Engineering Marvels From Hell

Hell yeah! Manhunt 2 reference!






SPOILERS

Also, I loved the story. I did expect there to be a scene where we would see the students or at least one get Vitruvianed on the machine. But seeing it, it made me begin to think to myself. Never tried coming up with a torture device but why not try? Before I got to the end of the story, I actually came up with a similar idea to the Vitruvian, my idea was that they'd be laying on a circular machine like that, their limbs would extended and it would replicate the 'movement' of the Vitruvian to an overextending degree. I didn't think it was enough pain, so instead of the arms movinag above their head, it would twist and go backwards, there would be a bar that would be in the way of their elbow breaking it, same for the knees as the machine moved, after those limbs were broken, the bars would automatically go down out of the way to allow movement again, then would force them into splits for their legs and arms bent behind their head. And I noticed practically all pain seemed to be focused on the arms, I wanted to take the pain to the body. The chest, just under the sternum or in it, is a place where most the nerves in the body like to gather before going back up in the brain, so a hydrolic would press down and break their sternum to squeeze the pain from that. This would both maintain most blood loss to without lethality or crushing their heart. You get arms, legs, and all the joints in them, in the reverse human plus Vitruvian kind of way plus the bonuse of breaking that juicy sternum without death. But for the kill switch, an ultimate display of gore, plus the ability for the feeling of remaining pain for the victim would be the circular machine would then rip the victim from its lower torso allowing for all those intestines to spill out and ultimately, death.
Tell me if you like it.

This was an interesting story.

I liked how it focused on the development of different kinds of torture devices.

But I especially like how each of them was described from both an artistic and a painful perspective, with pros and cons.

The final act was also very horrifying, and I loved it even if I saw it coming from a mile away.

The execution of that ending made the experience of this story worth it.

The only thing I had a problem with was the middle act of the story.

I felt that the pace suffered from the repetitiveness and redundancy of some of the events there.

really cool story, but i felt a bit lied to cause i wanted to play a game, not read a story. even in visual novels there are usually some choices for the player to enjoy, and here we haven't gotten any.
the devises are very cool though and i might steal it for my dnd campaign lmao

This was pretty great, ive always loved the designs of torture devices so this was really up my alley. The ideas were great.

I only have very few things i disliked:

1. As someone else mentioned, the chatter did feel too long in some cases. It wasnt too bad tho.

2. Again as someone mentioned; lack of gameplay so it felt useless only being given the ability to explore the rooms and confusing on why there was an item button in the menu. But im assuming thats due to the engine used?

3. I wouldve loved if more of the characters also had portraits. It made it hard to distinguish who was talking. At the very least the rest of Harry's group should have had portraits.

4. Very little animations on the torture devices being used. We only get one instance where a device is used fully, the rest were idle so idk felt underwhelming for me to see only idle animations for the project devices. Wouldnt a teacher want to see a project in action? 

Pts 1 and 2

Wow, just Wow. The story in this was amazingly crafted and riveting. Harry,Sophie,Dean and Brian sure are a Cut above in creativity, and its not going out on a Limb to say their artistic passion puts the rest to shame, even though William thought he was a master Manipulator and had he was a class Act. 

Also loved the multiple pop culture references you provided, from Jojo,Marvel, and the like.

Also what does the Password do, and can it be applied in the mobile browser version?

I really enjoyed the story and was so invested in it that I forgot to eat my grilled cheese sandwich. 

So friggin dark, man XD loved it

I have a ton of fun with the game and the story is really solid. My negatives were just a lack of gameplay but the story really carried this game, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

This game's story is absolutely genius! I really love all of the contributions from everyone that worked on this game! What I like the most about this game is the ambience, the music, the artwork, and of course, the story! The dialogue was well written, and the game developer cameo was definitely a huge bonus!

Once again, fantastic job to everyone who worked on this game!

i shall steal abra's joke and say that i give this game 5 stars in art, 5 stars in story, 5 stars in music and 0 stars in humanity :D

