You are in the unfortunate position that I played your game after playing nearly 100 other entries and I do have to admit, there were a couple of "red strings on a board of evidence" games, which is probably why I am thinking more critical about it than if I had played yours first. I totally get the visual appeal of the red strings connecting the evidence, but playing a couple different version of it now, it seems to me that the problem when actually playing with these mechanics is that the term "connection" is so broad and open for interpretation, that the functionality is somewhat questionable and the right solution is either very obvious (like: it has the same name or location in the evidence's description) and therefore way too easy or extremely open for interpretation with hundres of possible board configurations and therefore nearly impossible to solve other than brute forcing.
I would say your game has both extremes and locking a right connection in instantly does make the degrees of freedom more manageable, but it does lend itself to brutforcing a solution instead of deducing the truth.
sorry, if I am rambling. I hope you understand it is not meant to be an attack on your game, but just unfiltered feedback / thoughts I had while playing. you have a really cool and dark scenario and the game looks great, I do believe however, that the "red strings on a board of evidence" mechanics are more of a cinematic trope than a useful deduction tool unless it has some more predefined rules.
Viewing post in CONNECTIONS jam comments
When the theme was announced, I immediately thought a game about red strings on an evidence board would be a pretty unique interpretation, and the scope of a short, UI-driven detective game seemed perfect for the deadline. You can imagine my surprise when, ten days later, I saw a dozen similar entries, all while my own UI was bursting at the seams!
Either way, thank you for this INVALUABLE feedback. We are going to push forward with development and release a full version featuring a restructured narrative matrix, a much tighter connection validator, and other improvements that simply couldn't fit into a ten-day jam window. Our core vision has always been to reward analysis, rational thinking, and pure deduction rather than brute-forcing the solutions. Thanks to feedback like yours, we will definitely get there.