Just finished playing Winter-Over, and had a pretty enjoyable playthrough! I just scraped by with enough info to accuse the correct person within the time limit.
I’m curious what other’s experiences were like with the game, and what evidence you gathered. (Hiding that info in spoiler tags seems like a good idea, although hopefully people won’t be reading through this whole thread before playing)
I had collected enough to accuse the murderer, but i didn’t have anything on motive.
I also had a bit of trouble with getting Amanda’s help figuring out the phone password. There was a note from the game to spend time with her to help with this, and tried gardening with her (several times, lol), with seemingly no change. I spoke with her on a different day in a different location, and then was able to get her help, so maybe that was what was needed. This didn’t detract much from what was overall a pretty good playing experience, though.
Anyway, curious to hear what everyone thought. How much info did you get? Did you enjoy the game?
I enjoyed it! I was a tester, so I haven’t yet played the final version of the game, but I also finished with definite proof of the murderer, but nothing on motive—EDIT: I did get the ending where the motive was explained, though; just didn’t uncover anything on it myself. Re: Amanda, I think your gardening with her did have an impact, but not sure if there’s also another prerequisite that needs to be met before she’ll help with the phone?
Continuing this discussion…
I didn’t picture the PC as a man or a woman; I just didn’t really think about their gender at all (and as a non-binary person, that’s a nice option to have!).
I’m not sure what the etiquette is on author participation in these threads; would people like confirmation of how to find the motive and what the deal is with Amanda and the phone or should I butt out?
What I liked about the game is that each step the player makes is a meaningful step for progression. I feel like I was getting closer to the mystery. The investigation, the tedium of going around different locations, and the interviewing are pretty on point; every meandering step I take always leads to new directions.
I’m not too fond of the solution/culprit/motive. Perhaps, I’ve read too many Agatha Christies to know who it must be. I originally wanted to pin the crime on another person because I think it would be more interesting. But since the culprit is just the mastermind, it feels rather rote.
All that said, I enjoyed this game tremendously. I enjoy roleplaying as sleuths and this gives me the kick I’ve been craving for months. Definitely recommend it.
Hmm, I’m not sure what the etiquette is either. Speaking for myself, I’m fine with whatever you feel would be more helpful to you as an author. It can be fun watching players poke around and try to figure things out for themselves, or maybe you just want to let everyone know so they can focus on talking about other aspects of the game. Whatever you decide to disclose, I’m here for it, haha. Thanks for making such a fun game, by the way
Re: Finding the motive, I suspect you either need to give yourself more time to collect more clues, and/or, make sure the PC is well-reseted and de-stressed enough to access a different version of the confrontation with the murderer near the end? That was the impression I got, anyway.
Re: Gender of the player character, I imagined a woman, was getting protective sister vibes. I was also conscious of the fact that gender was never explicitly stated, so I think leaving it open to the player’s interpretation worked there.
Your second guess is correct. I recommend reloading an older save if possible and try to get your stress down before making the accusation. The game should auto save at the beginning of each day so even if you haven’t been manually saving you should have a shot at getting it without having to fully start over.
For people who have not yet played, or who have played and don’t want to read the spoiler text – if you feel there are dangling questions, there may be an ending you haven’t seen.
Well, I don’t want to rob players of the opportunity to discover things on their own, but the Amanda thing isn’t really meant to be a secret, it’s just not as well signposted as it could be, so I will clarify:
It really is just based on doing activities with her; the fact that it doesn’t give any indication that you’re making progress when you’ve done some activities but not enough is our oversight. Her location doesn’t matter, and the day doesn’t matter except inasmuch as the initial conversation plus the activities take up more than one day’s worth of time.
We will definitely fix the lack of clarity in the post-comp release at least, but if people are finding it particularly frustrating it might be worth a mid-comp update.
Ah gotcha! Yeah I never would have guessed that there was a meter that was increasing with each additional activity. Some clarification in that regard would have definitely been appreciated
We (1) wanted the whole phone thing to be a significant time commitment since it gives you so much of the solution, and (2) thought it would make more sense psychologically anyway for it to take some time and effort to get Amanda into a better headspace, rather than just having her be like “okay I feel better now” because you hung out with her once. But upon bringing the subject up again after doing one activity with her, the game really should give the player some indication of “you’re on the right track, just keep doing what you’re doing.”
So I’ve gone ahead and updated it so that it does (at least, hopefully that message is conveyed reasonably clearly in the current version). Thank you for the feedback!
I just finished this, and it was a welcome high spot in a day of playing comp games that didn’t work well. So it’s a low bar to say that I appreciated the game because it worked well, but I did.
But there was a lot to like here. In particular, I appreciated the general dark mood of the game and the real sense of place. Sometimes my eyes glaze over when there’s a lot of text, but not here. I was following it all the way. I felt really oppressed, and my anxiety level was following the meter-- I was quite invested in keeping my stress level manageable. I needed two tries to get the culprit, but I really liked the ending (maybe there was more than one, but I liked the ending I got). I think I wasted a lot of my investigation time just walking around and mapping the station, but that’s OK because for me that was one of the high points of the game-- exploring the environment and the randomness of running into people in various locations.
