This was really fun! A very well done mystery game and we particularly enjoyed searching for clues and being rewarded by finding another clues lol! The whole thing with showing how many pieces of evidence are left to be discovered was also quite helpful.
Just got done playing this with some friends and discord and it was an absolute blast. I'm particularly impressed by how filling out the family tree felt like just the right difficulty - we never got stuck in a way that was frustrating, it was always just compelling. It helped that most of the non-optional information could be found from a variety of sources, or logically intuited/figured out by process of elimination after certain points. I imagine writing something like this has got to be a real balancing act and takes a huge amount of skill to pull off.
The actual white-box typed in answers at the end were perhaps a bit too easy to come to, but that really felt secondary to the journey getting there.
I enjoyed this more than I tend to enjoy a lot of typical mystery game structures which tend to have a whodunnit or a howdunnit element to them, because I feel like I can get bogged down in the more open-ended nature of that kind of question. The fact that exactly what we were looking for in this game was so concrete - names, photos, and jobs - stopped me from getting lost in the weeds of wondering if I was basing my entire gameplay off of incorrect assumptions and made the actual search just a blast to do.
There's a ton of really funny, quirky, or otherwise interesting stuff to be found in here even outside of the enticing yarn of the Roottree family. The AI generated photos really help sell the epistolary format. Everything going on here just works! Great stuff.
Awesome game! I loved it—a super fun and fair puzzle/mystery game. I wish the ending mystery was a little less spelled-out (onfvpnyyl nyy bs gur pyhrf pnzr sebz n fvatyr fbhepr (Ynhen'f wbheany) naq gurer ernyyl jnfa'g zhpu gb "svther bhg", pbzcnerq gb gur bgure snzvyl zrzoref), but I had so much fun filling in the whole tree that I'm willing to overlook it haha
Hello! I'm really enjoying my time with this game, I did the first three names and closed the game to spend more time later mulling over the puzzles. However, when I clicked the "skip" button during the intro, it directed me to the "Thanks for Playing!" screen. When I clicked the "title" button, it redirected me to the title and I was able to click "skip" normally, but the game proceeded to throw all kinds of strange bugs--acting like I had finished the game when trying to apply a new picture to a profile. Just noting it as a potential bug!
Fantastic game! Me and my wife played it all in one evening. The puzzles were great, and the intuition system was both helpful and infuriating. We would go back to some evidence and wonder how on earth there was more to get from it, then we would eventually find it and be like Hell Yea. We had a great time.
-Spoiler- We ended up never finding the Silver Screen periodical or that other Romance novel, so those were interesting to see in the ending.
Really solid stuff! I thoroughly enjoyed your game after it was recommended to me because I liked Return of the Obra Dinn. There were no unfair mysteries, everything fell into place neatly. Getting to manually enter the final section felt good, especially because I was right! Bravo.
I sometimes get a bit of glitching of text in the game's computer searches. I need to search for something else as refreshing the same search doesn't update.
Additionally, I was having a difficult time trying to find the true name for "Wild Bill" Williams. Neither Periodicals nor Search was able to help. Was I supposed to assume the rumours were true and look for a book written by Marilyn Monroe (or Norma Jeane Mortenson) to see if there was an expose about ol' creepily charming Bill? It's so easy to overthink things.
I'm coming to the realisation that I should write down information into real notebooks. It's easy to take too many notes. I started thinking that the birth years of the people was going to be important.
In time, are you looking to eventually release the game files here on itch for paid download? (Some of us may have issues with Discord's EULA)
I am not planning on releasing a paid version here on itchio. As for the name you were missing, there is a periodical that you likely didn't find. It's mentioned offhand in a pretty major book (the main one in the game) and some people skip right over it because it feels a bit like "lore".
Played this last night, had a really good time tracking down all of the identities. This gets about as close to scratching the same itch as Obra Dinn as any game I’ve played. Great stuff.
