Interesting entry. The description says there are 4 kinds of cards, but there are 5? With the 5th one being ALIBI? The concept is pretty neat, it reminds me just a bit of nerdook’s cluesweeper. I got stuck too and I was looking in the comments to see if I can find any more hints to finishing the game. It seems like no body solved the murder mystery either. Wait until the end of the jam, if all you see is “Great game, cool concept!” probably nobody finished it. You would probably have to rethink game mechanics and execution a bit to make it clearer to the player as to how to finish the game. Under formulas, it would probably help if you have the word “actor” in blue, “alibi” in yellow and so on. I would even suggest to maybe have the “detective” as its own category. Anyway this is how far I got:
Viewing post in Stack Detective jam comments
I got a tiny bit further than you: 3/4 of Victor's last steps but I forgot what brainwave + combination I did to get that last card to pop out :)
Frankly it was driving me nuts by the end and I started another instance of the game in a new tab in case I'd hit a bug somewhere, but seemingly not... I'm normally too much of a completionist to let it go but the actor unavailable mechanic wore me down and I gave up. Could really use a bit of handholding or a 'clue' button on a MASSIVE cooldown or something...
Still got the tab open until Windows decides to restart my computer for me, lol.
You are right! I designed the rules to be 4 cards: Fact, Evidence, actor, alibi, but as the thing iterated I found "motive" an interesting new card. So I forgot to update the description. I have iterated on my notes getting all the wonderful feedback and there are more types of cards. Of course I will improve the UX and provide a hint system (it was planned, but really no time). The are some rules missing: detective + evidence is the one that got you stuck. In particular: Detective + piano photo. I usually see detectives looking at the photos when thinking about how to solve the case. That generates "questions" that you can ask actors and keep getting leads.
I also found myself thinking how to make the detective card special. I simply thought of making it all white / blue.
I got impressed you found the bank confirmation, you are one of the first that I see reached that deep to the check Camila Alibi. Have not seen many ppl thought, but congratulations!
It is in my plan to make a commercial version of this game, so I will update a version with many more improvements.
Thanks a lot for all your feedback, I did write it all.