an episodic fashion, one chapter at a time until the game is complete. You will be able to carry your saves between chapters.

 

NOTE 3: If you're interested, I'm writing a tie-in novel for this game and can share it chapter by chapter as I release it through PMs (I can't post it publicly as I plan to sell it once it's done, but I hand out digital copies of my books to anyone who asks).

 

 
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT MATURE CONTENT

 

 
I WILL NOT GIVE ANY SPECIFIC WARNINGS! I WILL NOT TELL YOU WHEN THESE THINGS I'M WARNING YOU ABOUT WILL SHOW UP! THEY WOULD ALL BE SPOILERS! As such, you MUST play Erebus: The Crime Project or read Erebus: The Innocence Project expecting that you may run into, in a completely uncensored way that may end up involving major, graphic, and detailed explanation/depiction of or on ANY of the following topics. I MEAN ANY OF THEM! Not all of them will come up, BUT SOME NUMBER OF THEM ABSOLUTELY WILL!

Death, Murder, Suicide, Rape, Sex, Language, Race, Hate Crimes, Torture, Mutilation, Politics, Drug and Alcohol Use, and basically any kind of dark or triggering topic that you could possibly imagine. MY WORK DOES NOT SHY AWAY FROM POTENTIALLY CONTROVERSIAL TOPICS! I will tell my story in whatever way I feel makes it the strongest story possible. I DO NOT DO THINGS FOR THE SAKE OF SHOCK VALUE!

Do note that no matter the topic, I try to approach it in a very mature and respectful manor. Humans do screwed up and disgusting stuff sometimes. They also do really beautiful things that some people may not want to see or read about. I try to portray it all honestly and with tact while still respecting your intelligence and maturity.
 
THIS GAME IS NOT GENERALLY EXPLICIT, BUT IT IS MEANT FOR ADULTS! AGAIN, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

 

 

 

On the Earth of the far future, fifteen strangers from all walks of life wake up in a mysterious location seemingly missing their memories and told they agreed to a mystery assignment. It is soon revealed that not only are they trapped, but that the only way to ever leave is to murder one of their fellows, and get away with it. When they are thrust into this competition of crime, will they be able to figure out how to escape, or will they be forced to find a way to live in peace without hope of escape or answers? 
 
Who will die? Who will survive? Who is behind all of this, and why? Figure it out for yourself in Erebus: The Crime Project.

 

 

 

Erebus takes place on Earth in the far future. Fifteen strangers are trapped along with a single mysterious and cold Caretaker in an unknown location. It is up to them to progress through the a set of locked doors to find out the true identity of their prison, and their secret wardens (or warden) behind the scenes.

 

 

 

Note: Sorry about the inconsistent text formatting. It would be too time consuming to remake these so I'm just gonna live with it, lol

 

 

All screens taken from Male POV because I'm lazy.

 

 

 

 

- Experience a detailed, dark, gritty, and compelling mystery story with devastating deaths and crazy plot twists you won't see coming.
 
- Unravel the mystery of the identity of the strangely unnamed location you find yourself in.
 
- Make decisions that will shape the ultimate fate of several characters, including yourself. 
 
- Experience three different endings depending on your choices.
 
- Investigate brutal murders and crimes.
 
- Gather evidence to use in trials where you will determine and convict the culprit.
 
- Play logic mini-games to advance the narrative and discover the culprit for each crime in a trial. The thing that will decide if the mystery is solved and the culprit caught is you.
 
- Choose between a male and female protagonist who switch roles depending on your selection, providing minor dialogue changes and different romantic options.
 
- Make friends or even become lovers with a diverse cast of characters that may die at any moment.
 
- Listen to a carefully curated soundtrack from a diverse set of games (mostly visual novels) that you may not have played before.

 

 

 

You can download the complete demo of the prologue here!

 

YOU WILL NEED DECOMPRESSION SOFTWARE (such as WinRAR) IN ORDER TO EXTRACT THE COMPRESSED FILES (in RAR format). ONCE DONE, OPEN THE FOLDER AND OPEN GAME.EXE TO START PLAYING. THIS WILL ONLY WORK ON A WINDOWS PC.
 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ric5ht0c2rvxfp7/Erebus%20The%20Crime%20Project%20Prologue%20v1.0.rar?dl=0 681.25 MB FROM DROPBOX

 

http://www.mediafire.com/file/n8pa7qzvuacgdj7/Erebus_The_Crime_Project_Prologue_v1.0.rar 681.25 MB FROM MEDIAFIRE

 

 
PATCH 1.0 NOTES (versus previous demo)
 
- Added the end of the trial (including 3 more mini-games). 
 
