Paradise Island. A synthetic rock floating on an ocean in another reality filled with lunatics, psychopaths and a thousand secrets. Each island fails and a new one is born. On a dark night during the 24th Island Sequence, Paradise is killed.



The surreal Paradise Island is home to the Syndicate; immortal worshippers of dead alien gods. The player assumes the role of Lady Love Dies, an exiled investigator brought back to solve the mass murder of the Syndicate’s Council. Using Starlight, her investigation assistant computer, Lady Love Dies will scour Paradise Island for clues in her quest for justice. Will she find a single culprit or unravel a conspiracy centuries in the making?



Paradise Killer is a free form, open world first person exploration investigation game. The player investigates the mass murder of the island’s ruling council as they wish, piecing together clues and forming their own arguments to present in the end game trial. By choosing how to interrogate suspects and finding any evidence in any order, the player will discover not a singular truth but a truth they shape and craft. Find your truth and breathe life back into Paradise.

Developers from Kaizen Game Works are hosting a live gameplay demo stream of their open world murder mystery, Paradise Killer right here on Steam!

You can tune into the livestream on Tuesday June 16 2020, 11am PT / 7pm BST on Paradise Killer's Steam page.

Meet the secretive psychopaths on Paradise Island and learn more about this innovative investigation game.

The developers will be showcasing the stylish detective game and taking questions from the audience. Helps us breathe life back into Paradise!

We'll also be hosting a Paradise Killer AMA in Fellow Traveller's Discord, on Thursday June 18 2020, 11am PT / 7pm BST.

In the meantime, you can:

• [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160220/Paradise_Killer/]Wishlist us on Steam

[/url]

[https://twitter.com/KaizenGameWorks]Follow us on Twitter

[/url]

[https://discord.gg/mVukYFk]Join Fellow Traveller's Discord

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[/list]

What is Paradise? How was it killed? Who is Lady Love Dies? How did we make a completely non-linear murder mystery in an open world?

All great questions and all questions you can ask us! Come and hang out and ask us anything about the game or game development.

The AMA be happening on Thursday June 18 2020, 11am PT / 7pm BST, in Paradise Killer's Publishers Discord.

Join us in the Fellow Traveller Paradise Killer Discord channel: https://discord.gg/mVukYFk

Meet the secretive psychopaths on Paradise Island and learn more about this innovative investigation game.

The developers will be showcasing the stylish detective game and taking questions from the audience. Helps us breathe life back into Paradise!

We'll also be hosting a Paradise Killer Gameplay livestream on Steam, on Tuesday June 16 2020, 11am PT / 7pm BST

In the meantime, you can:

• [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160220/Paradise_Killer/]Wishlist us on Steam

[/url]

[https://twitter.com/KaizenGameWorks]Follow us on Twitter

[/url]

[https://discord.gg/mVukYFk]Join Fellow Traveller's Discord

[/url]
[/list]

May has been a crazy month. I mean, they all are but this one has been crazy in some different ways.

We had a very successful LudoNarraCon in April, massive thanks to Fellow Traveller for organising it and making it an amazing event! Lots of people played the demo, checked out our stream videos and talked to us on Twitter. Thanks to everyone who played the demo, I had a huge grin all weekend.



Straight after LNC we got confirmation that we’ll need a new trailer for some exciting events soon so we got straight on with that. When you’re an indie dev you suddenly find you have to learn a lot of skills that you didn’t have before. Phil has done an amazing job on all our trailers and pulled the new one (more on that soon) together very quickly.



We’re launching Paradise Killer later this year and to make sure we hit our dates we set the end of May as our content lock deadline. Content lock means everything that will be in the final game is in the build to a near final standard. Somethings always slip through the net but the goal is to get 99% of our content in. Anything that doesn’t make it in will be minor (missing images, missing SFX etc) but the systems to support them are in and the game is “complete”. Our remaining time will be spent doing small bits of polish and attacking our mammoth bug list until we ship. We’ve been in Paradise for two years now and it feels very strange to be finally getting to the point where we’ll call it final and release it. I’m not ready to say goodbye to Paradise yet. I love the sun bleached concrete and psychopaths on the island.

Anyway, in order to hit content lock we had roughly 1 (one) billion tasks to do. Lots of incredibly small jobs but also some major ones. We restructured all of the end game trials to allow players to make more choices and choose how they will present evidence to the court. The new structure feels loads better and has more drama. Along with the restructure, we also completely redid the trial UI. It has been first pass for months and really didn’t sell the climax of the game. It has all been redone and looks loads better.



Another big change was the gutting of a gameplay system that’s been in the game for ages. We originally had a system where you would be given keywords by suspects that could be input as search terms into a computer. These searches would pull admin records from the Syndicate’s moon database. The system worked fine but felt redundant. There was no player creativity since you had to put in exact search terms to get exact results and you could only get a handful of records. It always seemed weird that you couldn’t just search the whole database. In focus testing, players felt the same. It was an unnecessary step to get evidence and felt half-baked. We had two options; create an entire database of records for a society that has existed for thousands of years (and in the process, confuse the player with way too much information) or pull the system out.

