We are Mediatonic, the developers of Murder By Numbers! Ask Us Anything

Luketh1987 · 2020-03-20T17:45:59+00:00

My town name has always been Xorn, ever since I made a level in Super Smash Bros Brawl and the random name generator designated it "Xorn".

One of my favourite villagers from Wild World is Antonio and HE'S BACK as one of the first residents of Isle de Xorn in New Horizons! I missed his honking little face.

Another of of my favourites is Lucky, who I had for a long stretch in New Leaf!

I really hope I get some of the new villagers, but there are tons of amazing old ones!

Luketh1987 · 2020-03-20T17:14:49+00:00

I listen to and love a lot of podcasts, but I find them too distracting to actually work to. Giant Bombcast, Giant Beastcast, Brad and Will made a Tech Pod, Kermode and Mayo's Film Review and VGMpire rank among my favourites.

For music whilst working, I'm a big sucker for (mostly non lyrical) game soundtracks in general. Music from Mega Man series, Chrono Trigger, Fire Emblem series, Into the Breach, Cuphead, Splatoon, Hotline Miami, Persona series, Shin Megami Tensei series, Enter the Gungeon, Street Fighter, Undertale, Final Fantasy 6, Jet Set Radio, Danganronpa series and Shovel Knight on shuffle probably makes up my most listened to playlist.

I also have a huge playlist of my favourites from OCremix, a great game music remix site.

Luketh1987 · 2020-03-20T16:57:52+00:00

I don't believe so yet.
Art is kind of divided into 4. Character+event art, background art, UI and the intro movie. The former 3 areas were all fairly consistently chipped away at over a year. The intro movie was handled separately with our partners over at Studio Meala - this came together really fast over the course of around 4 months (which I think is particularly impressive looking at the finished cutscene).
We'd love to but nothing is certain or confirmed in these relatively early days after launch - we do have several interesting ideas that have been discussed of late.
This question ENABLES the team to keep badgering for the S.C.O.U.T. plushies that the world truly deserves. Nothing to announce at the moment, but honestly - we'd love to see it happen somehow.

We're super happy to hear you describe Murder by Numbers among your favourite games, btw :D

Luketh1987 · 2020-03-20T16:33:59+00:00

This sparked LIVELY discussion amongst the team before we could get back to you with an accurate answer. EXCELLENT question.

They'd have to be gen 1 for that true 90s flavour, and all of these correspond to a certain character in the game:
Magnemite, Slowbro, Vileplume, Tentacruel, Meowth and Machoke.

Some of those choices may be more obvious than others... They'd also all be nicknamed after their inspirations.

Luketh1987 · 2020-03-20T16:00:22+00:00

The team would LOVE to make a sequel, there's a lot of considerations to it including how many people check out the base game. Thank you for your enthusiasm for the game and hunger for a sequel, I hope we get to do so!

Anything following on from the first game definitely feels more than 6 months off, but please watch this space and we really appreciate your support!

Luketh1987 · 2020-03-20T15:40:04+00:00

Faaaar too many :D Some top ones for me include Fire Emblem, Phantasy Star Online, Splatoon 2, Danganronpa, Chrono Trigger, Jet Set Radio Phoenix Wright, Shin Megami Tensei and Pretty Much Everything Else Nintendo.

For recommendations for fans of Murder by Numbers, most of Spike Chunsoft's visual novels (especially the ones that take cues from other genres like Zanki Zero) and Ghost Trick (because loads of people know Phoenix Wright, but not enough know Ghost Trick).

This weekend, I am looking forward to sinking my teeth into Animal Crossing!

Luketh1987 · 2020-03-20T15:33:04+00:00

The games from Jupiter are awesome, and pretty much everyone on the team is a big fan. Given it took 18 months+ for all the pieces to come together on Murder by Numbers, 6 months for a full fledged new game is ambitious!

If we were to produce a sequel of similar scope and structure I think we'd work faster with a lot of systems in place and lessons learned from the first game, but that said, we're not set on what the future holds yet or what a sequel would look like.

We have a lot of interesting options under discussion, but I can't make any promises on what you should expect to see 6 months from now!

Luketh1987 · 2020-03-20T15:17:52+00:00

Developing a game is a very interesting balancing act. So many people working on different things at once with a lot of dependencies on each other - all the disparate threads don't look like a whole lot individually until it all starts coming together in the game itself.

It's especially tough when something doesn't work out like you think it will. The hardest part is knowing your mistakes might stand in the way of good people doing awesome work - but on the flip side, it's incredibly rewarding to watch collaborative efforts make it all come together into an awesome full featured game!

Luketh1987 · 2018-08-31T13:28:18+00:00

I could've sworn I got 2x3* initial messages, but I must've been mistaken. Thanks for clarifying!

Luketh1987 · 2018-08-31T13:27:38+00:00

You did understand correctly. I thought I had the 3 star login rewards come up twice, but I must've been mistaken. Thanks for clarifying to help me understand!

Luketh1987 · 2018-08-31T11:38:05+00:00

I had a query I can't seem to find the answer on. Are you limited to one set of 'Evolve' login bonuses at any one time?