I'd appreciate if you edit out your spoilers, but yes, there are answers for both. One is located on a webpage and the other is located in a periodical article.
If you come to the discord I (or someone else) can tell you the answers less vaguely, if you'd like.
No problem, I really appreciate it! Because your questions are now removed I can kinda answer both a bit more vaguely without giving anything away to people that don't already know the answers/questions.
The male's job in particular that you were missing is in a magazine article. It's easy to skip over the significance of it because the article is about that person's offspring, not them directly.
The other job you guessed at is found on a website that lists some clients of a specific company. To remind you which list, one of the entries lead you to find some advertisements involving vehicles. That's the easy one to find. The other thing in the list that you can search for leads you to some information about a local performance. That can help find the second person's job.
Just finished this game after about 3 days of sleuthing.
10/10 - Would recommend to anyone who enjoys logic puzzles and/or genealogy.
It was so much fun! The puzzles and clues are spread out just far enough so that connecting them is a challenge, but still close enough so the solutions don't feel too obtuse or abstract. Even seemingly little details and jokes turn out to be useful branches that provide plenty of useful information. Some of the final details such as last of kin or some of the non-blood relation's names come down to process of elimination, but it never feels like brute forcing it.
The tone itself is also wonderful, a mix of sarcastic humor and just a slight edge of suspense. Personally I got a bit creeped out whenever our mysterious client showed up and I loved that unease. It reminds me of the game "HER" if you've ever played it, with how creepy the mood gets as more dark secrets are revealed.
If I was forced to give this game any criticism, matching the faces for the family photos (especially Free Spirits) was a little daunting at first, but once you manage to match a couple of faces to names, it becomes a process of elimination. Also, maybe adding the option to turn off "slow loading internet"?
Funny tangent: I was absolutely stumped for a while because I thought I had the remaining branches solved but wasn't making any progress. I finally realized that I had correctly deduced that someone was president of the Roottree Company, but I picked the wrong number. Chalk that up to my own tunnel-vision rather than poor UI.
SPOILER
I immediately knew there was something up with the farmhand when I could take his picture from the photograph. I don't know if that final branch is supposed to be super difficult or just a bonus for those who have been paying attention, but between that and the one-off mention of "Mr. Miller", I had a feeling it was something to keep on the back-burner.
Scroll wheel will zoom out once you're done with the tutorial.
The game should save but depending on browser and OS it has had some issues. The best way to be sure it is saving is to finish the tutorial, then to use the "save and quit" button in the settings. If you restart the game and don't have the ability to skip the scene with the news on TV, then the game is not saving properly.
Wow, this was amazing! Very thorough and compelling mystery, and I kept wanting to uncover more! I like how it's like Obra Dinn with the confirming guesses, but also has a notebook for typing notes which helps me so much! And it was so fun searching through the different sources and finding new things to look through. Thanks so much for the game!
I have created an account specifically to comment on this game. I have been hooked to my laptop for the last 2 days, as soon as I got off from work, trying to solve this. I think it's one of the most unique, well-thought and overall amazing games I have ever played and I loved every minute of it.
Have you tried doing a search for Rhose Roottree in the search engine? There's a somewhat general hint there that gives you a push in the right direction when it comes to how to make discoveries in this game.
When you do a search for Rhose Roottree in the search engine, there is a mention that you can sometimes find more information about people by searching for things like brand names associated with them. That will help you solve the first puzzle.
When you search for the Roottree Sisters it mentions that they specifically have a job associated with one brand of clothing. That's a good place to look into.
INCREDIBLE!! Sooo thoroughly well done. So exciting for anyone who loves a mystery game. If you liked Return of the Obra Dinn, this will scratch the same itch.
this is the first ever comment i've left on a game, but i HAD to because this was such a well-done piece of work!! i did it all in like five straight hours and was straight glued to my laptop for 90% of that time. this is seriously a real gem and i got an immense amount of enjoyment out of this, so thank you for sharing!!! i never knew playing with fake family trees could be such a cool game, but i love research and puzzle-oriented gameplay, so this was perfect. so much love!
