Hauntless by Abby Blenk
Playtime: 47 minutes
This made me want to talk about:
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You play as a paranormal investigator in a world where everyone knows hauntings are real, and resolving the current haunting requires solving a murder mystery from the 1920s (unclear to me what year the game is set in, but at least a few decades after that).
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You investigate by navigating through the locations in the circus, looking for clues (that have been preserved for ?? years). Visiting the same location multiple times will likely yield additional clues.
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I liked the central navigation pane that lets you instantly revisit any previously visited location
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I enjoyed the story aspects, there was some nicely written interpersonal drama between the members of the circus.
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(I saw in a few other reviews people discussing issues loading saves towards the end, but I had no issues there, so if there was an attempted fix, it’s working great.)
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In the end, the answers you need to provide are basically Clue format (perpetrator, location, weapon), which has the effect of making guessing more manageable
Notable line:
My one fervent wish:
I had a hard time ultimately “solving” the mystery. Partly because a major part of it required realizing that the a supernatural entity might do some things that I didn’t realize would be possible for them to do (verbatim from my notes during play “wow these people have some issues but it doesn’t really seem like enough issues to explain why so many got murdered”). There were definitely clues about where and how people were killed, but if there were clues that would have helped me with my issue (i.e., clues that a certain supernatural entity specifically did it), I missed them. I would have appreciated more intermediate cluing to motivate the player toward that solution.
Overall, a fun and engaging urban-fantasy feeling circus game. The fiction elements were working for me although I was struggling with some of the game/mystery elements, but the combination was compelling.