I have been musing about detective/mystery games for the past week or so because I’ve been obsessed with them lately. Here is my post from yesterday in which I griped about more things I hate in detective games.
In this post, I’m going to try to focus more on what I want from a detective game, not what I don’t want. But, there will be some of the latter because it’s unavoidable. At least for me. I tend to think of things in terms of what I don’t want. It helps me discard the chaff and focus on the wheat.
What I want, what I really really want.
1. Characters that I really care about. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, there was a character who really touched my heart. When they turned out to be the murderer, I felt so bad for them. I did not want to turn them in, but I knew I had to.
By the way, I was given three choices of how to present the evidence. I picked two of them, thinking they would be gentler than just turning them in. Joseph (the prrosecutor) told me that those were not acceptable, so I chose the third one. It turned out to be the most lenient of all, but I had no way of knowing that just by reading the choices.
I was lamenting about this yesterday, and I will continue now. Why am I given choices if there really is only one correct choice? And, while I’m happy that I don’t get a penalty for choosing the wrong one, it makes the choice meaningless.
2. To put it in a more positive way, give me meaningful choices, but ones that don’t have an objective right and wrong answer. Yes, I know that the point of detective games is to ferret out the truth, but there can be room for gray, right?
3. Simplified deductions. I don’t want elaborate or tortuous trains of thoughts that are the mental equivalent of ‘combine a piece of yarn, a tire iron, a broom, and a can of pop to make a key’. I still love Murders on the Yangtze River (OMEGAMES Studio), but I love it despite itself. It can’t help being a big ol’ pain in the ass when it comes to laborious inferences and obscure clues that make no sense.
Or, if it the devs have enough money, then I would be down with them having two ways to solve things. One, the elaborate, fifteen-step deduction that takes greater leaps of faith than I am capable of making. Two, simple, clear steps with maybe just a few twists that are juuuust hard enough to make me feel clever.