#serra otd

[rikitiki-5000]

we! love! serra!!!

[sarahmunificentfan]

[the-bitter-ocean]

Forgot to post this but woe of the devil fanart be upon ye :

[thelistenersfury]

[thebirthofvenusfly]

that's it. (founds your family)

[junoverses]

Ace Attorney fans rejoice

[ectophasm]

so episode 1 <3

the only issue i've had is that the game runs like a cryptominer on my computer where it has absolutely no excuse to. this is a damn VN it has no right to be eating as much of my memory as a moderately-modded minecraft save i forgot to download optifine/embeddium on. it loaded in on ultra graphics but even after turning them down to medium i was still having my laptop fan blaring (less after medium graphics but still there) and frame drops (nonexistent before medium graphics but prevalent after) during the courtroom segments. i suspect a memory leak or things not unloading when they should be but i don't have the knowledge to have any say in it at all

you'd think the reading comprehension minigames are a pace breaker, but they tend to pop up when the game is slow anyway. this does hurt my ability to pay attention to them, but they are just a bonus most of the time. as a(n occasional) perfectionist i think this game might genuinely improve my reading comprehension and i think that's beautiful. they also provide a lot of worldbuilding, which is especially important with this genre + setting combo to set boundaries of what's realistic in this world and what isn't, so it can get your brain in the right mindset for Theorizing . they also get added to the archive so if you're like me and was trained in american public school to throw out all information once you've already used it on the test then you can reread it whenever

also ITS COURTROOM SEGMENTS

its trial system is like if danganronpa's trial system and ace attorney's trial system had a sexy sexy baby with a gambling addiction. when lag was minimal it felt satisfying as hell to play, and when you're up to bat with ace attorney and danganronpa that sort of gratification is tough to match but otD hits a home run. its minigames make more sense than danganronpa's (all beautifully themed) and it's SUPER engaging. i was liveblogging on bsky but locked in too hard at the court segment to say anything about it

past this point there will be ep1 spoilers. beware all ye who enter... admittedly i am very biased (this game isn't just up my alley, it's ringing my doorbell) but if you like mystery VNs at all then you will LOVE this game. at the very least play ep0 and see if you like it

guh momin ...

i LOVE this chapter. no notes here, just... it's fantastic. the mystery is paced well, the new characters are amazing, BLATANTLY CANON TRANS WOMAN, the animation of a card whacking emma in the face is funny as hell to me...

That aside. Some analysis because I'm a chronic yapper when I want to be.

idk if i'm reading subtext that isn't there but... morgan IS grieving. just doing it her own way. the way how in the trial she IMMEDIATELY jumps to the conclusion that serra killed david... before being like. wait. this isn't me. i've gotta consider all the variables here. there's a couple of other moments too (would she have flipped out that bad at the xmas photo if she weren't already exhausted?) this feels like a miniscule thing but morgan has a lot of nuance other media serial killers don't get and that's important when she's the protag. also i wonder if emma KNOWS morgan is the HK but doesn't have the evidence to get her on it. doubt it but she's got a lot else about the case on lock. i love morgan she is a fantastic character

serra is adorable and i will protect this robot with my life. david really did just force a serial killer to adopt his daughter huh... i've seen this trope with dads and daughters and dads and sons but never with a mom. i wanna see how this unfolds so bad

i could yap all day about this game but i should probably stop here for my own sanity. i need to go be mentally ill about this game in other ways too

so i saw of the Devil on bluesky and, as a self-proclaimed Detective VN Enthusiast, had to play the demo.

and it is FANTASTIC so far. so fantastic in fact that i am typing this up on tumblr for the higher character limit

first off, the game has INSANE style points.

morgan has a huge theme of poker/gambling, and that's reflected in the game's UI in an absolutely beautiful way. the UI also brings in the cyberpunk aspect, so just looking at the UI can tell you what kind of world morgan's in and how she thinks about her job. and also it looks awesome combined with the comic book motifs of the artstyle. my only complaint on this front is that london and reyes aren't very expressive in their sprites, but it at least makes a little sense considering they're detectives. and also i've been playing ai: the somnium files, which goes above and beyond on the expression front, so my perception may be skewed here. some extra poses in the sprites overall would be nice for the full game but they are absolutely great as is and do not need it to hold up

also i LOVE that you're rewarded for interacting with the game world and understanding it. reading comprehension game my beloved <3 being rewarded for investigating every object in the room my beloved <3

some extra notes under the readmore. don't click unless you've finished ep 0

also a spoiler for zero escape: zero time dilemma but i try to be as vague as possible abt it

