Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter News

Development Update #4: Scriptwriting Completed, Voice Acting Confirmed and More!

Hey everyone, Lina here with a new update! 🎴🐰

Don’t worry, we know it’s been a bit since the last one, and we’re sorry for the wait between them. To be blunt, we didn’t really like how the last few had been so light on stuff to actually share, and so instead we elected to hold off until we had enough ready to be worthy of your time. We don’t intend on having another gap like this for the foreseeable future.

As alluded to though, we have a whole lot to show off for this update, so let’s get started!

As of now, our estimate for Episode 1’s current progress is 50%, which with a whole lot of hard work is actually slightly ahead of our intended pace! Here’s the breakdown:

As mentioned in the previous update, we’ll still be sending out our Backer Survey in May to collect our supporters’ reward preferences (such as choosing platforms for your game keys) in preparation for the Early Access release, so keep an eye on your inboxes then!

The biggest leap in progress since our last update is in the writing department, where we can confirm that Episode 1’s whole script is now complete! That means every line of dialogue is finalized, clocking in at a total 56,200 words with an estimated ~5 hours of playtime!

That’s a whole lot of text to read for just one Episode, right? Luckily that leads us into our next topic…

That’s right! We can officially confirm full English voice acting for Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter! It took a lot of budgeting and logistics wizardry, but we managed to find the money to cast and pay an incredibly talented group of voice actors, courtesy of our amazing casting director Mia Paige!

We’ll be announcing our cast and their roles at a later date, but for now it’s just so exciting to be doing this at all! This was one of the big stretch goals we sadly ended up not able to hit, so to be able to follow through on it anyways is a big deal for us (and hopefully you guys are excited too)!

Next up, we’d like to share a preview of the next area you’ll be able to explore in Episode 1, the Living Quarters! Here you’ll find the cast’s dormitories, the cafeteria, the locker room, and the laundry room! Every comfort necessary for a long, eventful stay in the Bunker.

The extra fortifications should protect this level from any collapse caused by seismic activity. Maybe. Hopefully.

On a less ominous note, we’re excited to show off the second of our Retro Minigames, a classic-style space shooter called Cosmidors! Alongside Merlite, this new game will be playable as a proper arcade game in the Prize Corner, while also having unique remix challenges within the Clinical Trial!

While of course very reminiscent of games from the period, Cosmidors has a pretty unique twist with its time-warping gameplay! You’ll need to manage your warp charge alongside your missiles to be able to defeat the attacking alien fleet, and bend time itself to strike enemies that are otherwise invulnerable!

Going for high scores in the Prize Corner makes for a very fun time-sink, so we hope you’ll enjoy this new addition!

Next, we just wanna showcase a few of the new character sprites our art team has been cooking for Episode 1, particularly for Tsubaki, Hiroshi, and Kazan! They’re so expressive!

Before anyone asks, none of these sprites we’re sharing ahead of time contain spoiler content, so don’t think too hard about them!

That about wraps up everything we’ve got to talk about for now, but that doesn’t mean we’re vanishing again! Next month we’ll be sharing another beefy update, revealing the voice cast and discussing our participation in the June 2025 edition of Steam Next Fest alongside a new Demo Update!

Thank you all so much for your patience and taking the time to read this, we really hope it reassures everyone that we’re not dead and still hitting our goals.

Discord: https://discord.gg/mangofactory

Website: https://www.mangofactory.win/kumitantei

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MangoFactoryEN

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MangoFactoryEN

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mangofactory.win

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/mangofactory

Kumitantei in The Storyteller's Festival!

We're excited to announce that Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter is making an appearance in a currently ongoing event called The Storyteller's Festival! It's an event that celebrates storytelling in video games hosted by Two And A Half Studios, featuring many narrative-based games from many genres, with Kumitantei being one of them.

The event will take place from 17th - 24th February 2025. We hope to see you there!

[h3]Link to the event.[/h3]

February 17th Demo Update

Thank you for playing the Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter Demo! This update adds the Scanner to the Story Demo alongside a limited version of the Pause Menu you will find in the full release, as well as a new opponent and some balance changes for the Battle Demo.

[h3]Story Demo[/h3]

Added the Scanner, accessible with right-click or Y/Triangle by default on controller. The Scanner reveals all interactable objects when triggered.
The Pause Menu has a new visual overhaul, as well as the new Bonds menu that updates and fills out as you progress through the demo and talk to each character.
- The "Save and Quit to Title" option has been moved to the System menu.
Added the new song "Nyanus, Your Overseer" to the gym cutscene.
After idling for 7.5 seconds, an input guide for basic actions will appear. It will disappear after moving or pressing a button.

