today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games ft. an institution of higher education as a significant location
The Killings in Wasacona by Steve Kollmansberger
Playtime: 43 minutes
The one where: recent FBI grad investigates string of murders
I was excited about this game based on the front matter alone; I have always wanted to be Clarice Starling.
The game takes an rpg-inflected approach—you can customize your stats or take one of several pre-built “archetypes,” and then some investigative tasks require skill checks based on a die roll. I quite liked this. It was nice that the game showed the skill checks directly so you would understand what was affecting what happened to you. And I liked the overall frame that you won’t be able to get every clue—it added a sense of realism. That’s just how life works, no one can convince every witness to open up to them or notice every possible connection. (And there’s quite a bit of information available that doesn’t require skill checks.)
Now, the danger of this approach is now we have players running around with arbitrarily different amounts of information, but I thought the game handled this really well. The mystery still worked for me despite missing a bunch of skill checks so I think a lot must have gone in behind the scenes to making it still make sense.
I didn’t take one of the pre-made archetypes, but I customized to +6 to physical with deficits elsewhere, so that was probably pretty close to the physical archetype. (Look, I was just thinking “what if you have to engage in fisticuffs with a suspect” and I really did Not want to lose.) (minor spoilers theorizing about efficacy of various builds) I have since seen discussion, including in the walkthrough, that focusing on physical is not the optimal approach, and that’s no doubt true. Different paths probably differ, but I got exactly 2 physical checks all game, and they were both after I told the sheriff to go make an arrest. Still, I wouldn’t say I anti-recommend doing that—the mystery was still pretty solvable and now I get to feel I bloomed in the face of adversity &c &c .
The gameplay is very procedurally focused (we can go to the morgue, we can interview people, we can visit crime scenes) with light resource-management elements, which matches well with the realistic vibe and gives a pleasing sense of autonomy.
On the realism point, the game was also very effective at making me feel the tension between resting and committing future crimes (I’m sorry Jamal . . .).
The writing didn’t get in the way of the game but it might be a focus for future efforts—some of the dialogue read a bit clunky.
And there was a few times the game mechanics were unexpected in an unpleasant way—not sure if this was a bug or not, but sometimes taking one option would foreclose the option of doing the others, and sometimes not (e.g., after I questioned the server at the restaurant I couldn’t eat a meal anymore, after I got the call logs I couldn’t call the victim’s phone).
Finally, I wondered if it was significant that I got the option to arrest Black very early—when I barely had any evidence, andI never got the option to arrest anyone else. I actually think that was not meant to be dispositive that he was the correct choice, but just to indicate I had found some quanta of evidence about him but not others. If that’s the case, spelling that out might avoid people thinking they’ve been spoiled.
I liked the stat table after finishing—if the author does a postmortem I would LOVE to see stats on say, how people build the PC, which pieces of evidence were most and least frequently discovered, etc.
Front matter | ||
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Could better set the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game | Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS |
Overall, a very well planned and polished procedural mystery
Gameplay tips / typos
- unlike most locations, you can visit the sheriff’s office more than once