Amazing, amazing work, an exercise of slow reading and attention, in a world of fastness and superficial reading of everything.
This kind of investigative game, especially this one that estimulates the ear-reading (as Family especially does too), looks to me very related to the "indiciary paradigm", that the historian Carlo Ginzburg analyzes. Have you heard of him, Tim?
Sorry for the bad english. Cheers from a brazilian history teacher fan of your work!
Sorry for not answering you. My computer broke, and I didn't see your reply until now. Well, about the "indiciary paradigm": Giznburg was one of the founders of a method and way to look to the past, that was named microhistory. He developed this concept of "indiciary paradigm" (in english translations, this concept appear as "evidential paradigm") to indicate how humans perceive reality trought evidences, remnants of the past. He shows how hunters, doctors, detectives and historians all use this paradigm in their work, dealing with vestiges that indicate a past reality, not directly acessible. I think that in your work, you put the player in a state of detective look, making us use this kind of abilities and way of thinking to answer questions and know more.
In my previous comment I also mentioned that the game is an exercise of slow reading. This idea I also take up from Ginzburg's work. He talk a little bit about this in this video:
I'm just a simple history teacher and historian, but I think that the reading of Ginzburg's texts may contribute to this vision and method of making games that you are developing. Thank you so much!
-- The concept of evidential pardigm was developed in the chapter "Clues: roots of an evidential paradigm" of the book "Myth, Emblems, Clues".
You can acess the PDF here: https://vdocuments.mx/41-carlo-ginzburg-myths-emblems-clues-cap-5pdf.html?page=1