NEONnose

Welcome to NEONnose: the canine detective adventure game that will take you on a thrilling and humorous journey through a cyberpunk city. You play as Daisy, a lovable and determined dog who wakes up one day to find her owner, Blake Steel, has gone missing. With no one else to turn to, Daisy takes it upon herself to become a detective and track down her beloved human.

While NEONnose is a self-parody of my earlier game NEONnoir, it is a standalone game and does not require you to have played it to enjoy this one. If you like it, or it puts a smile on your face, please let me know by leaving me a comment. Thank you!

The Theme: Duality

As the story of NEONnose unfolds, you play from both Daisy and Blake's perspectives, each with its own gameplay elements. Daisy is a good girl and puzzles out her problems with her nose. Blake... well, he's Blake, and he's going to use his fists.

Controls

I may have gone overboard with the control scheme.

	Keyboard	Gamepad
Move Forward	W, Up Arrow, Num 8	Left stick, D-pad Up
Move Back	S, Down Arrow, Num 2	Left stick, D-pad Down
Strafe Left	A, Shift-Left Arrow, Num 4	Left stick, D-pad Left
Strafe Right	D. Shift-Right Arrow, Num 6	Left stick, D-pad Right
Turn Left	Q, Left Arrow, Num 7	Right stick, Left bumper
Turn Right	E, Right Arrow, Num 9	Right stick, Right bumper
Examine	Space, Num 0	A
Enable Instant Step	F1	Start button
Disable Smooth Step	F2	Select button

A Note on Instant and Smooth Steps

Smooth Step uses Cubic interpolation, which makes it speed up and slow down with every step, giving each step on the grid an "oomph." However, if it causes motion sickness, you can disable it with F2.

Instant Step is unaffected by Smooth Step, and enabling it removes the transition between grid spaces with moving. There is still a delay when walking.

Combat

NEONnose is completely turn-based. The enemies won't move until you do; if they don't like the cut of your jib, they might just come to fight you. Combat is Rock, Paper, Scissors with a different skin: Punch, Kick, Block.

• Punch beat Kick: It's hard to kick someone punching you in the face.
• Kick beats Block: It's too powerful and breaks through the block
• Block beats Punch: The punch can't get through the block

The enemies have a strategy they use, so you can try to outsmart them.

Collect coffees outside of combat to heal Blake. Once per combat, if you run out of health, Blake goes into a berserker rage.

Also... I never removed the cheat button from the game. Happy hunting!

Game Jam Version

There needed to be a lot of compromises to get the game done in a week, and it still needs a lot of polish, especially in the audio department. Once the jam-judging period is over, I'll update it with a hopefully improved version.

Credits

I did the story, programming, game design, and environmental art. My lovely wife helped with story and game ideas as well as some NPC assets. You can find samples of her work here). The other NPC assets came from an asset pack I purchased.

The title music was from another purchased asset, and the club music was from Mathias Sosa, which he composed for NEONnoir.

Sound effects were from Soundly.

Anime speed lines modified from the original image by Freepik

Voice Acting

Daisy	Allison Cossitt (https://www.fiverr.com/allisoncossitt)
Blake	David Stoker (https://www.youtube.com/@thedavidstoker)
Thumbs	E. Alex Gardipe (https://alexponential.wixsite.com/voiceactor)
Acid Nova	Ron F. Leota
Coffee Girl	Chantelle Conn
Poster Lady	Sarah Altenburg (https://www.youtube.com/@pnwgeekmom9525)
Manic Paxie	Sandy Loi
Vape Guy	Massimo Loi
Razorblade	Ron F. Leota
Thugs	Kevin Morano