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The  recordings of the dead people that the agent is transcribing for us. He mentions in some places that he has trouble hearing exactly what they are saying or what spelling to use, like he does in 20-DI-1 for Kate/Catherine/Katherine.

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"Katherine matching Kate" probably refers to him listening to the recordings where some people say Kate instead of Katherine.

(Spoiler-filled feedback for the author)

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Great updates, especially the changes to 25-AT-1 fixes multiple issues!

Now that you have addressed my main complaint that made the game too hard (locating Katherine's scene) I want to suggest some additional tweaks to improve things that imho made the game too easy. :)

It's regarding the narrator's commentary about sounds he hears on the recordings. Primarily when characters die; the way he explains when someone collapses/falls over. I think it's a mistake to spell this out so clearly. Apart from feeling unrealistic that it would be possible for the narrator to hear exactly what happens, it makes it too obvious to the reader what is going on.

It's usually pretty clear when someone dies, but by leaving out the narrator's explanations it would make what is going on a bit more ambiguous. I think it would make a great little puzzle if the player doesn't realise someone died and has to deduce that by noticing that the person is never being referenced again after a certain time.

It would be much better to change the death scenes to either not mention any sounds at all (like my favourite 09-ED-6-10), or just have some reactionary sound, like the dishes shattering on the floor when the butler dies. (07-KI-11)

Here's a list of death scenes where I think the narrator's commentary could be changed:

• "the sound of a body falling to the floor" (01-ST-12)
• "someone collapses to the floor" (12-BI-1-2-3-4-5-7-8-9) 
• "the sound of someone collapsing" (18-VI-2-7)
• "the sound of someone falling over" (20-LI-2-5)
• "the sound of someone falling to the floor" (21-LI-1-2-4)
• "the sound of someone falling over" (22-CH-2-3)

Apart from the deaths, there are other detailed explanations for things that wouldn't make any identifiable sound. Like "Person 4 sounds like he's searching for something in his pockets" (09-TO-4-9), "sounds like things are being moved and pockets searched" (19-DI-4-6), "The rest of the room is searched" (12-TO-6).

Please know that these suggestions come from my enjoyment of your game. I'm simply excited about the potential to make something I already love even better. I hope they are received in the spirit of enthusiasm and support in which they're offered. :)

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He doesn't say it's a bedroom, just a room. He's talking about the study - where the first body was found.

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The only person who got identified was John because he was not part of the chain, so he wasn't forgotten. Everyone else was erased from memory so they remained unidentified.

(Although, how this would work in reality is quite unclear since physical evidence like photos or dental records does not get erased, so the police should be able to find a match after some research... They just won't find anyone remembering them, but they should have been able to put a name to the bodies.)

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The only clue is in 21-CH-3 where the narrator says "like in that terrifying dream I mentioned"

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The 98th document is hard to find and might be more of an easter egg and is not really required to "solve" the case. There are instructions on how to locate it in other comments.

This is where I (and many others too, it seems) got stuck as well. This was my one complaint about this game; that the clues to solve this were too vague. Even if you think you have the location code, you still need the name(s) and the timeslot to find that last scene. (I discussed this problem and some suggestions to fix it in my review earlier in these comments. Feel free to read that once you have solved it.)

Since you only want a small nudge to the solution, I'll tell you the scene that imho fails at giving the hint to the final scene is: 

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25-AT-1

(Edit March, 2025: The update fixes this issue.)

I watched a play-through and remembered another annoyance with the list command caused by the act divisions: in the very first file (00-readme) there's a reference to 26-EN-1 and when that file is accessed it says "NEW FILE RETRIEVED -- ADDED TO FILE LIST" but when you try "list" it's not there (because it belongs to act 4).

43092: 

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How does the act system prevent you from progressing like you say? The "list" command is mainly for convenience. It's there to remind you what scenes you have found. You could do the same thing by writing down the filenames on paper.

