That’s right! After almost three years in development, the first case in My Little Investigations is finally ready to be released to the public!
I’m sure the first thing that you’re looking for is a download link, so you can find that here:
http://www.equestriandreamers.com/downloads/
At that link, you can find four things:
- The game executable itself plus case 1
- The soundtrack to case 1, composed by Trot Pilgrim
- Source code for the game executable
- Source code for the (now-defunct) Java case compiler (+ game implementation)
If you just want to play the game, the first item is what you want. Highly recommended as well is the second option, as Trot Pilgrim did an awfully fine job scoring the game, and his music is great to listen to on its own. If you’re interested in exactly how the game works or are interested in any specific functionality therein, the third option will give you that. And if you’re academically curious, the fourth option contains the source code both for the initial Java demo of the game, and of the case compiler in Java that I’ve been using to compile the first case. It’s very bare-bones and is really not very good, and is entirely unsupported – now that case 1 is released, work on a proper case creator is underway in earnest – so only the most curious and adventurous will find anything there. Still, we included it for the sake of completeness.
If you’d like to discuss the game, don’t forget to check out our forum! Talk about MLI, about MLP:FiM in general, or about general things with other fans is all welcome!
Finally, I’d like to mention that we also now have a Twitter account, @EqDreamers! We’ll be using that account both to alert fans to new posts here, news about MLI, or just general communication with others. So, following us is definitely encouraged. 🙂
We’ll have more to post about in the coming days, but that’s probably more than enough for right now. Enjoy!
Congratulations, very good to see this 😀
Thank you so much for your effort, I will give it a try as soon as possible!
Keep being awesome, everypony /) /) /)
OMG! I thought this game would come out later. It’s time to chek it out!
Thanks for the work you put into, I’m sure it will be a great game.
The game started up fine and the first screen with the tutorial and Rarity works fine as well, but when I venture to the next screen (Where you find the CMC cloak) and town square, the background goes to black. The bridge shows p but no roads or grass and the tents aren’t visible either. Same with town square. I’ve re-downloaded the game twice and continue to receive the same problem. What do I do?
This is a known issue, with no mitigation at the moment, I’m afraid. We’ll look into it.
Stuck in the Boutique with Rarity. After finding the Broken Glass, Hairpin, Diary Key, and of course, the Small Gems, Rarity’s magic isn’t reacting anywhere else in the room whatsoever. I’ve seemingly scoured every pixel looking for any hint of anything I’ve missed, and no reaction. Without the magic, I’ve interacted with the Broken Window, the Makeup Booths, the Mirror, the Stairs, and the Ripped Stool, and the way to the outside (clipping issue encountered there, btw, where Twilight managed to “walk out the door” and thus overlapped the top and right side of the door frame, but under part of the diamond pattern on the top left side of the door). So of course I have the Ripped Stool and Small Gems in my Evidence, with no hints of evidence combining available. There is seemingly no way to move forward at all.
“I have searched HIGH, and I have searched _low_. _Low_ and HIGH, HIGH and _low_.”
p.s. Playing on OS X, in case that has anything to do with it.
Ah, never mind, I found it. I hadn’t realized the “hooked” gems were separate from the small gems. I thought they were part of the same jumble of gems.
I’m loving the additions so far, but I wanted to mentioned that when I presented the hair that had been paired with Opal to Rarity it still closed. This was not during an investigation (I still need to do that) but just after I started talking with her. For info purposed: I’m doing this on OSX. I’m so glad the game autosaves. I’ll let you know if I run into more issues. Thanks for working so hard to get this done!
Also I can now confirm that if I present it at the correct time (during the investigation) it does not crash, just if you present it before, as I mentioned. I’m guessing that’s left over from the code that closed it during the demo. Hope that this is helpful to you!
An incredible job on the game, guys. I love everything about it. Props all around! ^_^
Guys, I think we need to start syndicating this thing to different sources just in case Hashbro starts being overprotective again.
It closed on me again, much later though. I tried combining SPOILER: (the red key and the empty safe)
Okay I tried it again and it didn’t happen this time. I guess it’s an inconsistent thing.I’ll still continue to let you know if/where I run into this if I do again.