- Second day... everything starts to become monochromatic. I have the company only of my cigar and my questions. Will I finally get to the bottom of this? - xD Awesome game. Thank you!
I wish my gf showed me as much as love as this dev has shown this game
@jjhonston I specifically made an itchio account for the first time just to thank you for making an absolute masterpiece. I wish there was a way to let devs know that there's a market for handcrafting such experiences. Do you have a youtube channel or something? I feel like you're super good at game design and charming storytelling. I'd love to hear your thoughts on a channel, something like razbuten or joseph anderson. Just use AI voice or whatever if you're worried about privacy.
But yeah, this is like a once in a lifetime game, those you can never play again.
Time for the Constructive criticism part:
1. I thought there'd also be a chance to guess who the person who hired me was. It'd be nice if i could like select 3 possible people who i think it was, and i can check if i got it right.
2. It is absolutely not clear to me that the list of names i have is a resource that can be used. Even though you set up a tab for it, there doesn't seem to be a reason that the detective would have a list of random names. And that is the reason that i avoided using it until i got very stuck. And when i did use it, it felt like i was "gaming the system". Only later on discord, i found out that it is necessary to find many of the wives. So i think it should at least be made very clear that your benefactor has given you this list (maybe it can be given to you mid game?) and it IS TO BE USED for solving.
But honestly, it would be way better to pick up breadcrumbs and arrive at their names, instead of a magical list being at your footsteps. When i played without using it, the game felt so much more natural.
3. A similar issue exists with the structure of the tree being given to you. This i suppose probably isn't an intended mechanic, but can definitely be used to "game the system". I suppose there should be a difficulty checkbox in settings that can be added, which hides the connection between two people (so if someone got divorced in the story, it's easy to see it's one of the people in the tree that are divorced). And also there can be some extra "children" or "spouse" slots, that are supposed to be confirmed as empty and non existent. This way, a player can't use the tree structure to see that "oh X had 2 kids? well it can't be this this and this because they only have 1 kid".
It wouldn't have to make the game difficult because it's a setting that you can turn off. But currently, i hated how I could basically guess who X spot person was, but didn't know if i was gaming the system and kept looking for further evidence to confirm what i find before filling it in.
4. I didn't find the periodical in the tutorial. I feel like, the player can be guided towards that more, though maybe i'm just dumb. (Also, i kept waiting to find the legal periodical, with how many legal cases i kept finding. That'd be a nice addition.)
5. A lot of the details are guesstimates, where you really just guess that particular detail, but i assume you already intend to make those more deducible facts over time.
6. The game needs more red herrings. Like making you think that X's husband is Y because an article says they were dating or engaged, but later turns out, they broke up and married someone else. That kinda bait stuff.
7. In the long future, or a sequel if you ever plan it, a timeline system would be nice. Either for the notes, or for the tree requirement, or something similar.
(Also, for the love of god, please make Home and End key work per line in the notes)
Spoiler marked constructive criticism, so do not read beyond if you haven't finished:
1. Example of not using the names list limiting the experience of the game- I didn't find EJ's past because i never found her full name when i saw the article. When i read the article that mentions her checkered past, i thought i don't know her full name, so i didnt search her up. Later i forgot about it. So i ended up never finding it. I think EJ should have at least 1 more mention somewhere else.
2. In fact, the whole MR part of the family felt so underexplored. It seemed super interesting to me, yet felt like there was so little stuff on it, compared to so much drama and stuff to read on the other parts of the family.
3. N's mom being AQ was just annoying to find out. But maybe others enjoyed it ig. I found it antithetical to everything else being based on realistic deduction, and this one you're supposed to solve as a joke.
3. LR's brothers, the 2 for whom you have to guess which is which, that also felt like guesswork. I know that one is supposed to look younger, but i just thought he is short. And just guessing because he's shorter, felt like it cheapened the game.
