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(+1)

First of all, congratulations on the submission! The narrative style reminded me of a choose-your-own-adventure book, which I enjoyed.

I think there's a tension between the depth of the worldbuilding and the encouragement to visit as few links as possible. There's a lot of detail and a huge number of people with potential reasons for involvement in the murder, which  was great in terms of enriching the story but also meant it was quite difficult to keep track of the facts (e.g. who owned what company) without moving to a new page so that I could read more and gradually accustom myself to the setting. It's also very easy to miss the fact that the player is penalised for each link they visit.

What I think you could potentially do is start the player off with a certain time limit. Then, perhaps each link could take a certain amount of time to investigate, so that clicking links is more like spending a resource than being docked points. You'd also have the opportunity for consequences if the player visits too many links and runs out of time.

Overall, I think there's a lot of potential in the setting. The tech-dystopian, Blade Runner-esque vibe was clear without being too overwhelming. I'm left wanting to know more about this world - for instance, how was a corporation able to get away with cloning humans despite the fact that so many people object to it? What's up with the Cybersquads, and could they be turned against the player as a consequence of getting on the wrong side of someone? The final line of the intro does a great job of setting up the player character as someone generally apathetic to all this as long as they're able to get enough work to stay afloat, and I thought that was a good narrative choice since you've given the player a clear objective. However, all these factions you've set up give you ample opportunity to have things go sideways for a protagonist who keeps poking their nose where it's not wanted...

If you do ever revisit/redevelop the game, I'd be interested in seeing the results!

(+1)

Wow, thanks for the detailed comment! I wrote this back in 2015 based on a board game, which is where the scoring and narrative style come from. But having a “time limit” with consequences makes more sense, especially for a digital game where you’d be able to see the time limit on screen. 

I don’t actually remember what the Cybersquads are since I wrote it so long ago! 😅 But the world was heavily influenced by the card game Android: Netrunner and the Tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020 so if you’re interested in the genre in general I recommend checking those out!