I had an assignment to create a fake crowdfunding campaign. I had this idea of a murder mystery visual novel time loop story taking place in a theater. So I quickly threw together some character designs. At my school each year anyone who wants can compete in a competition where you create a game and then the best in each school go up against each other.

I teamed up with some friends (Echoartisty, Anton Ekholm, Hugge) , and to my surprise we ended up deciding to go with my idea, Murder Stage. This was all of us (7 people excluding three who were going to work on the music.) first time ever creating a game so it was exciting. Unfortunately for the project 3 people (plus the music students who had to focus on their courses instead.) quit to work on individual projects instead. I went from only being the script writer and managing the project (scheduling and making sure everything got done.) to also doing the background art, customizing the gui, the majority of programming and music.

I won’t lie, it was A LOT. I worked every moment I could. We later got 2 more people on the team, Myx who did the art for the notebook our detective uses and K1w1 who composed one song and helped out with drawing some items. But after all the work the deadline had arrived! Some stuff stopped working right when I had to turn it in, but I luckily managed to finish it in time. Now we only have to wait until the end of May to see if it got anywhere in the competition and then the game will be up on itch.io for PC and Mac.

You play as detective Charlie Hurculi who decides to go see a play that spawned seemingly out of nowhere about his best friend’s death, hoping it’ll give him some more insight on the case. But you get stuck inside along with the only other four audience members present. Soon you’ll have to solve another murder if you want to attempt getting out.

As I revealed earlier it’s a timeloop and when you play the game a second time the killer along with other story elements may be different.

I would so grateful if you went and checked out the game when it releases, it’s always been a passion of mine to release a game that people can play.

For more information check out @murderstage on most platforms