God forbid women do anything.

i LOVE morgan already. i didn't see the twist coming at all, but the foreshadowing was extremely solid. it could have easily felt as bullshit as the villian's reveal in ZTD, but it didn't feel like that at all - it made a lot of her past lines make a lot more sense, and it being revealed this early in the game makes me excited about how the game is going to handle it. also you texted a heart emoticon to the fucking DEPARTMENT OF STATE ? absolute fucking menace

i was playing aitsf before i picked up otdevil. i will be drawing date and reyes together with their yellow prosthetic detective-assistant eyes as soon as i finish aitsf

also the interviews in extra content are a fucking fantastic idea and every VN should do them. i've only viewed reyes's so far (i need to be up in 6 hours </3) but it was AMAZING. tell me your character has autism in one easy step (and possibly a tgirl depending on what that third thing is)

that being said, i do have a few nitpicks.

- it's obvious from the moment the photo is shown that carlos isn't the killer. iirc we already determined that carlos didn't have a right arm at the time, and whether you account for the mirror or not, the suspect in the photo has both arms. this tripped me up for the rest of the mirror segment and i think it could be fixed (relatively) easily by altering the pose of the figure such that the arm not holding the gun is more behind the figure or perhaps less distinctly an arm

- some of the solutions are a little unintuitive. to me anyway. and sometimes i am a little stupid. the one that comes to mind is the smell of the jacket -- admittedly i'm not very knowledgeable on guns, but i don't think i'd have thought of the smell of the gunpowder not being on it. that being said, gambling's kinda the point, so maybe i'm bound to have to make a few guesses

- it's not very easy to jump back to a particular segment of the episode. i unlocked everyone's interviews but morgan's on my first run, but if i wasn't such a religious multi-slot saver i might've had to do the whole episode over to get morgan's unless there's a replay option i'm missing.

i'll prolly have more and better thoughts when i'm more awake but damn that demo was good and i'm so excited for ep 1

[thelistenersfury]

Music peaked in the early 21st century

[rikitiki-5000]

omg its SERRA ASHUR??!? FROM HIT GAME OF DA DEVIL?!?!??!!??

[thelistenersfury]

[thebirthofvenusfly]

no spoilers as i havent completed episode 1 yet but i love seeing serra and morgan's dynamic so far. morgan is trying to be so uncaring. so callous. so business-oriented. trying to get shit done. places to be. serra is very compassionate, kind, curious... and both are incredibly headstrong so their will and determinations clash head-on like speeding trains all the time. love them

[thebirthofvenusfly]

:,)

a proud dad and his beloved baby in the official concept art

[thebirthofvenusfly]

finally finished episode 1 (and 0, before that, before you ask) of Of The Devil and as a certified american, internet user, acting (and game development) student, i felt it imperative to share my opinion of this project. im writing this at 4 am and while half-tipsy so if you see typos, no you dont.

the following includes significant spoilers for both episodes 0 and 1 of Of The Devil so if you havent played it, you might want to Not read this!

im just gonna go ahead and start with what i think overall: THIS IS A REALLY GOOD FUCKING GAME. Like, REALLY REALLY GOOD. Like, I enjoyed this more than many of my attempts and experiences to play some of its inspirations (re: ace attorney, danganronpa) which is NOT me hating those inspirations; i am saying the innovations and unique creative decisions made to set Of The Devil apart from other titles in the murder mystery genre of games has made it what i love about it.

starting with general Things I Love:

Character Writing: name one boring character in this game. (spoiler alert: impossible!) this game has mastered an art of bringing charm and whimsy to a variety of characters who vary in age, design, occupation, relation to one another--without a single stale mark among any of them. every character is multi-dimensional. yes, emma is a perpetually tired nerd, but also yes, she is a ruthless, meticulous, prompt, dedicated lawyer who has a repeated record of having beat morgan in trial several times over, and will come running at 4 am to work.

