itch.io

Hi! Bought your game yesterday and I think you have a really solid framework here. I love the map feature and seeing the evidence, testimonies, and deductions stack up is very satisfying. I've finished the game on easy and hard mode and have some feedback:

Feedback:

In both playthroughs there ended up being no evidence pointing to the culprit at the point where I solved the mystery, after searching every room of the manor and interrogating all of the suspects until they were about to get hostile, which made getting the right culprit feel more like luck than about my detective skills. This could be the result of randomization or not properly interfacing with the persuasion mechanic, but in both cases none of the suspects contradicted anyone's alibi and on the solve screen it also said that no evidence pointed directly to the culprit.

I didn't encounter any monsters on either playthrough? Probably not a bug but it felt confusing to see mention of a monster mechanic in the update notes and never have it come up. If there was some "monster status" information available to the player I would have been less confused about what happened, but I appreciate wanting to keep the suspense high by not giving the player that information.

Using potions doesn't change their descriptors in the inventory, so at the end of my game I ended up having three empty potions taking up inventory space still saying what they originally were. Not a gameplay issue but it's easier for comprehension if they were removed from the inventory or were replaced with "empty bottle" for example.

I would have liked some flavour text for the torn page from a bestiary item, in line with the envelope from the commissioner and the dreaming note.

The game music is very intense, which doesn't always fit the vibe of a relaxed and careful playthrough. The first command I ran every time I restarted the game was to switch the music to ambient noises. Maybe a persistent setting or toggle for music?

Right now the executable doesn't come packaged with an icon. I made one for my use by cropping the lovely splash art, and having an icon to immediately identify the game is a very small touch that makes the game stand out among the others on my device.

Bugs: 

Some interactions have the "press space to continue" prompt happen multiple times, notably stuff that interacts with the inventory like using certain items or searching through rooms and acquiring items (see screenshot where I open a chest).

Some interactions that should give the player a moment to read them don't have a prompt to continue. For example any time the player enters an unknown command the game prints a suggestion to use the "help" command but as soon as the text is printed it resets to the room so I wasn't ever able to read the whole line. This was especially problematic in my first run, where I solved the mystery after finding all of the eibon pages so the game printed the mystery solving text followed by the assembling the book of eibon text and then immediately cleared the screen, so I couldn't read any of it.

In my current saved playthrough I deliberately solved the case before finding the pages of the book of eibon because of the above feedback, I wanted to see what the solving the mystery text said. I have now found the pages but can't get the book to assemble or trigger the prompt to read it and am currently stuck. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, I tried to go back to the room where I accused the culprit and restarting the game but nothing has happened.

I got several really enjoyable hours out of the experience and will definitely be following the updates as they come. Looking forward to a steam release!