Red Creek Summer Camp

Hi, this was a very good first game! You did a lot right and Red Creek Summer Camp is certainly a fun short game to play. The mapping was especially great and the text boxes have different faces to indicate the emotions of the person currently speaking. The few pieces of custom art that were in the game were good, I really like the title screen in particular. The story is interesting and there's plenty of potential for even better sequels!

Now, the game also has things that could use improvement. I'm gonna go over both the game itself and the story and offer a lot of suggestions. I don't know if you plan to work on this game some more, but hopefully my suggestions will help you to make your future games even better!

.

.

.

First, there's the issue with the Full Screen being required for the game. It's RPG Maker MV, so you can just set the default resolution on itch.io on your project page. The default resolution for MV games is Height: 816 and Width: 624. I wrote a detailed guide for the RPG Maker Game Jams I'm hosting on how to submit a HTML version of RPG Maker MV and MZ games, the link is HERE, so you can check it out for information how to make it playable without requiring full-screen mode.

Now, for the game itself. There's a lot of things you do right, the mapping is great and the story is decent, even if it could use improvement in certain areas.

First, too much of the game is spent trying to find what part of the cluttered area is interactable. The important places and items really need to stand out more. Maybe mark them with those stars you used for that one hint later on. Some items that stand out are unimportant without the MC even making a comment about them, while others are easily overlooked, but are actually needed to progress.

One example is the piece of paper under the bed you have to interact with after going through Dale's backpack. You can't interact with it before finding the notebook in Dale's backpack, but then you suddenly can after doing so. Or the part in the Office, where you have to find a key hidden in the fridge, but you can't even interact with the fridge before you find the locked drawer. That only makes the fridge look like a part of the scenery instead of something important. Even something like "it's a fridge" and "there's some piece of paper under the bed" if you interact with it before could mark it as a place of to keep in mind.

The game also has a certain lack of direction at the start. In the opening cutscene, the Sheriff tells you to check out the counselor's cabin first. However, after that you are outside the camp and have to solve a simple puzzle to find a key before proceeding inside. And then, when you get to the camp area, the MC reiterates what the Sheriff told her to do (Very good!), but then the MC says that she should explore the camp first before doing that. That is a bad suggestion, since there's ever only one location at a time that's actually relevant.

This results in the player wandering around the area, finding only things they can't interact with yet while to actually proceed they have to go to the councelor's cabin, because no other location is relevant yet. But the game tells you to explore the camp first and that will only confuse players and waste a lot of time. If there were other puzzles spread out around the camp to solve at the same time, that would be one thing, but the game is actually very linear.

The MC also seems to actively avoid places that look like they would warrant a closer look and the player will obviously want to investigate. "The Mess Hall is roped off, I shouldn't go inside." and "Hey, there's the obvious crime scene around the tent that belonged to the missing people. I should probably not go inside." Why? The MC is here to investigate what happened at the camp. Some reason should be given as to why she shouldn't investigate those places.

There are also a lot of collision issues, where the MC can walk on walls and such, but those are easily fixable.

.

.

.

Now, for the story.

SPOILERS:

Overall, the story is fine and works, but it's more of a first draft. There's issues with presenting the story and also some plot holes. It sort-of works as-is, but it needs more refinement to make it truly great. After playing the game, I got the impression that the game was supposed to be longer, but you had to cut it for time, resulting in the long exposition at the ends. So, here's my commentary on the story of the game and suggestions on how to improve it, filled with SPOILERS.

.

.

.

.

.

So, the game concerns a Summer Camp where people tend to go missing every so often and it has been happening for decades, only managing to remain open because the family that runs the place is very powerful and well-connected. Now, even if the camp owners somehow managed to avoid having their camp closed down, onw would think that a place so notorious would struggle to get people to want to go there in the first place. But you have to suspend your disbelief somewhat for these kinds of stories. So this premise is fine.

