Seeking Gamma Testers for "Miss Gosling's Last Case"

Playing Beta Testing Requests and Discussion
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Miss Winifred Gosling, 76, of Marswich Green, passed away on March 3rd after an unfortunate dog-induced accident. Miss Gosling was well-known for her long and illustrious history of crime-solving, often unravelling cases that had left the constabulary utterly perplexed, and her loss will be keenly felt throughout the county. She is survived by her nephew, Nigel Gosling…and on and on.

What utter nonsense. It wasn’t “an unfortunate dog-induced accident”, it was arsenious oxide poisoning, and if you’d managed to get to the phone in time you would have told them that yourself. You’d think that they’d put at least a token effort into investigating your death; a standard Marsh test would have given them plenty of proof.

But no. It seems that, once again, you’ll have to do the constables’ job for them, and solve the case of your own murder.

This is a lighthearted murder mystery with lots of puzzles, intended for IFComp; it should take approximately an two hours to play. The format is hybrid parser/choice: you can play entirely with hyperlinks, entirely with the parser, or a combination of both.

I consider it basically ready for release now, but I’m sure there are further bugs and pain points that could do with polishing! I’m also trying to write an Agatha Christie pastiche while being thoroughly American myself, so anyone who can correct my Americanisms (or, worse, my incorrect Britishisms) will be especially appreciated.

Content warning for genre-typical depiction of dead bodies, but there’s absolutely no gore or violence, and (given that the protagonist is the murder victim) it’s treated with a certain degree of irreverence.

If you’re interested in testing, either reply here or send me a DM, and I’ll set you up!

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I stopped reading here. Count me in.

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I’ll give it a go!

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Count me in, too.

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I don’t have time in my schedule right now, but if you’re planning on a second round of testing, count me in for that!

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This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

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We’re now in beta! If anyone else is interested in testing, let me know here or in DMs—I’d love to get another full round in!

(Also I’m abusing my mod powers a bit to reopen this thread, because it seems more polite than making a new one. I missed the closure deadline by a few hours…)

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If you really need just one more betatester, I’d be happy to. I am doing a lot of betatesting around, however, so I’m on the fence.

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No pressure if you don’t have time! But I’ll probably be looking for testers right up to the deadline, so if you end up with time later this month, hit me up!

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puts hand up Sounds fun, so count me in!

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Moving on to a final round of testing now—let’s call this the “gamma” round! If anyone’s interested in giving this a quick whirl before the 27th, hit me up!

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As a software engineering instructor, I must object to your term “gamma testing”. :laughing:

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Oh, does it have an actual meaning? I just figured it’s what comes after beta…

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Oh no, “gamma testing” is a nonexistent term. Any testing involving actual users is called beta testing. (Alpha testing, on the other hand, is testing done in-house by the development organization in controlled environments. It’s not just an earlier round of testing, as is a common misconception.)

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I didn’t know that! I use it because Infocom used to use ‘alpha’, ‘beta’ and ‘gamma’ in the “expected” ways. :slight_smile:

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Huh! I never learned that.

I think in my head, alpha testing is when it might not work at all, beta testing is when it definitely works, and gamma testing is when it’s a release candidate.

But perhaps we could go farther…delta testing when you’ve made a change and want to see the ripple effects, epsilon testing when the tweaks are truly miniscule and you want to see if anyone notices…

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Of course gamma testing is a thing. Isn’t that what happened to Bruce Banner?

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Bringing this back to the actual topic, though, I’ve corrected a few things in the initial description:

  • The estimated play time is two hours, not one
  • You can play it entirely parser, entirely choice, or a mixture of the two; it’s no longer necessary to switch to the parser at any point if you don’t want to (though you may find it more convenient)
  • It’s now a release candidate, so a lot more polished than it used to be, though I’m still looking for bugs and pain points
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With how inconsistantly the terms alpha and beta are used in practice and the fact some software has a pre-alpha phase to its development cycle and how common it is for FOSS projects to never have internal only builds or to have both a master/main branch that is constantly getting new features and a branch that will become the next official release, I have no objection to non-standard extensions to the usual terminology.

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