You can re-visit a scene by typing in the name again. The list command just makes it more convenient by allowing you to click on the name instead. 

By only showing the files from one act at a time, it just causes unnecessary annoyance and confusion.

btw, the "act" command is pretty much useless, it only allows you to rename an act. I never used it. ("title" on the other hand was more helpful by allowing you to remember what happened in each timeslot.)

I agree regarding the acts. They don't seem to serve any purpose and are just an obstacle when trying to look at all the files. Judging from comments here, it's also a source of confusion when players can't find the files when they reach 07...

An easy fix is to have the list command by default display all the files you have found, and if you want to show only a specific act you could supply that as a parameter.

Here's a clue to finding the agent's name:

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For me, "rolling thunder" implies a longer, more stretched out low rumbling sound. Not the sharp whip crack of a thunderclap. It's also heavily implied that the death sounds in the game are not actual thunderclaps, they just sound similar. So they are not originating from a storm or anything. The rolling thunder line is much more ambiguous and could be read as bad weather approaching.

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Fair enough. I didn't really mind the numbers being in death order, but I also think it wouldn't have bothered me if they were in a random order because it did feel a bit like cheating once you realise they are dying in order. From then on you're never surprised at which person is next to be erased.

In fact, it might be a missed opportunity to create a situation when you're not really sure who has been eliminated. Once players figure out that the thunderclaps signal a death, they would want to know who it is but with this system it's never a mystery. It could have been a fun little puzzle to try to deduce some deaths that aren't obvious (people dropping in the middle of a conversation etc.)

btw my favourite death scene was 09-ED-6-10 where it's heavily implied that Eddie is in the middle of having sex with a dead Eve... X-)

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The focus on the character numbering system makes it sound like it has to follow specific rules. (Namely the order people die in.) But the numbers are really just the agent's shorthand for the different voices he's transcribing. It could have been anything. In fact I think it would have been better to have them in random order since the system isn't really death order because Hobbes dies after Katherine and he's not part of the chain. So I don't think using 13 instead of "K" would be "highly confusing".

As for Rupert (01-ST-12) being harder to find; I guess that's another example of people having different views on difficulty. It was stated in 00-audio-recovery that there were "twelve victims found in and around the house" so I think it's clear that there should be a number 12 death somewhere (edit: the audio-recovery file was found at 01-ST-12, so it can't be a clue) and with the only unaccounted thunderclap being in timeslot 01, it's just a matter of finding what room it could have been in. I found it easier to find just because it did follow the normal scene code naming convention where persons have numbers. So it was logical that the number would be 12 (or possibly 0). It would have been MUCH harder if had been named 01-ST-R or something.

btw, another confusing clue I was reminded of now was the statement in 00-audio-recovery: "they were only able to recover about a minute from the thirteenth body" which refers to someone as number 13. Another suggestion that there should be a person with that number.

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I want to clarify that I don't think the puzzle is flawed, in a broken sort of way. My criticism was regarding the much higher difficulty for it. Perceived "difficulty" is individual and can vary a lot, so fair enough if others didn't have problems with it. Props to you for figuring it out quickly! I can only speak of my own experience and I felt it was much harder than the rest of the game and stopped the progress as a rather abrupt obstacle.

My reason for suggesting renaming "K" is that it would reduce the ambiguity of what the filename for the final scene could be. All other scenes follow the same pattern with numbers for the people, so allowing a letter in there makes the search-space even larger. You seem to argue that "K" can't be renamed because there's a fixed rule about having the characters numbered in a specific order, which isn't really the case. It's true that the numbering follows the apparent order in which they die, but then Hobbes wouldn't really be number 1 since he never became part of the chain. Katherine would be 1 by that logic.

