The Litchfield Mystery
thesleuthacademy
This game was competent, but I found it a little… dry, I guess? All the trappings of a mystery were there. You investigate the house; you interview the suspects, you make deductions and discover new clues and new things to ask the suspects about. It’s pretty solid? The only issue I had with the mystery and the clue-gathering is that as I discovered clues, I really wanted to ask people about them, and only rarely was I able to: I feel like the author had a certain pathway in mind for how things would be discovered and what conclusions you could draw from them, and didn’t think of things from a player’s perspective: when you find evidence that implicates person X, maybe the player will want to talk to person X about that? I think the author believed the evidence would be much more conclusive that I found them to be: I found things and thought “That seems kind of fishy” but I was intended to think “Well, that clears that up.” I got to one point in the investigation, couldn’t figure out what to do next, turned to the hints… and discovered that literally all the hints pointed at things I had already found. I was done! The only thing left was the ‘accuse’ button.
The whole process seemed pretty dry, though, and a large part of that can be attributed to the utter cypher of a main character: they methodically search every room for clues, and once in a great while a random spike of personality will show up that seems to come out of left field and have zero context. At one point, you notice the person you’re talking to has red fingernails, and it reminds you of the blood of the victim that calls out for justice! Which… I mean, I guess? You’re a detective, so that’s kind of your job? But every question you ask everyone is clinical and precise (though you manage to develop a slight personality when interviewing the child, so you don’t scare them to death). You don’t have a style; you don’t have a method; you don’t muse to yourself about the case; you don’t commiserate with the perpetrator to put them at ease; you don’t… become a person. You are a detective. You solve the case, and then you’re done.
Add to that, the cast of characters are relatively straightforward, too. The murderer has a single secret, which motivated them to murder the victim, that’s not at all surprising or odd. One other person has a motivation, too, which again is utterly pedestrian. A single suspect has ‘the makings of a blackmailer’ in your opinion, but then nothing happens with this. The suspects hang out in the sitting room the entire time; nobody wanders around trying to cover up their crime or otherwise just do stuff (though the cook wants to make lunch for people! She’s a cook! That’s her personality!)
This review has turned into a nonstop litany of complaints, and I do want to say that the basic structure was great, the ultimate story made sense, and I did feel clever eventually figuring things out. I just didn’t feel satisfied eventually figuring things out.
Did the author have anything to say? Present a kind-of-standard murder mystery in a competent format.
Did I have anything to do? Find clues and interview people, though unfortunately kind of perfunctorily.