Okay it seems to just be an inconsistant bug that seems to have some chance of happening with any items that can’t be combined.
I can’t wait! Forget catching up with sleep tonight – it’s detectorpone time.
I told ya I’ll be around when Case 1’s released.
Damn good work, guys.
Thank you Warwolf and everyone else showing their praise! 😀
Please continue to spread the word and leave feedback. We do read through mostly everything, so don’t be afraid to post.
Just finished this game, and my personal take on it and this first case: It’s absolutely wonderful and entertaining ~ it was all wonderfully executed and the gameplay and all the details were all so well organized.
There were a couple things I do have to say about it, though, but even then these are just personal little nitpicks of my own, and are very minor to begin with:
* Pinkie Pie. Sheesh, for all the times she appeared (which was during about half this gameplay) could rival the equivalent of what the Diamond Dogs think of Rarity – annoying. But, that isn’t necessarily bad either, in this case. The reason for her role in it, that she’s breaking the fourth wall in this situation was all very funny and clever, especially with the mention of the walkthrough and to us, the players. It’s like any game when going through tutorials (ie: for instance, “To walk, use the analog stick”). How do they know what that is, to begin with? XD I think it was a nice joke to approach something that many of us as game players have noticed in games, in general.
* The sound quality with some of the voice actors. Perhaps there were limitations for some of those who provided the voices, but I could not help but wonder on some occassions how some of the voice and audio that went through weren’t equal. Sometimes, some lines or tones seemed a bit quieter than others. I could hear it quite fine, but it still crossed my mind that I was near to struggling to turning the volume up, when not needed. Again, it wasn’t a huge thing, but it was enough to notice for me to point out. If I were behind a project, I would look into making sure the voice actors have very good quality mics, and when during the process of putting the game together make sure you can fix or remedy anything with the sound and if you cannot, return to the one who supplied the voice to see if they could fix the problem (be the lighter volume of their recording or something else such as audio or mic quality).
Gah, that ending, we know the next case is going to involve Trixie somehow, be it as the party being wrongly accused or not. I hope these guys don’t get a C & D, or if they do, the work on it anyway, and upload it. I mean, rights or not, it’s not like they’re getting money out of this.
I got stuck on the second part of the Diamond Dogs confrontation. Can anyone help me?
You need to point out something that a very greedy Spike would do that didn’t happen during the events of the crime.
Look out for the red text in confrontations too. They should help point the way forward.
Once Twilight said the line:
“*sigh* Apple Bloom, I think I know why you’re not talking”
I selected Scootaloo and as soon as I pressed [Present], the game crashed (MyLittleInvestigations.exe has stopped working…).
I’m on Windows 8.1, it that’s somehow relevant.
Loving most of it so far (some things that didn’t quite work with me I can chalk to a different taste in jokes and stuff, so don’t worry), but I had two major issues:
First, the background not loading after a certain part of the game, like Ciglon above. In my case, I remember it happening after confronting Scootaloo. Exiting and re-entering the game seemed to solve that one, so I would agree with the forum posts about memory issues. (I run it on a computer with 6 GB of RAM, and was playing for a while when this happened, for the record)
Second, the confrontation with Rover; once he first shows his “damaged” animation, the game stops. Twilight is still blinking, but Rover is immobile, and no text or nothing to interact with appears, essentially freezing it (I must’ve waited a couple of minutes before closing the game). Exiting and re-entering the game didn’t do anything about it.
I’m running the game on Windows 8.1, if that’s necessary.
Very well done! Unfortunately, after presenting the second piece of evidence to Scootaloo, the game is freezing under Wine (1.4.1) on one of Scoot’s lines, probably when that number 3 is supposed to become a 2. When I run it with a terminal, there’s no output or anything to indicate an error, so I can’t really tell you more unfortunately. I’ll switch to a different OS and try again later.
But first, impressions! Overall good, I’m glad you got the audio issues from the demo sorted out, although the OCs were on the whole a bit quiet: Abby was fine, but the guy with the broom was drowned out by the background music and the other pony started off sounding as if she were on the other side of a thin window. My only real gripe is this aspect of the script: why do the characters seem to hate each other so much? They’re supposed to be friends, so why is Twilight mentally considering Pinkie as a suitable candidate for a mental asylum, and why is every single line met with a frowny “ugh”?