4. There were other issues, but those were my fault. But these issues didn't feel fair like the others. These felt like i was not told what i'm supposed to do, so i kept high expectations, and was then disappointed. I'd rather just be told to do some guesswork or use the list.
Regardless, an absolutely amazing game. Easily one of the best I've ever played. Thank you for this.
I do want to address that based on the design of the game, there are people you can't solve without the list and the tree structure. It think it would be a very different feeling game that would need many more clues without those aspects, it's not a setting I could just enable.
I could have made it clearer that the list you have came from the person that hired you, but it seemed to waste precious time during the tutorial and story which is already pretty text heavy.
On the bright side, I just spent an hour frantically googling and hacking together home and end functionality into the notes. It will hopefully be coming in an update pretty soon.
Hey, I appreciate the prompt attention to feedback. I'll be sure to definitely make any friends play this who i think would be interested. Hopefully you find the optimum build for the game you dreamt of :D
Ok now that I'm done with this, is there anywhere i can find a walkthrough for harm charm, level 5? I've spent hours trying what i think is every possible combination, but i cant seem to get it. I'm at the point that i was starting to teach Bard the various components of this game and hopefully it might work out an answer, but that is taking wayyyy longer than i thought. So any walkthroughs or something?
It's really tricky because its the only level where you need to purposely call upon the dark art. The sequence is: Block rain fire block sap fire block block fire
Thanks a lot, I'm gonna go **** myself now. How did i not try something so simple (my best guess is that i kept assuming shielded damage becomes 30 not 20).
Just finished the game. Iv been working through it in spare time over the past few weeks and oh my god this is a MASTERPIECE. I have always been interested in things like this and it was absolutely facinating and so fun! Will def by sharing the game with anyone who will listen, LOVED this experience! Great job devs! Hoping for similar games in the future! :)
i got so stuck i started going back and putting anything in quotes in the search bar and got this which fucking killed me thanks for bothering to make the stupidest of searches worth it
for ai art im shocked at how consistent everything is. i was able to correctly differentiate the cousins and sisters on the second album cover because of how jim and diamond looked on the first
hey jjjhonston just wondering if this game might be uploaded somewhere other than itch.io in the future, since itch is a pretty niche platform(compared to others) and this game is *wildly* underrated. if this where on somehere like steam i know it would garner so much more attention
The game cannot be uploaded to Steam, due to its reliance on AI art.
So for me, releasing it for free on itchio was the option that made the most sense. I do have an exe version I give out on the discord for people that want a local copy, but generally, I plan to leave it here and playable in browser for as long as I am able.
This was a treat to play. It was fun and kept me invested in the story, and was also genuinely challenging. Did not anticipate that twist ending at all, though I guessed who the employer was. Some of the occupations I had to guess, but overall this was an incredible experience. I would pay money for this.
← Return to mystery
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This was really fun! A very well done mystery game and we particularly enjoyed searching for clues and being rewarded by finding another clues lol! The whole thing with showing how many pieces of evidence are left to be discovered was also quite helpful.
Just got done playing this with some friends and discord and it was an absolute blast. I'm particularly impressed by how filling out the family tree felt like just the right difficulty - we never got stuck in a way that was frustrating, it was always just compelling. It helped that most of the non-optional information could be found from a variety of sources, or logically intuited/figured out by process of elimination after certain points. I imagine writing something like this has got to be a real balancing act and takes a huge amount of skill to pull off. The actual white-box typed in answers at the end were perhaps a bit too easy to come to, but that really felt secondary to the journey getting there.
I enjoyed this more than I tend to enjoy a lot of typical mystery game structures which tend to have a whodunnit or a howdunnit element to them, because I feel like I can get bogged down in the more open-ended nature of that kind of question. The fact that exactly what we were looking for in this game was so concrete - names, photos, and jobs - stopped me from getting lost in the weeds of wondering if I was basing my entire gameplay off of incorrect assumptions and made the actual search just a blast to do.
