I don’t play many games where the gameplay is mostly reading, but I found this to be very enjoyable. the art has a pretty “raw” style — probably the result of time constraints, but in my opinion it turned out really nice! I especially liked how the characters were just sketches at first, like they’re out of focus until dialogue starts. the split-screen transition between the suspect board and the different locations was my favorite piece of this game, it gets out of the way in the best way possible: with efficiency and style.
when it comes to the writing, there’s a nice balance between character building and “getting to the point”. I never felt like I was reading padding, everything felt relevant or interesting in some way. each character seemed a bit linear on their own, but this was well masked by the parallelism of effective detective-work. the subtleties of some of the interactions really intrigued me, and it was fun to piece things together with the log.
just like in real life, I didn’t manage my time very well. I didn’t have time to figure everything out, so I had to make an educated guess in the end… and I got it right! I had confirmed one and ruled out two, so it wasn’t just luck, but I’m still curious about what was on that broken phone. the game was very lenient with time, which was probably a good call for a jam entry. the replayability just seems very low without some sort of randomization. I wanted to see the bad ending as well, but after realizing how much clicking that would require, I decided not to. anyway, as a one-and-done experience, I enjoyed it a lot!