A downloadable game for Windows

Tales of the Neon Sea is a retro-styled pixel-art adventure, developed by Palm Pioneer and published by Zodiac Interactive.

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Set in a fully realized cyberpunk cityscape where humans and robots contend with escalating tensions and mutual distrust, you take on the role of a hard-boiled detective using your wits and puzzle-solving skills to determine the course of this unique tale.

Welcome to a vibrant future world of intrigue and suspicion, where you must journey through the unknown as you work to uncover the truth.


Genre:adventure/puzzle-solving  

Platform: PC (Windows only) + Consoles  

Game length: 8-12 hours Release  

Date: Coming in early 2019! 


STORY
In the near future, humans and sentient AI robots rely on each other for survival despite growing tensions and unease. Our protagonist, formerly a veteran police detective but now retired following years of frustration and disillusionment, spends his days intoxicated while accepting random jobs as a private investigator to make ends meet. He exists within the neon sea of an immense city, its blinding artificial lights unable to hide the shadow of greed and lust that threatens to engulf it at any moment.


This drunken cycle is broken when our hero becomes entangled in a missing person's case, one which holds the key to tracking down a monstrous killer who long ago escaped justice. Unlock your memories, decode the truth, and resist drowning in the wave of conspiracy that grips the city!

Download

Download
TalesoftheNeonSea20181122.zip 269 MB

Development log

Comments

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Hi! Is there anything that can be done to make the fonts more readable? They look extremely small and washed-out, and it's hard to follow the story when I can't read it. Same goes for the menus and settings dialogs.


Oh, almost forgot... You really gotta do something about that puzzle with the cat and the crane. It freakin' stinks (not the puzzle itself, but the absolute chore of having to walk between plugs, and connectors and the lever... ) my god, is it boring AF...

Guys, there's a big problem with Xinput.dll with your game. When using a gamepad that utilizes XInput (XboxOne wireless gamepad, for example), the player character will always be stuck walking to the left (because you messed up somehow with the Z-Rotation in the gamepad configuration). 100% sure that it happens in Windows 7 (not sure about Windows 10). If I plug in a regular wired controller, that utilizes Direct Input, it works fine.

This has been reported several times in the game discussion page on steam! You guys must see to this...

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Hello! I really admire the beautiful style of your art and very much enjoyed the demo you provide here on itch.io. I see that you sell your game only on Steam. Are there any plans to sell it DRM-free anytime? Or is the Steam-version itself DRM-free? In other words: If I purchase the Steam-version will I be able to play your game without the Steam-client running? Thank you!

i love it!

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This is not a game. It is a chore. A very frustrating and boring chore

Love this. Beautiful! Not sure how I feel about the puzzles. Something about them is a little too hard? And the clue finding is a little nit picky. Other than that, I enjoyed it thoroughly. 

This is such a beautiful game! You have crafted such a charming and immersive demo that has me hooked! I had so much fun and the premise behind the entire game makes me pumped to see what the full game has in store! :D

Thank you for creating such a wonderful and memorable game, it has been a joy to play! I would highly recommend, and if anyone wants to see how I experienced this demo...I've got this video here!

What a beautiful game! There's so much detail in the pixel art and I just love the cyberpunk/neon aesthetic! I can't express just how much I love the art. The story looks interesting so far and the puzzles are fun. I really like doing the investigation and putting the clues together. The only problems I had were with the keyboard controls, it felt a little wonky. I think it would be better to allow arrow keys to walk and spacebar (or z, x, c) for the enter key. I thought it was strange that we had to hold down E for information/prompts but regular press other times. Also as much as I love cats, the continuous meowing while I was solving the puzzle was a bit annoying. Other than that, I loved the demo! And with some polishing, I know that the game will be amazing!

so beutifull, so misterious, so GOOD!!!

A retro-style cyberpunk point-and-click adventure game? Well that pretty much ticks all of my boxes!

This demo was really fun to play, I love how many different gameplay elements there are here, from the logic puzzles to the crime scene investigations to the being able to play AS A CAT (needless to say the section with William blew my mind!).

If the whole game is as varied and colourful and witty and fun as these three teaser parts were, we're all in for one heck of a treat when the full game appears!

I'll be following the development of this game very closely, and can't wait to see what else awaits us! Keep up the awesome work =)

As a big fan of cyberpunk work I was pretty quick to notice this one. Visually it's great! The UI is clean, the character portraits are cool, and the environments are nicely packed and interesting to explore. It was cool switching between different gameplay styles, although the cat segment really threw me for a loop.

Possibly unrelated, but I created a game a few yours ago called Noir Syndrome. The detective/roaming parts of the game felt very reminiscent of the gameplay I worked on back then. If it was an inspiration, that's totally fine! If not, it's pretty cool how different people can design these detective games that converge in many ways. Obviously my old game was a much smaller project, so I'm interested to see where you go with this!