- Fixed choices going off the window by shortening a few answers (I'm still not sure if I should've done this, if you feel an answer is unclear please report it!). 
 
- Added final trial choice and punishment choice.
 
- Added the ability to deselect the currently selected piece of evidence in the evidence window.
 
- Fixed a bug that allowed the the player to leave their room after heading in post-intro cutscene.
 
- Fixed a number of inaccurate tutorial messages.
 
- Implemented Mistakes system (I am suspicious that the game might be too easy, please report if you feel the same).
 
- Fixed a bug where both Andel and Cybil would reply to Kayla during a conversation during the investigation (Male Protagonist).
 
- Fixed a bug where Jensen's namebox wouldn't appear for a specific piece of dialogue in the trial.
 
NOTE: Credits were accidentally left out of the main menu. They will be included with the next release. If you want to check them, you can find them here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ul7x1g3mx6vas95/EREBUS%20CREDITS%20LIST.txt?dl=0 or below in the Credits section.

 
 

 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ul7x1g3mx6vas95/EREBUS%20CREDITS%20LIST.txt?dl=0
 
IF YOU SPOT ANYTHING THAT BELONGS TO YOU AND WOULD LIKE TO BE CREDITED FOR IT OR HAVE IT REMOVED, PLEASE CONTACT ME VIA PM! I WILL WORK TO MEET YOUR DESIRES AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!
 
Shaz
Neon Black
Yanfly
Enterbrain
G Senjou no Maou OST
Ever 17: Out of Infinity OST
Swan Song OST
Fate/stay night OST
Rewrite OST
Super Danganronpa 2 OST
Danganronpa OST
Fate/hollow ataraxia OST
Muv Luv Alternative OST
Caitlin
999 OST
Galv
/u/ScorpioSerqet
/u/RenigmaRyuugu
Grisaia no Kajitsu OST (Anime)

 

 

 

I have to give a massive shoutout to my internal committed group who helped me get through all of the work and gave me valuable feedback (along with listening to all my rambling)! This group includes Danganronpa redditors such as...
\u\djokra
\u\robbingrouge
and
\u\alliance_of_rumors
 
Also the artistic contributions of Danganronpa redditors such as...
\u\ScorpioSerqet
and
\u\RenigmaRyuugu
...helped me improve the game! Thanks!

 

 

 

Here's a lame userbar I made.
 

 

[url=http://www.rpgmakercentral.com/topic/39798-erebus-the-crime-project-a-murder-mystery-visual-novel-in-the-style-of-danganronpa/][img=http://i.imgur.com/uUftBOz.png][/url]

 

 

Edited October 12, 2017 by Novem

[+ Novem 344]

So, just so nobody is fooled (I think double-posting is against the rules?), I thought I'd say that I'm still technically working on this (so it doesn't get moved to inactive projects). Though I've moved production over to a prequel of sorts. I'll update the thread with news about that when it's ready. I had been working on The Crime Project for a pretty lengthy amount of time, but the way in which the initial demo was designed was just too convoluted. As the trial's got longer, it became much harder to prepare and sort all of the images necessary for it to work, and the original way it worked wasn't exactly clean anyways. So what I've done is removed or redesigned all of the mini-games in the demo which made use of an external image and converted them to just take advantage of the established text system. 

 

Going back to the drawing board took me a while and I worked on it between some other things, so I slowed down a bit. But, this prequel works on very much the same concepts, and is an essential part of the story I want to tell so I'll work up to The Crime Project a chapter at a time. The important thing is that I've made it into a format that's much easier to produce. If the demo took me, say, 300-400 hours of work to design. I imagine that on a chapter-to-chapter basis that the new format will cut that by at least half, if not a quarter, since I don't need to create and sort all of the picture files that aren't part of RPG Maker.

 

By the way, I notice no one ever replied with any feedback or anything to this game. Did anyone pass on this game for a particular reason? Was it the mature content warning or something else? Are you guys not a big fan of mystery games? I'm very curious, so if there's anyone out there, please let me know. And if you are interested with the game, I could still use feedback on whether or not that original demo was enjoyable. Maybe you think I could use some more mini-games? Is there too much dialogue? Let me know.

 

Oh, and by the way, if anyone knows how to insert a text backlog or knows how to make it so you can open a common event menu while you're showing text... that would be great. Right now, especially because I've become even more reliant on the text boxes, the player almost never has access to their evidence menu. I'd like to make it so that the player can access this at all times, but because of how the text box works in RPG Maker, I can only let the player have access to it at very specific times. Clicking on the window just makes the text advance, so the player can't click on the folder to bring up the menu. If anyone knows any solutions to this problem, please let me know!

Edited October 12, 2017 by Novem