Play Time

May 10, 2019

One thing that’s always tricky to gauge when developing a game is how long its running time will be. Especially when a game contains elements that players have to figure out. Different people figure out different things at different rates. Sleuthhounds:Cruise also presents some additional issues with regards to timing in that there are certain optional actions, side quests, and sometimes just different things to do based on choices made earlier in the game. All those issues aside, I wanted to get at least a rough idea of how much gameplay the game currently offers.

As the developer of Cruise I have a skewed perspective on the game. I know all the behind the scenes details and how the game is all hooked up. That makes it impossible for me to play the game with any semblance of the experience actual players will have. However, for my particular timing purposes that was OK. I wanted to know how long the game was if the player already knew the critical path through (i.e. everything they have to do and the order they have to do it in).

Here are the results according to the gameplay time recorded with the save files at each act break.

Section Time
Prologue 1 minute 27 seconds
Act 1 46 minutes 28 seconds
Act 2 1 hour 29 minutes 24 seconds
Act 3 2 hours 13 minutes 22 seconds
Total 4 hours 30 minutes 41 seconds

These times do include one side quest from Act 2 that’s large enough that I’ve always considered it part of the main game even though technically it’s completely optional. The times also include one short optional puzzle from Act 3 that I forgot was optional until I’d completed it.

This was a fun run through the game. Actually, this is the first time I’ve played the game right through from the beginning in its entirety since I finished development of Act 1 about this time last year. The weird thing is I actually did find it to be a fun time. That’s weird as with all the previous games, when they’ve been in the state of development that this one is currently at, they haven’t been a lot of fun to play. All the optional stuff is missing, which includes basic responses for actions that don’t advance the game in any way, and it also includes all the production value stuff of finished backgrounds, animations, sound effects, music, and voice overs. Despite all that stuff being absent from Cruise I did enjoy the run through. Fingers crossed that that feeling will persist throughout the rest of production and this will be the most fun Sleuthhounds game to date.

I’m quite pleased with that four and a half hours running time so far. For actual players the play time should be longer as they will have to do some exploration and will have to solve all the conundrums themselves instead of already knowing the answers as I do. Additionally, there is still the entirety of Act 4 to implement and the denouement/prologue at the end. When all is said and done, I expect the game will take over six hours to complete even if you know everything to do already.