There's a ton of really funny, quirky, or otherwise interesting stuff to be found in here even outside of the enticing yarn of the Roottree family. The AI generated photos really help sell the epistolary format. Everything going on here just works! Great stuff.
Awesome game! I loved it—a super fun and fair puzzle/mystery game. I wish the ending mystery was a little less spelled-out (onfvpnyyl nyy bs gur pyhrf pnzr sebz n fvatyr fbhepr (Ynhen'f wbheany) naq gurer ernyyl jnfa'g zhpu gb "svther bhg", pbzcnerq gb gur bgure snzvyl zrzoref), but I had so much fun filling in the whole tree that I'm willing to overlook it haha
loving the game so much - i've been hearing mentions of a discord around, but i can't seem to find it. anyone have the link?
It's in the menu of the game, you can get there from settings.
thank you!!!
it only appears a black screen :(
Hello! I'm really enjoying my time with this game, I did the first three names and closed the game to spend more time later mulling over the puzzles. However, when I clicked the "skip" button during the intro, it directed me to the "Thanks for Playing!" screen. When I clicked the "title" button, it redirected me to the title and I was able to click "skip" normally, but the game proceeded to throw all kinds of strange bugs--acting like I had finished the game when trying to apply a new picture to a profile. Just noting it as a potential bug!
This is very good indeed!
search time cube lmao
Fantastic game! Me and my wife played it all in one evening. The puzzles were great, and the intuition system was both helpful and infuriating. We would go back to some evidence and wonder how on earth there was more to get from it, then we would eventually find it and be like Hell Yea. We had a great time.
-Spoiler-
We ended up never finding the Silver Screen periodical or that other Romance novel, so those were interesting to see in the ending.
best detective game ive played
Really solid stuff! I thoroughly enjoyed your game after it was recommended to me because I liked Return of the Obra Dinn. There were no unfair mysteries, everything fell into place neatly. Getting to manually enter the final section felt good, especially because I was right! Bravo.
I sometimes get a bit of glitching of text in the game's computer searches. I need to search for something else as refreshing the same search doesn't update.
Additionally, I was having a difficult time trying to find the true name for "Wild Bill" Williams. Neither Periodicals nor Search was able to help. Was I supposed to assume the rumours were true and look for a book written by Marilyn Monroe (or Norma Jeane Mortenson) to see if there was an expose about ol' creepily charming Bill? It's so easy to overthink things.
I'm coming to the realisation that I should write down information into real notebooks. It's easy to take too many notes. I started thinking that the birth years of the people was going to be important.
In time, are you looking to eventually release the game files here on itch for paid download? (Some of us may have issues with Discord's EULA)
I am not planning on releasing a paid version here on itchio. As for the name you were missing, there is a periodical that you likely didn't find. It's mentioned offhand in a pretty major book (the main one in the game) and some people skip right over it because it feels a bit like "lore".
Played this last night, had a really good time tracking down all of the identities. This gets about as close to scratching the same itch as Obra Dinn as any game I’ve played. Great stuff.
EDIT: Removed spoilers at request
I'd appreciate if you edit out your spoilers, but yes, there are answers for both. One is located on a webpage and the other is located in a periodical article.
If you come to the discord I (or someone else) can tell you the answers less vaguely, if you'd like.
Oh, my bad, I’ve removed the spoilers now.
No problem, I really appreciate it! Because your questions are now removed I can kinda answer both a bit more vaguely without giving anything away to people that don't already know the answers/questions.
The male's job in particular that you were missing is in a magazine article. It's easy to skip over the significance of it because the article is about that person's offspring, not them directly.
The other job you guessed at is found on a website that lists some clients of a specific company. To remind you which list, one of the entries lead you to find some advertisements involving vehicles. That's the easy one to find. The other thing in the list that you can search for leads you to some information about a local performance. That can help find the second person's job.
