The Steam Detective Fest was a big success! Thank you to everyone for your continued interest in the game, and in particular to everyone who play-tested version 2 of the demo and gave some great feedback.
This version implements a lot of your feedback and fixes at least one really annoying bug with the “Send Feedback” button (ironically).
And apologies for blasting your eardrums with some rather loud sound effects. Those affected will be pleased to see the new volume controls in the Settings menu.
New features:
General UI: New 4-digit year input component, including conversion to Japanese era calendar.
In puzzles, the year (e.g. “1923”) is no longer listed in the word list, but is now entered using the year input component. In some cases this means you will have to determine the Western-style year using the Japanese era calendar.
In other places the standard spinbox has been augmented by the year input. This should make data entry much easier if you don’t have a keyboard, but you can still use the keyboard here too.
Since the year picker includes Japanese era names, the existing era text files have been deleted from the database.
Accessibility: When using Steam Big Picture mode, the Steam on-screen keyboard (OSK) should open automatically when selecting a text field. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to work on Steam Deck yet for some unknown reason. This is a priority to be fixed.
Explore overworld: Crisp high-resolution 320x240 video! Travelling around Tokyo by train will now trigger a short video clip.
Improvements:
Explore desk: The desk letter text was a little small and hard to read. It now expands to fill the screen when it appears.
Audio: More refined audio controls for master, music and ambient sound levels.
3D treasure viewer: A good suggestion to add play-pause controls for the 3D treasure viewer has been implemented.
General UI: The menu button at the bottom of the screen is more obviously a menu button now.
Puzzles: Tweaks to the Kameido Tenjin and Takarazuka puzzles to make them a bit more interesting and challenging.
Bug fixes:
Fixed an annoying bug faced by a few players, where trying to access “Settings” or “Send Feedback” at the start of a chapter (during the intro or when the desk appears) would essentially freeze the game. Apologies for the annoyance.
Postcard browser: You can now browse Week 2 postcards after completing the demo. Also, the browser now correctly shows the Notes you have unlocked.
Treasure browser: Treasures are now correctly unlocked from your save data even after restarting the game.
Fixed bug where treasure was unlocked at start, not end, of chapter.