I’m a big fan of slightly unnecessary friction in games. I like games that have rough edges with systems that aren’t streamlined. It creates flavour. However, in this case the answer was to streamline the experience and rip it out. The evidence the player would get from the moon database is still in game but we have strengthened a number of suspect interactions and crime scenes by placing the evidence directly in context rather than putting in an unnecessary step to acquire it. It also means I haven’t had to write a trillion database entries that players would never read (and even if they did read, would muddy the waters around what is evidence and what isn’t evidence). It feels much better and I’m particularly happy with one change that made an area of the game much more important and tells a nice story about someone’s movements.



We also did final dressing on loads of areas. A very unique and secret area has existed as a white box (a term that means it didn’t have any real art in it, just blank cubes to designate the playable space) for about 18 months got final dressing and looks really cool. We also got a new prop in that helps tell the player how the island works. A haulage trolley based on the ones used in Tsukiji fish market are now dotted around the island and show how workers in the Agri Fields and Deep Factory transport their cargo around the island.



And now we dive into battle with the bugs! Catch you next month!

An island outside of reality. A rogue human civilization hoping to resurrect dead alien gods. A murder behind locked doors. The “investigation freak” Lady Love Dies is summoned from exile to find the culprit and save Paradise. Watch the cinematic trailer here! Get ready to breathe life back into Paradise this Summer 2020 when Paradise Killer releases!



Paradise is an island that regenerates every few millennia. The psychic power that the alien worshipers within release into the universe is meant to feed and eventually resurrect their fallen deities. The system isn’t perfect, but it will be one day — on Perfect 25, the next island-to-be. But on the eve of rebirth, the Council is murdered and Paradise is killed. You are tasked with finding the killer and building an airtight case against them.

The “truth” is that there are many possible killers, and many ways to build a case. Even if you make a convincing case for prosecution and get someone convicted, is the mystery really solved?



Paradise Killer will be exhibiting at LudoNarraCon! Breathe life back into Paradise and end your exile by playing the demo beginning April 24th. We'll also be livestreaming over 5 hours of content until April 27th: learn more about the suspectscharacters, watch gameplay with developer commentary, see how the lovely music is made, and so much more. To participate, investigate our Steam page during the event. 🔎

{LINK REMOVED}

Stay in the loop with the latest clues: wishlist Paradise Killer today to stay up to date with monthly developer updates and lore blogs.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160220/Paradise_Killer/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3nAfoLrdR8

LudoNarraCon is a free digital festival running April 24 - 27 here on Steam that celebrates narrative games like our’s! Tune in to see behind-the-scenes streams from over 40 narrative games, download and play over 20 demos, and watch live panels from narrative developers. We hope you’ll visit our Steam page during the event: we’re excited to livestream 3-4 hours of behind the scenes content for you. It’ll replay on a loop for the duration of the event, so come anywhere and anytime starting April 24th until the 27th.


We're excited to announce a demo of the game will be available during the event! Get ready to breathe life back into Paradise. As part of LudoNarraCon, nearly half of the exhibitors will be offering free demos...! Enjoy a taste of these games from the comfort of your home on your schedule.


Developers and publishers will stream live on their games' Steam store pages with behind-the-scenes content, couch chats, and demo gameplay. We’ll be streaming a Q&A session, character presentation, a behind the scenes look at bug fixing, and a look at how we made the music for the game.



A main theatre stream will feature 12 hours of live panels with game developers, writers, journalists, and other industry influencers. Panels will cover everything from narrative design, game localization, how to create player empathy, and much more.



The LudoNarraCon Sale launches on Steam during the event, with more than 50 story-rich games participating.

All live streaming content will replay on a loop for the rest of the event, making it easy to check out everything from the comfort of your own home on your schedule!



Excited and don't want to miss out? Visit this Steam page to set a calendar reminder.

What a weird month! We’re in the midst of a global pandemic but fortunately everyone on the team is staying safe and healthy.

We’ve always had a list of nice to haves that we thought we’d never manage to get done. One of the many benefits of partnering with Fellow Traveller is having their support in getting some of these features in. This month we got in a major wishlist feature that I am absolutely in love with.



Phil ripped out our existing music system that was based on where you were in the world. Each area had a music track assigned to it that would loop while you were in that area. What we really wanted to do was allow the player to find new music and customise their own playlist. So now you start with a small selection of tracks and can find new ones in the world.



When you acquire new music you can assign it to a playlist within Starlight and choose exactly which tracks you want and how they play. We’re big believers in emergent moments of magic and rather than assigning specific music to specific areas, we’d rather abdicate authorship and let just the right combination of music, environment and player emotion create a special moment unique to that player.