Just finished this game after about 3 days of sleuthing.
10/10 - Would recommend to anyone who enjoys logic puzzles and/or genealogy.
It was so much fun! The puzzles and clues are spread out just far enough so that connecting them is a challenge, but still close enough so the solutions don't feel too obtuse or abstract. Even seemingly little details and jokes turn out to be useful branches that provide plenty of useful information. Some of the final details such as last of kin or some of the non-blood relation's names come down to process of elimination, but it never feels like brute forcing it.
The tone itself is also wonderful, a mix of sarcastic humor and just a slight edge of suspense. Personally I got a bit creeped out whenever our mysterious client showed up and I loved that unease. It reminds me of the game "HER" if you've ever played it, with how creepy the mood gets as more dark secrets are revealed.
If I was forced to give this game any criticism, matching the faces for the family photos (especially Free Spirits) was a little daunting at first, but once you manage to match a couple of faces to names, it becomes a process of elimination. Also, maybe adding the option to turn off "slow loading internet"?
Funny tangent: I was absolutely stumped for a while because I thought I had the remaining branches solved but wasn't making any progress. I finally realized that I had correctly deduced that someone was president of the Roottree Company, but I picked the wrong number. Chalk that up to my own tunnel-vision rather than poor UI.
SPOILER
I immediately knew there was something up with the farmhand when I could take his picture from the photograph. I don't know if that final branch is supposed to be super difficult or just a bonus for those who have been paying attention, but between that and the one-off mention of "Mr. Miller", I had a feeling it was something to keep on the back-burner.
I can't figure out the controls to move on from the tutorial...
Once you fill in the three sisters correctly the tutorial will automatically move on, you don't need to do anything special.
what an amazing game! I spent SO LONG on it, I could barely tear myself away from my computer.
Yoooo I'm so close to finishing :) Only gotta guess the mystery names.
"You stumble across an auction for a black and blue dress...the white and gold dress itself..." i see what you did there lolol
but really i looove this game. makes me feel very smart. amazing opening, amazing playlist, and amazing design!
OMG the degauss button works!!
Yo, does anyone know how to zoom out lmao- also, does this game save??
Scroll wheel will zoom out once you're done with the tutorial.
The game should save but depending on browser and OS it has had some issues. The best way to be sure it is saving is to finish the tutorial, then to use the "save and quit" button in the settings. If you restart the game and don't have the ability to skip the scene with the news on TV, then the game is not saving properly.
Fantastic game! I sent you $10 because it would easily be worth that on Steam. Congratulations on a great game, and best of luck to you!
Thank you very much!
Wow, this was amazing! Very thorough and compelling mystery, and I kept wanting to uncover more! I like how it's like Obra Dinn with the confirming guesses, but also has a notebook for typing notes which helps me so much! And it was so fun searching through the different sources and finding new things to look through. Thanks so much for the game!
How do you use Periodicals?
After the tutorial ends you will see another sticky note on the computer that leads to a periodical search.
I have created an account specifically to comment on this game. I have been hooked to my laptop for the last 2 days, as soon as I got off from work, trying to solve this. I think it's one of the most unique, well-thought and overall amazing games I have ever played and I loved every minute of it.
I just cannot find Rhose's name on the drop down list and so can't get past the first step >.<
Have you tried doing a search for Rhose Roottree in the search engine? There's a somewhat general hint there that gives you a push in the right direction when it comes to how to make discoveries in this game.
cant find it either
When you do a search for Rhose Roottree in the search engine, there is a mention that you can sometimes find more information about people by searching for things like brand names associated with them. That will help you solve the first puzzle.
kk!
what brands do you look up?
When you search for the Roottree Sisters it mentions that they specifically have a job associated with one brand of clothing. That's a good place to look into.