Maybe it could be improved if there was some reason given why people still go there despite everything that happened there. Maybe it's really cheap and the camp owners have great PR and managed to ensure that the public soon forgot about the events that keep happening there. maybe it's fallen on hard times recently due to everything that happened in the past finally catching up to the and the camp owners are trying to keep the camp going regardless.

The Sheriff sends the MC, who has a day off, to investigate the camp "before the police come in and trample everything." Well, that's not a valid excuse. If they are competent, the police will secure the crime scene remains and allow the investigators to work in peace. And they will want to do so fast, before the evidence vanishes (sending the MC ahead delay the proper investigation).

The MC is also much more likely to compromise the crime scene without proper equipment and result in the evidence being inadmissible in court than if a proper crime scene investigation takes place. And if the Sheriff is worried about the competency of her deputies, she should have fired them and hired better ones long ago. I don't think that's a very believable setup, even when you stretch out your suspension of disbelief. It just made me think that the Sheriff had something to hide and is part of it somehow, but that's obviously not the case.

This setup could make more sense if instead there was some need to conduct the investigation in secrecy. The game says that the family running the camp is very powerful and maybe they managed to block full-scale police investigation somehow. Maybe the Mayor is a member of the family that owns the camp, or some other powerful politician and they are trying to sweep it under the rug. Thus, in an effort to prevent this from happening, the Sheriff sends the MC having to basically unofficialy investigate the place at the Sheriff's behest, so that they can hopefully find something that they can use to justify an official investigation into the camp.

Or it could be that the police was already there and they haven't found anything concrete. So the Sheriff sent the MC to search the area one last time to see if they've missed anything before they wrap it up. There could be a cop stationed outside the gate to the camp that would be there to keep anyone but the MC out of it. For the key puzzle, the cop outside the gate could've lost the key to the gate somewhere (because he's incompetent) and the MC has to find it before she can go inside. And the cop dropped the key in some ditch and thus the MC needs a tool from the toolshed to reach it. Just an idea.

Anyway, just what the MC is supposed to be investigating and the overall timeframe isn't very well established. Apparently, the camp has been all over the news lately (why?) and three people went missing there (when?). The fact that this camp was apparently all over the news lately suggests that it's due to the people that went missing there, which the MC investigates, but it's not made clear. And if it already was on the news, so that the MC heard about it, one would think the police would have already checked the camp long ago.

Also, why is the place deserted? When did the disappearance of Dale and the others take place? Was it the last day of camp? Did Dale and the two girls that went missing stay behind for some reason while everyone else left? Was the summer camp cancelled after what happened to Dale? And then everyone just left without the police doing anything or interviewing any witnesses? Well, I guess they know that Dale was last seen at the counselors cabin. One would think the police would go to the campsite and interview people there so that all the witnesses (and potential suspects) are in one place, while the other cops would secure the crime scene around Dale's tent.

The supernatural stuff also suddenly comes right at the end with ghost Maria and the curse being mentioned for the first time, in one long conversation. Before that, there was no hint that this isn't just some typical detective story.

It would be better if there were some hints to the supernatural happenings at the camp. Maybe Maria could periodically apear to the MC over the course of the game. She would only be able to momentarily glimpse her, because she can't fully materialize yet (maybe she can only do that at the place of her death?). Maybe there could be a scene where a previously locked door suddenly opened on its own and it would actually be Maria opening it to guide the MC to the truth?

Maybe the MC gets a vision after she finds something that belonged to Maria and it shows her the scene that's in the game now about the events leading to Maria's death. And in the end when the MC finally meets Maria, instead of showing her the events leading to her death, Maria shows the MC what her parents did and how they cursed the camp?

The curse should be foreshadowed too, the MC could find some documents in the office that mentioned it and how they are trying to break that curse for example, or maybe they are talking about how they have to keep it under wraps.

Things like that would make it that there's something weird going on instead of suddenly adding supernatural elements at the very end.