I guess the biggest problem for me was to realise WHEN the scene took place. I was pretty sure it would take place on 27 since there were hints about "completing the chain". The clue about "distant thunder" was too vague for me to understand that it was the same "death sound" that had been heard for the other deaths. I was also confused by the "one death doesn't quite fit the pattern" clue, which made me start theorising that maybe one of the earlier deaths were faked à la "And Then There Were None". Which made the number of possible final scene permutations enormous, when I didn't know WHEN, WHO and maybe not even WHERE it took place.

Anyways, I still think it would help to make the filenames consistent by only using numbers for the characters, but the biggest improvement would be to make it clearer that there's a similar thunderclap sound in 25-AT-1.

This has to be the worst name for a game I've ever come across. But I still decided to try it based on recommendations and I'm glad I did because it turns out it's an excellent game!

The way the game is played is pretty genius in its simplicity and the story is something I haven't seen before in any sort of media. Making it a very satisfying mystery to figure out.

Here follows a random assortment of comments.

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!SPOILERS BELOW!

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The only flaw for me would be that the final puzzle is much harder than anything leading up to it. I spent 2 days on the game to reach the end and then another day just trying to find that last location. Oh well, time wasn't exactly wasted since it gave me opportunity to re-read the story and find some subtle things I had missed the first time. But it did feel like a somewhat abrupt change in difficulty. If you had trouble finding a location earlier, you could often brute-force it with some constraints. E.g. if you hadn't located 2 persons in a timeslot, you could try one of them in each location and if that didn't work you knew they were together somewhere.

A big clue was that Wintercote was bolded as a location so I was pretty sure it should be used but the problem was figuring out what person(s) would be there PLUS what timeslot to use. It was made extra hard by not knowing if I should use "13" like all the persons before, or to use the "K" from the transcript. Another major stumbling block was that I assumed the timeslot would be 27 (or maybe 0) "to complete the chain".

A "fix" would be to

a) Rename "K" in the phone transcripts. Use "0" or "13" instead.

b) Rephrase the clue about thunder in 25-AT-1 from "There's the distant sound of rolling thunder" to something that makes it more clear it's the same type of thunderclap sound that has been heard throughout the game.

I found a small bug with the "act" command: It only works if you supply two parameters and doesn't show any helpful error message if you don't. Also, if you never rename the acts the useful arrows don't show up when using the "list" command. (They make it easier to jump between act listings.)

Some plot points that are never explained (or are they?):

• Why didn't Martha call the police? (My best guess is the phone wasn't working properly because of the weather and she couldn't place the call when she tried, so she decided to pretend that she had called them in order to not cause further panic.)
• What had Annie done to get into trouble? (I'm guessing she ran away from home (Wintercote) and needed money because of something like drug/gambling addiction.)
• Why did John kill himself? (Did he have a mental breakdown and blamed himself for the deaths?)
• The hangman was confusing and didn't feel like it belonged in the story.
• Is the agent's name (Richard Longley) a hidden easter-egg or are we supposed to deduce that?

And isn't that because the "missing" files belong in another act? Try "list 2" for example.

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The files are divided into acts. You supply a numeric parameter to the list command to view each act's files.

This is explained in the 00-act-structure document.

Are we supposed to figure out the agent's name? Or is that an easter egg or something?

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His name was Richard Longley. RIP

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Eleanor was just a red herring. The curse had nothing to do with her death.

Unclear if Amelia was the start of the chain (I suspect not). Maybe the reason for Rupert suddenly remembering her is the music. It does seem to hint that the piano is (almost) playing every time someone remembers a dead person.

John's suicide is unclear to me as well. Your theory about him having a mental breakdown is as good as any, but it's not very satisfying.

The hangman game has no solution. It ignores any guesses you make. Not sure what the meaning of it is. Seems pretty out of place.

I've been thinking the same thing. This game deserves a design overhaul to make it appeal to a broader audience.

The game works fine as it is with just text, but being able to hear the actual audio for example would enhance the experience. I have also compiled some UI ideas that would make gameplay smoother and more visually interesting.