It is interesting to see that the scenarios change each time you play. Perhaps you could allow a seed input so players can share their criminal cases?
It’s pretty cool to have a large and open town that can be explored with different alignments of objects with each new case. However, since the placements of the NPCs and trash bins are random, I ended up getting stuck in the starting area with no way to enter the alley since there were trash bins in the way:
It’s also neat that you have to look at each piece of evidence to assume which timeline is the correct one. However, I kind of wish the inventory would graphically display what each piece of evidence looked like.
The game mostly involves clicking random objects and NPCs until you find the evidence you need. I was hoping the game would involve hints that would connect with another. For example an NPC who finds out you’re on this case coming up to you and saying “Look, I dunno much ‘bout this case, but I think I might have overheard some guy at the Ale House talkin’ about some creep coming out of their apartment soaked in blood or somethin’. But just so ya know, ‘lot of people there get pretty tipsy on a Saturday like this, so take what I said with a bit of salt”. And then you would go to the Ale House to get more info. You ask the bartender if he overheard anyone talking about someone soaked in blood. He mentions Jeremy was drunkenly talking loudly about it. Jeremy refuses to talk while he’s sober, so you find a way to have a few drinks with Jeremy, and get him to speak up when his alcohol levels go through the roof.
Finding information should be interesting for the player. It should involve people who you would least expect to have useful info (like a hobo in an alleyway who was near the apartment of the killing), the people who won’t give up information without exploiting a weakness of theirs, managing to spark a person’s memory by showing them a piece of evidence you found, etc.
Going up to the most random people and trash bins to find evidence based on luck is not fun.
I kind of got excited when the game involved time travel, but the NPCs did not look different at all, and the game ended immediately after clicking some trash can. The game never announced who did the crime, so I felt completely unsatisfied to not get a concrete answer of who did the crime.