I just think the controls are a little uncomfortable, the E I don't think it's a good place, you have to move your hand everytime, instead of using the free hand(or the space or shift, so you don't have to move your fingers every every time). I don't know but it's the thing that has anoyed me a little. The enviroment it's nice and I like everything else, beautyfull and interesting. 

The game starts out in fullscreen, but my screen is ultrawide, so a good part of the starting menu is hidden. As such i only see the option to play in chinese and yea,... i don't speak chinese. 

Made a video

(+1)

Hello guys,

Your game looks really great but I found some issues/weird things that are worth mentioning:

1. For those who are playing with just a mouse, whould be really great to add a different hover state over the actions. ( like a hand cursor). Example

2.  The idle animations are sometimes too exagerated (especially for BB-X).

3. When some informations are displayed (tooltips etc), why do I need to keep pressing E instead of just a simple press? (with the mouse I just click right away)

4. For someone who is not so keen on cats, on the second stagechapter of the game the frequency of cat sounds is a little annoying. The whole last  cat chapter, was a little bit weird and out of place compared with the general AI/ cyberpunk feel and story...

5. The investigation scene of the dead lady is a little bit boring, maybe is taking too long to find some clues or dunno. (also please note that not all the text is displayed correctly Example).

6. The clues, gears and watch minigame is confusing. Even after reading the little info, I still didn't understand what I need to do. I mean, what needs to be connected to what?

I don't understand

I finished it only after I watched a playthrough on Youtube... maybe make it more simple or add some other posible solutions/options so the players don't get stuck.

Note1: maybe rebind key "move gears" to right click mouse, not space bar...

Note 2: also maybe make all the gear teeth the same and not different shapes.


Things that I like:

1. Great world detail: your artist have done a good job on making this world alive and rich.

2. Environment animations

3. Visual Effects


So... this is a little interesting game  and I hope you'll create something good and fun. 

Good luck with your game,

Alex

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Its not the best quality video but I wanted to make one none the less, Give this game a try!

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This was amazing. Everything looked great, the gameplay was good, and the story was interesting!

Do you have other projects besides this? I feel like i've played a couple games similar to this not the story or anything just the dynamic. If not keep at it you are really good with this genre of game. Maybe if the watch puzzle wasn't so hard though I got stuck!
(+1)

The art is so damn beautiful gj guys

Nothing more to say... its beautiful :)

GREAT

I hate that my college budget won't get me a computer that can't play and record this game at the same time comfortably. I saw this game while browsing and the title is what piqued my interest but the art, the sound, and the Easter Eggs inside made it a wonderful experience that surpassed my expectations. I may not be able to record this game enough to justify it but I can say this has to be one of the best games I have played in quite a while. My opinion doesn't matter I'm just some dude online that likes to play video games and make videos. But if you are reading the comments to find out if this game is worth a play, IT IS! I would highly recommend this game to anyone that has a deep respect for creators that put a lot of effort into what they make.  I can't wait to see what else you add, and I will be waiting patiently for the full release.

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(+1)

This was so bright and colorful! all the puzzles were fantastic too, and the dialogues were funny... I absolutely cant wait for the full game.

there were some spelling mistakes in the english version, but i just found them funny lel

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Of course! It was a great demo nevertheless!

Neat game. Can't wait to play the full game.  You have done an amazing job,

Rate:5/5

watch video here:

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I can not wait to play the full game! Loved this! It was so much fun! Anything cyberpunk and I am sold, throw in retro styled pixel art as well and you get this gem! Thanks developers for this game! Awesome job! 

How dare you doing something so beautiful? :0

This game was pretty good! I liked the mechanics and story, although it was a little hard finding all of the evidence. Plus I'm just not that good at puzzles. But I really enjoyed it and I look forward to the full release! Great job!

隔壁过来支持一个!加油!~

Sherlock Holmes whewww

The art and sound are by far the strongest aspects of this for me. The story seems interesting, but I didn't get to see enough of it to make a real judgement on it. My major qualms are the fact that the text is so slow and the menu interactions seem inconsistent (some are Esc, hold E or an Y/N confirmation). But what really killed it for me was the investigation mechanics. In both the environmental and contextual scanning investigative modes I was unable to progress for seemingly missing one piece of evidence. I think being able to piece it together with a bit of missing information or some other way to track down the final piece could be really important in not halting the progression of the story due to the inability to press E on the final arbitrary item. This is an aspect I criticize of a lot of these types of games, so maybe it's just a design choice that I disagree with, but I think it could go a long way. Hope you find this useful :)

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Couldn't download this fast enough. Wow what a beautiful game, the artwork is magnificent, amazing amount of character squeezed into a pixel based game. I loved it, the forensic and other puzzle parts really added to the game's intrigue. Cannot wait to play the full version. I did a Lets Play of it, I hope you don't mind!

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Thanks for the message, and the brilliant game. Best of luck with it!

The visuals are great. Good luck(:

ok, this is epic

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love this game