INCREDIBLE!! Sooo thoroughly well done. So exciting for anyone who loves a mystery game. If you liked Return of the Obra Dinn, this will scratch the same itch.
this is the first ever comment i've left on a game, but i HAD to because this was such a well-done piece of work!! i did it all in like five straight hours and was straight glued to my laptop for 90% of that time. this is seriously a real gem and i got an immense amount of enjoyment out of this, so thank you for sharing!!! i never knew playing with fake family trees could be such a cool game, but i love research and puzzle-oriented gameplay, so this was perfect. so much love!
- Second day... everything starts to become monochromatic. I have the company only of my cigar and my questions. Will I finally get to the bottom of this? - xD Awesome game. Thank you!
I wish my gf showed me as much as love as this dev has shown this game
@jjhonston I specifically made an itchio account for the first time just to thank you for making an absolute masterpiece. I wish there was a way to let devs know that there's a market for handcrafting such experiences. Do you have a youtube channel or something? I feel like you're super good at game design and charming storytelling. I'd love to hear your thoughts on a channel, something like razbuten or joseph anderson. Just use AI voice or whatever if you're worried about privacy.
But yeah, this is like a once in a lifetime game, those you can never play again.
Time for the Constructive criticism part:
1. I thought there'd also be a chance to guess who the person who hired me was. It'd be nice if i could like select 3 possible people who i think it was, and i can check if i got it right.
2. It is absolutely not clear to me that the list of names i have is a resource that can be used. Even though you set up a tab for it, there doesn't seem to be a reason that the detective would have a list of random names. And that is the reason that i avoided using it until i got very stuck. And when i did use it, it felt like i was "gaming the system". Only later on discord, i found out that it is necessary to find many of the wives. So i think it should at least be made very clear that your benefactor has given you this list (maybe it can be given to you mid game?) and it IS TO BE USED for solving.
But honestly, it would be way better to pick up breadcrumbs and arrive at their names, instead of a magical list being at your footsteps. When i played without using it, the game felt so much more natural.
3. A similar issue exists with the structure of the tree being given to you. This i suppose probably isn't an intended mechanic, but can definitely be used to "game the system". I suppose there should be a difficulty checkbox in settings that can be added, which hides the connection between two people (so if someone got divorced in the story, it's easy to see it's one of the people in the tree that are divorced). And also there can be some extra "children" or "spouse" slots, that are supposed to be confirmed as empty and non existent. This way, a player can't use the tree structure to see that "oh X had 2 kids? well it can't be this this and this because they only have 1 kid".
It wouldn't have to make the game difficult because it's a setting that you can turn off. But currently, i hated how I could basically guess who X spot person was, but didn't know if i was gaming the system and kept looking for further evidence to confirm what i find before filling it in.
4. I didn't find the periodical in the tutorial. I feel like, the player can be guided towards that more, though maybe i'm just dumb. (Also, i kept waiting to find the legal periodical, with how many legal cases i kept finding. That'd be a nice addition.)
5. A lot of the details are guesstimates, where you really just guess that particular detail, but i assume you already intend to make those more deducible facts over time.
6. The game needs more red herrings. Like making you think that X's husband is Y because an article says they were dating or engaged, but later turns out, they broke up and married someone else. That kinda bait stuff.
7. In the long future, or a sequel if you ever plan it, a timeline system would be nice. Either for the notes, or for the tree requirement, or something similar.
(Also, for the love of god, please make Home and End key work per line in the notes)
Spoiler marked constructive criticism, so do not read beyond if you haven't finished:
1. Example of not using the names list limiting the experience of the game- I didn't find EJ's past because i never found her full name when i saw the article. When i read the article that mentions her checkered past, i thought i don't know her full name, so i didnt search her up. Later i forgot about it. So i ended up never finding it. I think EJ should have at least 1 more mention somewhere else.
2. In fact, the whole MR part of the family felt so underexplored. It seemed super interesting to me, yet felt like there was so little stuff on it, compared to so much drama and stuff to read on the other parts of the family.