[/i]PLEASE NOTE: These screens are work in progress! The Starlight menu is about to go through a MASSIVE redesign and none of this is final. We just wanted to show off some WIP stuff![/i]



As well as this we have given the player two options of how to play the music in game. Music can either be set to be played from speakers in the world or directly from Starlight (your in game investigation assistant laptop). Playing it diegetically from speakers within the world simulates the effect of when you walk around a mall in the real world and hear music being piped in through speakers. The volume increases and decreases with your distance to the speaker and other sounds in the world may drown it out. I love this and can’t think of another game that does it. It gives an amazing sense of being in the world and feels wonderfully natural. However, we know that some players may not want this so there is an option in the playlist editor to play the music normally like in any other game.



Another hot new wishlist feature we have added this month is collectable skins for Starlight. Starlight is your investigation assistant laptop that tracks case files, investigation notes, evidence, collectables, etc. You can now customise the look of Starlight by finding new skins in the world. These collectables are tied into our manual save point system to give you an extra reward for activating save points around the world.





It’s been a busy month and I’m very happy with what we’ve achieved! You can also see in the screens above our new conversation UI that now includes a log of everything that has been said and better shows off our character variants. So much changes so quickly in game dev!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160220/Paradise_Killer/

February has been all about optimisations and improving the player experience. We want the game to run on loads of different systems so we have been implementing lots of ways to get the frame rate up on very low end systems. We’re making good progress; culling and LOD settings are being tinkered with, meshes are being optimised, better streaming is being implemented and a whole bunch of other very detailed things that Phil is doing an amazing job chasing down.



A test of some new ivy. The number of polys in the mesh have been reduced by about 90% and the material performance has been reduced. This is still WIP but the performance increase has been good and it has allowed us to turn the shadows back on, improving the visuals

We also bulldozed a new gorge through the centre of the mountain to make traversing the island easier. It has now become one of my favourite areas in the game.



The new gorge. Please use it to access the power station from the suburbs while under the gaze of the floating god head of Nightmare Revival

We also put in a load more collectables that explain more about the terrible gods that came from beyond the stars and enslaved the Earth in man’s prehistory. We hope you enjoy learning about the tentacled armed goat god from a forgotten area of antique space when you play the game!

Our composer, Barry “Epoch” Topping, has been cranking on the music and SFX. Barry says his “limiters have been released” and you can tell, the music is killer. We can’t wait to share some more of it.

Rachel “AbKi” Noy has been working on some Top Secret art stuff which is allowing us to dramatically improve the major crime scene in the game. Unfortunately that can’t be shown yet but we’re very excited about it.

And finally, our amazing character artist Curran “Gigalithic” Gregory has been doing new body variants for the player character Lady Love Dies. One of these can’t be shown as it is a major spoiler but here’s her accusation pose. I got sent this late at night and couldn’t stop looking at it instead of going to sleep.



See you next month pals!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160220/Paradise_Killer/

LudoNarraCon, the free digital convention on Steam celebrating narrative games, will take place April 24-27. There will be more than 30 narrative games exhibiting and a main theater airing 12 hours of live panels, all available free to you on Steam.

We'll be exhibiting at LudoNarraCon: visit our store page during the event where we will be livestreaming behind-the-scenes content, gameplay, and more! Learn more at www.ludonarracon.com!

It is an exciting time to be making a narrative game. The breadth of themes and directions is amazing. Everyone is trying something new and figuring out what the possibilities of interactive stories are. LudoNarraCon is a wonderful celebration of the medium and we are thrilled to be part of it. We are looking forward to showing off Paradise Killer and talking about our take on a narrative game. Join us as we breathe life back into Paradise!




Just look at those beautiful games! 😍

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjnumLK9LyU&feature=youtu.be




Fellow Traveller has set up desktop + mobile wallpapers here. 🎁

Fellow Traveller, an indie publisher, is thrilled to partner with Kaizen Game Works to publish Paradise Killer! 🎉

Paradise Killer: a whodunnit where you decide whodunnit

Paradise Island, a world outside reality. There’s been a murder that only “investigation freak” Lady Love Dies can solve. Gather evidence and interrogate suspects in this open world adventure. You can accuse anyone, but you’ll have to prove your case in trial to convict. It’s up to you to decide who’s guilty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7QBB_VDz3c&feature=youtu.be
An island outside of reality. A rogue human civilization hoping to resurrect dead alien gods. A murder behind locked doors.

The system isn’t perfect, but it will be one day — on Perfect 25, the next island-to-be. But on the eve of rebirth, the Council is murdered and Paradise is killed. In the aftermath, the “investigation freak” Lady Love Dies is summoned from exile to find the culprit. This is the crime to end all crimes.

What are the facts? What are the truths? Are they the same?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1160220/Paradise_Killer/