Hey, thank you so much again for the kind words and thoughtful feedback—it really means a lot to me, especially since this was my first fully finished game and my first game jam!
Yeah, finding that balance in a mystery story turned out to be much tougher than I expected. I hadn't heard of Knox's Commandments or Van Dine’s Rules before, so I’m definitely going to check those out! Also, thanks for mentioning Kinjo’s post/video—I’ll dig into that too, sounds super useful.
Regarding the matches: I totally get that! The clue in the storage room was a bit too subtle, and I didn’t guide the player well enough toward it. Your point about running out of time before being able to double back makes a lot of sense, and I’ll be more mindful of pacing and visual emphasis in the future.
And wow—I haven’t played Murder Most Misfortunate, but that sounds really cool! I’ll definitely check it out; it’s awesome to hear that The Suspect reminded you of that, even a little bit!
About the settings: thanks for confirming that I can upload additional builds! I actually didn’t realize at first that bugfixes should go in separate files. I did update the original jam build early on, but after learning the correct way to do it, I’ve reverted it and will upload all future fixes or changes as separate files (like “The Suspect v1.1.zip”), so that the original jam version remains unchanged for judging.
And yep—you’re totally right about the Itch page. 🙈 I didn’t test the text/background combo on different screens, so I’ll definitely brighten the text to make it easier to read.
Thanks again for playing and for all your awesome suggestions. Super helpful and motivating!