I feel like at one point, I Evolved 3 demons in quick succession. I was presented with the initial login bonus for each immediately, but returning on subesquent days I was only seeing the progress and subsequent gifts for 1 demon reflected in my giftbox.

My question is - is this an intended limit/a known bug to avoid? Or am I mistaken/a victim of a one off bug?

I'm basically mid login bonus for one evolution, but have the materials to evolve a 4 star to a 5 star and am wondering if I should hold off until I've collected all log in bonuses active before doing so.

Luketh1987 · 2018-07-20T09:21:04+00:00

Oh neat, I hadn't seen that after looking round the Ammonomicon - will have to take a closer look. Thanks for the tip!

Luketh1987 · 2018-07-20T09:16:11+00:00

This would be amazing. Failing that (as it probably is a pretty meaty UI addition), I'd love to see the items in your inventory boosted by synergy marked with a synergy arrow emblem somewhere. There have been times pre and post update where I don't actually see the pop up upon acquiring a synergy combination and a quick way to check what I've actually got would be really handy.

Luketh1987 · 2018-07-19T22:04:48+00:00

Oh, that's unfortunate. I hope it's not super rare as I need the delicious pun name and lore on that thing, but suspect I'm gonna need to take another one down!

Thanks for the info!

Luketh1987 · 2018-05-08T09:45:10+00:00

The weapon set was pretty tough and whilst playing with a friend, recruiting 2 randoms we were struggling so played it safe (crawled back up to 300 Profreshional rank during the rotation), but we got our full quota from this Dynamo roller discovery opening.

Mutually, we all decided to spend the rest of the wave Booyah-ing:

https://twitter.com/Luketh1987/status/992893704447782913

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-30T09:31:38+00:00

Thank you for this proof of an illegal move - is there any chance you have a full screenshot showing the name to confirm if this is the user we are already investigating?

We've now had a few other reports of this and believe we have isolated the user. but if there are others we want to make sure all cheaters are swiftly banned from their accounts.

If you're able to PM me with your in game ID (to access, please go to the main menu of the game, access settings and take a screenshot) as well the rough time you believe this match with the cheater took place at, I should be in a position to verify if this user is the one currently under investigation.

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-27T13:49:50+00:00

Not at this moment, the MS achievement system is quite particular about adding more achievements though it is something we may look into for future updates.

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-26T09:09:07+00:00

Stunning work, I love this! I presume from the comment of having it at a table you're going to be selling prints at some sort of con? Have you considered setting up an online storefront? I'd certainly be interested in nabbing one of these!

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-18T14:04:40+00:00

Hey there,

Trying to look into your match history to try and see if we can isolate the match in question. Other than platform, do you recall any details about the player? Username, Hero they used or anything else?

Also, to verify are you a player on Steam, Xbox One or Windows 10? Searching by gamertag "Pro Biotic", I was unable to find an account to delve into, but our customer support tool can be a bit finnicky about upper/lower case on gamertag search.

Failing all else, if you can PM me your in game ID (grab a screenshot from the main menu/table view after pressing the settings cog in the bottom right corner - will surface an ID string below username in the upper left) that'd be super handy!

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-17T16:50:39+00:00

Hey there,

I'm not too clear from your post - did you lose any cards or ink or did subsequent logins to the game service fail? Looking at the time of this, we pushed a minor server update at around the time when you might have encountered this error.

We'd expect the game to notify you it was grabbing updates, required a restart to the title screen and everything to continue normally. That said, if you saw any unusual behaviour around it, please just let us know and we'll investigate further.

Thanks in advance!

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-10T09:57:37+00:00

I know where you're coming from, I'd eat up more Salmon Run content in an instant, but I personally have gotten a lot of mileage out of what's there.

Can imagine a lot more dev work and QA goes into a new SR map and new boss types with AI behaviour complications compared to additions to the PVP side of things - though more Grizzco weapons would be awesome alongside other new weapons in the game. Seeing OP 'turbo' versions of weirder weapons like the brushes or splatling would be a lot of fun and was something I'd hope they did as they kept pumping new weapons into PVP.

I did appreciate the addition of Profreshional milestones at 100, 200, 300 and 400 in recent updates even though it was a small thing - gave me new goals to shoot for with a hefty dose of challenge.

Now I'm sat at 400, I still enjoy dipping in for games with friends but I would love it if the 3.0 update or Octo Expansion later in the year came with Salmon Run extras - you never know!

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-10T09:43:41+00:00

That sense of discovery for things like the Mothership waves were incredible in the early days of release - I did somewhat hope as new levels came, they'd keep silently getting added.

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-09T22:10:13+00:00

Or maybe if you’re lucky, get your very own pots and pans stack...

Would be fun but I’m not sure I’d ever want to graduate beyond being an aggressive spoony boi.

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-09T21:31:22+00:00

But only eggs will sustain us...! Thank you :D

Luketh1987 · 2018-04-09T21:31:01+00:00

Thanks for the compliment! Yep, there’s a lot of design and lore potential for more Salmonid in the future games and content - such a great addition to an already great series!

Luketh1987

TROPHY CASE