That aside, it definitely has its moments, and it’s been great fun so far.
That was great just finished up the first case cant wait to do some more really reminds me of turnabout storm good times hope all of you have fun with it 2 things though one of them a bug the other im not sure 1 the screen goes mostly black when going between places all you see is twilight and if you have anyone with here and a few foreground objects its fixed by saving going to the main title screen and reloading though the other thing is the months don’t going with the words spoken like a bad anime dub lol don’t know if that’s a bug or if its meant to be like that anyway great game guys good way to kill a few hours loved the artwork till next time.
RD87
You guys are champions! This is easily my favorite My Little Pony game out there! The fact that you accomplished this HUGE game just blows my mind!
Congratulations!
You guys put on some great work here! And I must say that I’m really impressed! (even though I think the objection poses were a bit too much, but aside from that, I loved the whole thing.) I have a question though. At one of the conventions you guys went to, you said fans would be able to make their own cases. Will you be releasing a Case editor for this? And if so, when do you plan releasing this editor (don’t really mean a specific date, more as in between wich cases).
Yes, we’ll be releasing a case creator. Work on it has started now that case 1 is complete, though I can’t really give more information than that.
Well, after finishing it… that was really great. You absolutely nailed the voices and motives of the real culprits, that was a very pleasant surprise. Technically it was very good, and I only noticed one small graphical glitch (Rarity’s side model has no hair between her nearest ear and horn, making her look half bald). The script started okay and improved to exceptional in the second half. The confrontations were exciting, and the fact that every single line of dialog was voice acted is just amazing.
Just one small programming issue… I notice that you set up the dialogue to enable fast-forward when a line of text that has been seen before shows up. This unfortunately means that you can’t ever repeat a line of text. For example, “…” is used often, and it’s a bit disconcerting to see the fast-forward button appear for a single tiny segment. Very minor niggle I know, but it’s there.
Anyway, congratulations on not only finishing a game, but also on making it both fun and reasonably polished.
It keeps freezing for me when I use the ribbon on Scootaloo on confrontation…
I just finished the case and I feel the need to express that this project has, without a doubt, the best fan voice acting I have ever heard, in this fandom or any other.
That. Was. Awesome! You guys totally made up for us not getting a new episode this week!
There was only one technical issue I had, and it’s just an ease-of-use sort of thing — I’d love if there was an auto-advance mode so the conversations would continue fluidly without the user having to click after each line.
My other complaint is that Rarity’s accent is… kind of off. It tends to skew into British Received Pronunciation rather than Trans-Atlantic.
Very glad to see this here! Close to beating it, but I have to head off to bed. Overall… I LOVE IT! It’s making me want to play the Ace Attorney games (Never did so).
Also love the Soundtrack! In the Ponyville song, there are parts where all I hear is “Stop the bats, stop the bat, make them go and not come back!” Not sure if that was intentional or not, but I laugh whenever I hear it!
Professor Pinkie ~ Giggle at the Mystery, Logic ~ Making the Connection, And Wait a Second! ~ A spark of Truth are my favorite songs from the soundtrack, especially the last one. Absolutely love that one.
Definitely can’t wait to see what else you come up with! Best of luck on continuing in other cases and congratulations on finishing Case 1!
That was really good. Conversations written in a very humorous way.
Special prize for Rarity. Her character was really on mark in this.
…I finished the case 24 hours ago and I’m still fighting the urge to pick up the game again and keep playing. Because there isn’t any more.
Help…
BEST GAME EVER! All of you guys did a fantastic job on creating this, but will there be more chapters/investigation?
Yup, we have more cases planned. 🙂
Im sad because its not an online game… 🙁
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
-TG
Hello,
So I just found out about this game and I am soooooo excited. I downloaded it right away to my mac OSX. I Started playing and it is brilliant. However I am stuck in the beginning outside carosel botique. I cannot get anywhere else. It quits on me anytime I go to the next place like the bridge. What I am doing wrong!!??