The Usual Sus · Press kit
Every suspect has a story. Question them one by one, read the lies behind the covers, and sign a warrant for every crook in the room before the heat comes down on you.
Thirty-two cases across four districts, twenty-four roles, and one rule that never bends: arrest the Fed and you’re off the case.
60 seconds · 1920×1080, 30 fps · captured from the game running in the Playdate Simulator, shown at whole-number zoom with the Playdate screen’s own grey tones · trailer.mp4
The Usual Sus is a noir deduction game for one, for Playdate. Question seven suspects around a card table, read the lies, and arrest every crook before the heat reaches 10.
It’s raining again, and the trouble has ended up at a card table. Seven seats, seven suspects, one detective. Somewhere in the room are the crooks, and they won’t make it easy.
Step around the table and question each suspect. Every card turns over to show the role they claim and what they have to say: who sits close to a crook, who is clean, which way trouble went. Most of them tell you what they know. The crooks wear a cover and lie.
Stamp your read on each face: Clean, Crook or Shady. Hold B for the guest list to see which roles are really in the room. When you’re sure, hold A to open a warrant and keep holding to sign it. Catch a crook and he goes away. Arrest a clean suspect and the heat rises, and at 10 heat you’re off the case. Arrest the Fed and it’s over on the spot.
Work your way up from Patrolman to Lieutenant through 32 cases in four districts: the Blue Moon Club, the Docks, Hotel Royale and Chinatown. Some cases start with a body at the table, and the Strangler sat right beside it. There’s a daily case on the title screen too.
Citizens · Honest folk. The Briber and the Kingpin can buy them. · 13 roles
Lowlifes · Not crooks, so arresting one costs you. · 4 roles
Crooks · They lie behind a cover. Arrest every one. · 4 roles + token
Bosses · Crooks at the top. The verdict reads BOSS. · 3 roles
A six-page pocket manual for the game: the table, reading the lies, the warrant, the heat, murder cases and every suspect. Turn the pages, or press the arrow keys.
Each page is a 1400×2400 PNG in manual, with an animated GIF of the full page: Page 1 PNG · GIF · Page 2 PNG · GIF · Page 3 PNG · GIF · Page 4 PNG · GIF · Page 5 PNG · GIF · Page 6 PNG.
All 10 screenshots are in screenshots/1x (native 400×240, pure black and white, exactly as the device draws them) and screenshots/4x (1600×960 in the Playdate screen’s grey tones).
Slow, smoky minor blues for the title screen: a tenor-sax intro, then a muted-trumpet lead with bent blue notes answered by tenor fills, over soft piano, a walking upright bass and brushes, with rain and vinyl crackle underneath.
The investigation loop is the trailer theme, rearranged to play under every case: the tenor sax states the noir motif over a two-feel upright, then a walking bass, ride and brushes carry muted-trumpet calls answered by the tenor and organ stabs, vibes take a lighter turn, and a turnaround folds straight back into the first bar.
The table theme in its trailer cut, written to the trailer’s bar grid: a cold open, the investigation groove, a stop-time build and a brass climax, then a last chord on the title.
Every note and sound is synthesized from code for The Usual Sus, nothing sampled, and the game plays them as 22 kHz mono. Previews are MP3; each soundtrack preview plays its loop twice.
The name is a pun on the usual suspects: rounding them up is the whole game.
Social deduction is usually a party game: a table of friends, a few liars among them, and everyone trying to work out who. The Usual Sus asks how that feels with one player and a room full of suspects who never break character.
The rules follow the lead of Demon Bluff: question everyone, trust no single word, and find every liar before you run out of chances. Each case is built so a careful reader can solve it.
Noir was the natural costume for it. A city in the rain, a smoky club, a card table under one lamp, and a cast of nuns, bookies, femmes fatales and feds who all have something to hide.
The whole game is drawn for Playdate’s 1-bit screen: file photos with the light coming through window blinds, a felt table in dither, case files that slide in like paper on a desk, and a title screen where a lone figure waits under a street lamp, below a logo with a detective’s pipe smoking behind the lettering.
Pixel art is 1× at heart. Scale it by whole numbers only (2×, 3×, 4×) with nearest-neighbour sampling, so every pixel stays square.
