This reminds me of Scotland Yard. Was that an inspiration to you?
I somewhat enjoy that boardgame but there are some things there also that I don't like. Firstly, it tries to be multiplayer game but it does not feel that way because all the detectives could be easily controlled by one person. Secondly the game takes quite long compared to how many interesting decision it has. By being solo puzzle game that you can play at your own pace, your game manages to fix both these issues. I enjoyed playing your game and each time I got new information it felt an interesting question to what to do next. I also liked the narrative: the letter at the start and all the changing forms of the sentences, all written in very fitting old style English.
While playing the game I also noticed some things that ate from the full potential of this game a little. The most important being that the Moriarty AI felt quite stupid sometimes. And he should be criminal mastermind with similar intelligence level to Sherlock himself. Still in 2/4 of my games I found Moriarty by accident without having any previous clues about his whereabouts and in the other 2 I found him somewhere in the middle of the board with many connections for escaping. Finding Moriarty didn't feel like as much of an achievement that I thought it would have because of this.
If you were to continue the project further, I would have following suggestions for you to consider:
- Moriarty AI should not move next to detective if he has other moves. This way they would be usually caught in the corner of the map and it would add a lot to the idea of "game of cat-and-mouse".
- Sometimes there was long sections with no hints of Moriarty (especially at the start) and this got a little bit boring. Maybe you could introduce random special information that player could get in this case, like "I heard a rumour that there was something weird going on in the east." which would point the player to right direction. Similarly there could be some hints for the starting location of Moriarty to add more interesting decissions for the start of the game.
- There was sometimes phrases like "No one has seen Moriarty after our last visit." and I found it difficult to certainly remember when I had the last visit or what they said then. If you don't intend this to be memory game (memory element certainly can also work in this type of game) you could show the gained information on the map. Each visited circle could have updating number that would display how many days since Moriarty was in that city based on the last information get from there. So if 2 days ago I had been in London and got information that Moriarty was there 3 days ago, the map would display that Moriarty was there 5 days ago. Of course he might have been there later also. In addition to numbers you could also use colors, with brighter colors for new sights it would visually show how the trails get cold.
Interesting game. It was nice to try it out. If there would be more replayability I could see myself playing a game like this more.
If you have a chance to try either of the games I participated creating (DNA & Travelling Neighbors), please consider leaving at least some feedback for it. Positive or constructive are both welcome and greatly appreciated.