The curse and the motives of Maria's parents also merited a better explanation. For one, Maria's parents accepted a settlement from the Camp Owners and got some amount of money as compensation for what happened to their daughter, because it happened while she was working as a councellor at the camp. Why did they curse the Camp Owners when they got the financial compensation they were after? Because they were suing the camp for what happened to their daughter on their property while she was working for them. The murder investigation would be an entirely separate case.

And as the story is presented in the game, the police didn't know who Maria's murderer was. The game reveals that it was actually the son of the Camp Owners, but there's no indication that he was suspected to be involved in it and only got away with it because his parent's influence protected him or something like that. Maria says that he got away with it "because his parents owned the camp", but there's nothing indicating that he was ever a suspect or even how the parents owning the camp even helped him escape justice.

I suppose the intention is that Maria's parents suspected that the Camp Owner's son was the murderer and couldn't prove it and that's why they cursed the camp with the help of that mysterious man. But if they want revenge, why curse the camp in a way that hurts innocent people instead of the Camp Owners they want revenge on?

Now, this could work if Maria's parents didn't know what the curse would do and either the mysterious man tricked them somehow or it went out of control. Or if it was Maria's vengeful spirit responsible for the disappearances. Or if the game portrayed Maria's parents as tragic villains who were so full of rage that they didn't care who they hurt if they could get the Camp Owners to confess, but the game doesn't seem to take that route.

Instead, it just seems to portray Maria's parents as sympathetic and puts the blame for the people that went missing over the decades due to the curse solely on the camp owners. And they already know the Camp Owners are terrible people, so why would they think they would care about others being hurt? Seriously, when it comes to that curse situation, Maria's parents are just as bad as the Camp Owners. Yet the game never mentions them after the conversation with Maria, so they presumably weren't brought to justice for what they did.

Also Dale... what happened to him? Maria said the "camp got to him first". Was it the curse or did the Camp Owners decided that they had to get rid of him because he "knew too much?". I suppose the latter, if so, it's very confusing and also doesn't make much sense just what Dale could say that would get the Camp Owners in trouble. I mean, if he knows about the curse and wanted to tell everyone about it, who is gonna take it seriously? They can just dismiss it as superstitious nonsense. Maybe they were afraid that he's gonna reveal that their son was the one who murdered Maria and that's why they decided to silence him, but the game makes it seem like they were afraid about people learning about the curse.

Regarding the ending... how exactly did the MC manage to bring the Camp Owners to justice? She only knows what happened because a ghost told her and I doubt that's gonna fly in court. Maybe the Sheriff will believe her regardless and the subsequent investigation will uncover more clues, but there's no mention of that. The MC's dialogue makes it seem like she never mentioned the ghost involvement, for obvious reasons, but what did she have besides what Maria's ghost told her? There was nothing that specifically linked the Camp Owner's son to the crime besides what Maria told the MC and Maria presumably can't testify because she's a ghost.

The MC also found the two missing girls, who were still alive and could give testimony, but it's not clear what they know? For that matter, once again, what exactly did Dale know and how did he find out? Did he know about the curse or what happened to Maria? And did he tells those two girls he rescued before dying? And if it really was the Camp Owners who are responsible for Dale's murder, why doesn't the ending mention that? It only mentions that their son confessed that he was the one who murdered Maria, nothing about Dale or the Camp Owners themselves, just that the camp itself is facing some trouble.

.

.

.

Don't get me wrong, I like the story a lot, but it really needs another draft and it has too many unanswered questions. I hope my comments and suggestions will be helpful, whether it will be in a new version of this game or some entirely new future game. You are on the right track, keep improving and I'm sure you'll making something truly great someday. You might want to consider joining a game jam sometime, they are great for learning and having a deadline really helps motivate people to finish atleast a prototype of their game.

Hope you make a sequel to this game someday!

Well, i finished the game and i kinda liked but the game has a very simple story, collision problems and some bugs that make the itens not appear in the menu.

The game was too short but for what it have, i like it.