yes, morgan is a hard-ass. also yes, she is a murderer. also yes, she is a criminal defense attorney. also yes, she is the most trusted ally of david ashur--a world-renowned programmer--and has killed on his behalf before without remotely being asked to do so. yes, she has taken serra under her wing and hired her. yes, she refers to serra as it and questions serra's independent thought on several occasions. yes, she begins to accept serra's opinions, quips, and muses more, and in her mind, refers to her as spearmint (out of endearment? teasing?). hell, yes, she chooses to even keep serra in her life after opening the episode 1 case with saying once she'd fulfilled this debt to serra (and david), she couldn't care less how serra fucked off afterwards.

tl;dr: the characters feel human. even the not-human ones. and they cover a variety of personalities and dynamics that clash and harmonize in lovely ways. Dialogue Writing: insane banter, bouncing off one another, fun puns and jokes and quips to specific characters. highlighted even further by the lovely portraits that change through conversation. ISAT and OTD prove: 2D character portraits can really do it all, and beautifully portray emotion in games with no emotional vocality (voice-acting, chat,) to support them. would make a good fandub. (i know there is a jelloapocalypse one, but as an acting student, i could see this as a fun challenge myself too if i can gather a couple more friends...) The Mysteries and Puzzles: did you play the game? the mirror-bit of episode 0? the synatonin-poisoned water, kept in the body for hours, becoming deadly when mixed with alcohol, gagged back up with salt-and-water concoction to get away with a murder-designed-as-a-suicide-turned-into-murder-against-an-innocent-party? cause that was very fucking clever.

Music: banger. nothing more to say here. the greatness of the soundtrack speaks for itself.

Character Designs, Art Style, and Visual Choices:

art style: 1000000/10. speaks for itself. same with character design choices, a fine diversity of heights, complexions, ages among the cast, etc. i suppose i would like to see more black and afro-featured characters moving forward as isaac was really the only one thus far, but given how small the cast is, this isn't an awful ratio for now.

i wanna talk about the visual/cinematic decisions. i want to talk about the way we cut to type-writer font and text and cut to panels of what looks like it was ripped right out of the script; you know, the solid-colored, semi-static background stills? where the character name and dialogue line sit in the middle, in the top left corner, you'll find the location of the current scene, and at the bottom, the line number, like we're looking at the actual script on paper? i love those. they create a nice change of pace and highlight of satirical and interesting moments in conversation. same with the multi-colored text, italicized text choices, and the other cuts--where some lines would cut to a grey, new camera angle in another part of the room, with the dialogue in red at the bottom for some of the most soul-chilling realizations of the narrative? W choices.

Plot Twists and Surprising Additions: okay so actually playing episode 0 i joked it would be really fucking funny if morgan were the heartbreak killer fresh after clearing carlos' name and you can only imagine the look on my face when i clicked into the next panel to immediately see morgan in the doorway with a smoking gun in hand.

it seems like such a simple idea for a twist; let's make the criminal defense attorney, whose entire career has been responsibilities along the lines of clearing people of murder, a flat-out murderer. let's say SHE is the murderer responsible for the death of a victim whose case she is assigned to, to prove someone else's innocence for it. she goes in with full confidence KNOWING she is the one who pulled the trigger, and as such, the evidence to support carlos' innocence should be there somewhere. all while using her arguments (smell of gunpowder, for example) as ways to keep herself separated from suspicion (light a cigarette inside the interrogation room so that the smell of gunpowder potentially on her is overwritten with the cigarette scent). and then reveal those supposedly six people she's shot in the heart? yeah, they are FAR from her first victims. very far. even david's stalker was, at minimum, her 20th, maybe 30th, maybe 40th kill; she's too precise, too meticulous, too... comfortable and satisfied doing it. it cant be new. cant be a fluke hobby. its something she is consistently finding satisfaction within, almost therapeutically. why???? (let's find out.)

anyways. we WILL be tuning into episode 2. we WILL be buying any merch on the horizon, and we WILL be checking out the ao3 scene (and perhaps contributing to it...?)

thanks gamers