(SPOILERS)

this is such an original and creative interpretation of the school of dark arts theme, and just an awesome concept in general! the idea of a secret school focused on torture is great on its own but it's super impressive how it's used to its fullest potential. torture methods being a balance between pain and art, the graduation project and the consequence of failing it, even small things like mathematics and biology being some of the subjects goes to show how much thought was put into this world. and on top of a great foundation, the plot is really interesting! i got really invested in knowing if the main characters would come up with a good enough idea for a torture device (please don't take that out of context) :>

before delving into the plot, i have to mention that the presentation is amazing! the pixelart is perfect, everything feels like it has the right amount of detail. the characters being so tall is a neat change from the common rpg maker character style, and the variety of poses and movements they can do is really great. i especially loved the gorey scenes; the messed up look of the tortured people, the big (but not excessive) amount of blood, their small movements as they breathe, the fact that they're usually faceless... from the artstyle i still can't tell if in the presentation projects they used real people or not, and tbh that's really unsettling haha. and the busts are great too! limin's rugged artstyle fits the game like a glove, and the amount of unique character designs is really impressive (at the start i assumed only harry would get portrait privileges so it was a fun surprise to find each new one!). i did notice harry's sprite and busts look somewhat different (maybe it's just the hair color), and at times it felt a bit jarring, but it didn't take me out of the game of anything. and of course, the best art in the entire game, brian's drawings. 11/10 no notes. overall this game looks absolutely fantastic! (almost forgot; the machinery-like dialogue box did not go unnoticed. such a cool detail!)

and the music!! in the first scene when that weird mechanical reversed sound played for the first time, i knew i was in for good shit haha. super atmospheric and well made. whenever a track played it fit the scene so perfectly that i almost forgot it was there (that's a compliment i swear-). super moody. and the sound effects were great as well; their scarcity definitely made each one pop out a lot. the presentation is just top notch!

one of the things that sticks out a lot in this story is how... realistic everything feels. i've already said there's a great attention to detail in the worldbuilding, but the general plot and the succession of events felt incredibly real. like, if there was actually a school of torture irl and this was the graduation project, i'd believe this game is exactly how it would play out haha. the main characters pitching in different ideas while overlooking their flaws, getting advice from different people who graduated, getting anxious as time goes on and they haven't progressed as much as the others... and the way each idea for a project gets picked apart and analyzed, bringing up real concerns of why it wouldn't work, really goes to show once again how much effort was put into the writing. it would've been easy to make everything super over the top but the more grounded feel makes the plot genuinely compelling; i really wanted these guys to make their own torture machine, damn it!

but obviously everything here isn't grounded in silly reality, and when the plot gets creative it's always extremely fun lol. the different graduates harry and his friends go to being actual real life people?? including fucking david szymanski?!?! (AND YOU GOT PERMISSION FROM HIM WTF THAT'S AMAZING?!?!???!?!?!?) it legit took me a while to process it when it happened haha. but it honestly fits the story? like, if the point of this world is that this school actually exists but it's secret to everyone else, using fictionalized versions and/or descendants of real people makes perfect sense. like, you can't prove they didn't attend a torture school, can you? (and on that note the pop culture references (which were really amusing as well, the jojo's one made me actually scream lmao) also work in establishing how everything takes place in the real world!) maybe i'm reading too much into it haha, but it's really clever! and of course, i can't talk about creativity without mentioning the torture methods, cuz... idk if they are original ideas or not, but HOLY HELL they're so clever!! each one is extremely creative and actually getting to see them in action was gnarly as hell. a couple of them made me physically flinch in concept alone lol. i got a little worried that the project harry would go with maybe wouldn't quite reach expectations, but nah man, the vitruvian is actually diabolical. this game is filled with so much creativity and polish!!

i will say there were some points in the story where i felt conversations were going on for a bit too long, or getting somewhat repetitive. the overall banter and jokes are fun and make the dialogue really amusing! but some scenes (like the ones in the cafeteria) could've been a bit shorter, and at the meeting scenes i feel like the group explaining their project ideas could've also been cut, since they've already talked about them before. and this is a nitpick but it got a bit hard to tell apart the members of harry's group that weren't harry, maybe their names could have differently colored text to make it easier to tell them apart visually? also, i found a bug (i played the 1.4 version) where in david's room, next to one of the posters, you can go through the wall. not a big deal ofc! but i thought i'd mention it.

but yeah, overall this game was fantastic!! super original and all the ideas were done great justice. i was honestly a bit skeptical of how this jam's theme could be used in creative ways (nothing against schools of dark arts, it's just not a concept that intrigues me a lot personally), but this game proved it can be used to its full potential. amazing job!! :D

(only 3 stars in pain though; the playing experience was mostly completely harmless. except the moment where we're reminded of the e.t. atari game of course, this should be reported just for that /j)

Quick question: were you not able to finish this game in time to submit it for the jam it was made for?

This game seems cool. It crashed for me though. Playing the 1.2 build on windows.  I got this error at the end of the caffeteria scene:

this game... 5 for art... 5 for pain... 0 for humanity🔥