3. N's mom being AQ was just annoying to find out. But maybe others enjoyed it ig. I found it antithetical to everything else being based on realistic deduction, and this one you're supposed to solve as a joke.
3. LR's brothers, the 2 for whom you have to guess which is which, that also felt like guesswork. I know that one is supposed to look younger, but i just thought he is short. And just guessing because he's shorter, felt like it cheapened the game.
4. There were other issues, but those were my fault. But these issues didn't feel fair like the others. These felt like i was not told what i'm supposed to do, so i kept high expectations, and was then disappointed. I'd rather just be told to do some guesswork or use the list.
Regardless, an absolutely amazing game. Easily one of the best I've ever played. Thank you for this.
I do want to address that based on the design of the game, there are people you can't solve without the list and the tree structure. It think it would be a very different feeling game that would need many more clues without those aspects, it's not a setting I could just enable.
I could have made it clearer that the list you have came from the person that hired you, but it seemed to waste precious time during the tutorial and story which is already pretty text heavy.
On the bright side, I just spent an hour frantically googling and hacking together home and end functionality into the notes. It will hopefully be coming in an update pretty soon.
Hey, I appreciate the prompt attention to feedback. I'll be sure to definitely make any friends play this who i think would be interested. Hopefully you find the optimum build for the game you dreamt of :D
Ok now that I'm done with this, is there anywhere i can find a walkthrough for harm charm, level 5? I've spent hours trying what i think is every possible combination, but i cant seem to get it. I'm at the point that i was starting to teach Bard the various components of this game and hopefully it might work out an answer, but that is taking wayyyy longer than i thought. So any walkthroughs or something?
Thanks for everything!
It's really tricky because its the only level where you need to purposely call upon the dark art. The sequence is: Block rain fire block sap fire block block fire
Thanks a lot, I'm gonna go **** myself now. How did i not try something so simple (my best guess is that i kept assuming shielded damage becomes 30 not 20).
Wow! That was excellent. Incredible work. One of my favorite games I’ve played in a long time.
this is such a treasure! I cannot get over how well made and detailed this is I've been recommending it to anyone who will listen, excellent job!
Just finished the game. Iv been working through it in spare time over the past few weeks and oh my god this is a MASTERPIECE. I have always been interested in things like this and it was absolutely facinating and so fun! Will def by sharing the game with anyone who will listen, LOVED this experience! Great job devs! Hoping for similar games in the future! :)
i got so stuck i started going back and putting anything in quotes in the search bar and got this which fucking killed me thanks for bothering to make the stupidest of searches worth it
Is that perhaps related to the Legendary Turbo Encabulator?
(Not talking about the game anymore, but the meme)
This is obsessively fun for me.
I only got ridiculously stuck because I missed an entire ad campaign, but once I had that, it all fell into place. I was right about the ending too.
Thank you for making such a fun game!
Red herring... Nice lol
for ai art im shocked at how consistent everything is. i was able to correctly differentiate the cousins and sisters on the second album cover because of how jim and diamond looked on the first
learn to draw lmao
hey jjjhonston just wondering if this game might be uploaded somewhere other than itch.io in the future, since itch is a pretty niche platform(compared to others) and this game is *wildly* underrated. if this where on somehere like steam i know it would garner so much more attention
The game cannot be uploaded to Steam, due to its reliance on AI art.
So for me, releasing it for free on itchio was the option that made the most sense. I do have an exe version I give out on the discord for people that want a local copy, but generally, I plan to leave it here and playable in browser for as long as I am able.
well then the only option i have is to thank you wholeheartedly for making this. i will follow your future work!
This was a treat to play. It was fun and kept me invested in the story, and was also genuinely challenging. Did not anticipate that twist ending at all, though I guessed who the employer was. Some of the occupations I had to guess, but overall this was an incredible experience. I would pay money for this.
this may have been my favorite game of 2023