[h3]Battle Demo[/h3]

Art for Skill Cards has been updated with new art.
The Combo Timer and Influence gauge are now paused for the entire duration of the immediate effects of Skill Cards.
Skill Cards are now shuffled into the top half of the deck to make them more accessible and allow for strategies to become more consistent.
Tsubaki is now available as an opponent.
Added the Palaeontologist Skill Card, which fully reshuffles your deck and draws new cards. Levels 3+ reduce the speed of the Combo Timer.
The Plastic Surgeon Skill Card has been adjusted.
- Levels 1-2 change 2 random Debate Cards into the winning type.
- Levels 3+ change 3 random Debate Cards into the winning type.
- Changed the winning card value boost for every level. Now is 1 card, 2 cards, 2 cards, 3 cards, and all cards respectively for each level.

[h3]Other Changes[/h3]

The game now renders 3D environments at 75% of the set resolution, which boosts performance.
Added outlines around most visual elements.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

Fixed a bug in which various shader effects would freeze and change over very long periods of time.

Happy Valentine's Day from Kumitantei!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! We hope that your day will be full of love! 🎴💘

Aside from that, we're also here to remind you that we'll be dropping a major update on the game's demo on 17th of this month. There'll be plenty of new things for you to check out as a taste of what's to come in the full game, such as:

Scanner feature that highlights objects of interest in the area, making it easier for you to see what you can interact with.
Stylized and animated pause menu with. You'll have access to the "Bonds" menu, where you can take a look at the characters and learn a bit more about them.
Tsubaki being available as another opponent for you to battle with in the Battle Demo.

We hope you'll be looking forward to it!

Development Update #3: Episode 1's Progress and Early Access

Hey everyone, Lina here with another update! 🎴🎆

This one’s gonna be a little different from the previous few, we thought it’d be good to take a more macro view of the project’s progress this time and cover some questions we’ve been getting!

First though, we want to talk a little bit about the Demo Update coming next month.

As mentioned before, a substantial update to the Kumitantei Demo Version is coming very soon, and we’re excited to announce it’s coming February 17th! In it you’ll find the addition of Tsubaki as a Battle Demo opponent (as seen last month), as well as graphical and performance updates and the highly requested introduction of the Scanner in exploration!

We’ll be showing previews of the new Demo content on our Bluesky and YouTube Community pages over the coming weeks, so be sure to follow those!

Right now we estimate that Episode 1’s production is about 30% complete, which is right on pace for us to release it in Q3 2025 as planned! Let’s check out the specifics of our progress:

Our focus currently is completing and polishing Episode 1’s script after finalizing the scenario for it last month. For everyone wondering, doing the Demo Update for February has been to keep us making consistent progress across departments for general things not specific to the plot while we wait for the completed script, it hasn’t been a distraction from working on Episode 1 at all.

As for Episode 1’s release plan, as stated above our planned window is still Q3 of 2025, and with Episode 1 the game will be released into Early Access on Steam. We’re using the Early Access model for our Episodic release phase to ensure clarity of the game not yet being complete, and to encourage players to share their feedback with us while we gradually update and add in the narrative’s six Episodes. During this time, we intend on having the game’s price initially discounted on Steam and increasing with each Episode addition, then exiting Early Access when the game is complete.

You may have noticed from our previous few Backer Updates that we’ve been silent regarding the promised Nintendo Switch port of Kumitantei, and as you might have guessed, we were ourselves waiting for more information about the Nintendo Switch’s successor. With the news now of Nintendo Switch 2’s full backwards compatibility with its predecessor, we’re very excited to be supporting both generations of the system. We intend on releasing the full game on Nintendo Switch (and by extension Nintendo Switch 2) once we’ve left Early Access and officially launch, still intended for Late 2027.

Now that was a whole lot of densely packed information, so we’re gonna end this month’s update with something more mellow... the very first preview OST track of Episode 1 titled “Liminal Morning” and courtesy of Hundotte. It’s a relaxing coffee shop bossa nova-inspired alternative version of Liminal Apathy, which will of course be heard during each in-game morning! Enjoy!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We know this Backer Update was way more of an info dump than a showcase like our previous ones were, but we thought it was important to give you guys a better look behind the curtain and clear up all the concerns regarding releases and rewards. Plus with the holidays and focusing on writing right now there’s not really a ton of flashy spoiler-free stuff to share, so it just kinda worked out to do this now.

You guys have given us so much support, and so we want to be as transparent as possible!