itch.io

Andy,

Thanks for taking the time to write a response. I don't have anything to add, but wanted to express my gratitude for the transparency. I don't normally get a chance to hear the Why's behind designer decisions, especially in a direct response to my feedback. It's really interesting to have a behind-the-scenes view.

Anywho, excellent work on the game! :)

I really enjoy games which don't spoon-feed story details to you. 'Gone Home' is a nice example of this because it allows you to explore a giant house at your own pace, piecing together clues as you find them. While Perfect Citizen isn't nearly so deep, it followed the same disconnected flow by allowing the player to form the story in their head.

The Good

• The simple, retro interface kept the game from ever feeling overwhelming. If this was set up on a modern OS then it'd lose appeal.
• Perhaps intentional, one of the cases had no clear evidence of any wrongdoing. After a while of aimlessly re-reviewing files and transcripts, I realized this is a great example of what real life investigation must be like. Or maybe I just missed something. :)
• I really enjoyed finding positive traits of the wrongdoers, whether it be believable reasons on why they committed the crime, or genuine effort to reform from their past. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Suggestions for improvement

• The 'connect character portraits' bit lost its appeal fairly quickly for me and seems irrelevant to the rest of the player's work. The slightly-varied recycled text contributed to this feeling.
• The ending I received, a crash-to-desktop after an alert, was confusing. I understand the team is expanding on this in future updates however. I completely missed the clue about the latest investigative target being "closer to home" than previous targets.
• Perhaps the result of a smaller design team, but I'd suggest waiting on a few more cases of morally-difficult decisions before getting into the "My company may be bad" storyline.

Observations & Ideas

• It'd be neat to learn later into the story's progression that many forensic tools exist via command-line, allowing more depth of investigation AND replay-ability as old cases may contain new information.
• The spelling/grammar mistakes were a nice touch, even if not intentional.
• While it didn't detract from the experience, I suggest including more "fluff" (emails, journals, etc) to make the targets seem even more believable and to require more careful investigation during each case.

I came here investigating the same thing; suspicious crash-to-desktop. I understand now it's meant as one of the available endings.

Just wanted to say that I enjoyed it. If you are looking for specific feedback (ideas, critiques, praise), is there a better place to submit it than the forum?