Ok, let me start by saying there are parts of this game I absolutely love. The artwork is cool, the way the game is put together professional, the story engaging. I really liked being able to wander around and investigate and was invested in finding out what was going on in this town to cause all the paranormal disturbances. I liked the increasing tension of the built in days left timer for trying to get all your cases completed as much as possible before then. I could see this game as being on somewhere like steam.
I’m glad I played it to the end, because if I’m honest, I almost didn’t a few clicks in. If I have one thought on how this game could be improved personally, it would be to get rid of the timed text. I’d love to replay it, but I’m not sure I have the spare time to deal with having to wait through the delays to get to the points I’d like to replay and see if I can get a different outcome. Clicking helps, but still is quite slow. If the game was ever edited to remove the timed text, I’d probably give it another go.
A help file or a bit more direction would be good in some places. I found myself quite lost on a couple of cases. I’m assuming I needed a keyword to search in the library that I couldn’t quite figure out in those cases. (Like in the case where the divination wouldn’t localise but there was no one who would speak to you further so there seemed no way to proceed with the case.) There is also a glitch where if you reinvestigate the forest, it replays the same scenes over rather than telling you there’s nothing else to find.
I really appreciated in one case where I didn’t have what I needed yet to return to the house, the game told me so and I didn’t waste the day. I was a bit frustrating to sometimes recheck a house and be told that the person would tell you if they needed to speak to you again, but in other cases, if you didn’t go back soon enough figuring they’d contact you, you lost the case. Given the amount of cases going on at once and the tight time frame in which to get them solved, not wasting a whole day by revisiting places where there’s nothing new to discover would be a big QOL improvement for the player.
Anyway, congrats on the game. It’s a strong ectocomp entry.