Sleuth: Chapter One

[Toimia]

Description
This concept was based on my experiences with the hobby of web sleuthing. There are no hints or prompts, just a search engine and your brain.
However, I would recommend typing in "News" to get started.

You will have to analyse news articles, evidence and using maps as well as making a few phone calls to build your case and the assailant to justice. It's no easy task but a different approach to playing and solving puzzles.






Where do I save?
Your pen-and-paper are your saving tool. The game world never changes so you can quit and start at your own pace. Keeping your own personal notes are needed to win the game.

This is currently a concept game with only one chapter. If reception is positive I will definitely be looking into adding more chapters in future!

DOWNLOAD LINK

[Cassiebsg]

Interesting concept... guess finding the download link is also part of the puzzle...

[Crimson Wizard]

Interesting concept... guess finding the download link is also part of the puzzle...

1. Click on author's name: got author's profile page open.
2. Scroll down to the "I've worked on the following games:": found game's name.
3. Click on game's name: solved! http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1951/

[Toimia]

Interesting concept... guess finding the download link is also part of the puzzle...

Aha well played! Added download link to the bottom of the thread

[sergiocornaga]

From what I've played so far, your puzzles need me to figure out what you were thinking more than trying to logically solve the mystery. Here are some of my spoiler-filled thought processes while playing:

Spoiler

• Reaching the front page of The Daily Redpress is overly complicated, requiring either a search for "Redpress" or clicking on one of the non-existent other sections of the site and pressing back. Why not just let me click News or the logo?
  
• Father Matthew is used instead of Father Matthews at least once, at the start of the article on The Daily Redpress.
  
• The dates of his visits seemed inconsistent to me? His site seems to imply his first two Redfield visits were on 20 Jan and 25 March, being in Paris on 10 March. Whereas the article says his third visit to Redfield will be on 10 March.
  
• I'm not 100% sure the dates match the 2014 calendar year? Since some articles don't mention what day of the week it is, but only mention a day of the week in the article, it's hard for me to match dates.
  
• I couldn't find anything more about the impersonation incident, and I felt like there should be further information somewhere.
  
• Linking two events because those are the only two news subjects on a website was too detached from reality for me.
  
• Similarly, a surreal process of elimination mindset seems to show up a lot. There are only three pig farms, and two have been used already, so clearly the third is next? Is there something I'm missing there?
  
• Searching for "maps" isn't very intuitive, especially since locations like "East Redfield", "Redfield Community Centre", "Love Street" and "Quackfit" turn up nothing. An actual tab would probably better convey the feature existed, I'd have had no idea if not for your screenshot.
  
• I was stuck for a long time because I typically spell "tyres" as "tires".
  
• After calling tyre shops, I couldn't work out what to type. I tried numerous keywords, but the questions seem like what I type should be structured like a conversation. So many possibilities... I hit a wall here and couldn't get any further.
  

[close]

Sorry that most of that feedback was critical. Conceptually this is very interesting, but the investigation genre is a tough one to make user-friendly, and you seem to want it to be hard anyway. Have you played Her Story? I feel like it provides a good example of the sort of sacrifices you might have to make to the experience/linearity of your discovery process in order for the experience to be more enjoyable than frustrating. In this case, it operates more like a database than a traditional story, so a few overly clever or lucky players might figure out the solution much quicker than is ideal, but I feel like it's worth it.

[Toimia]

From what I've played so far, your puzzles need me to figure out what you were thinking more than trying to logically solve the mystery. Here are some of my spoiler-filled thought processes while playing:

Spoiler

• Reaching the front page of The Daily Redpress is overly complicated, requiring either a search for "Redpress" or clicking on one of the non-existent other sections of the site and pressing back. Why not just let me click News or the logo?
  
• Father Matthew is used instead of Father Matthews at least once, at the start of the article on The Daily Redpress.
  
• The dates of his visits seemed inconsistent to me? His site seems to imply his first two Redfield visits were on 20 Jan and 25 March, being in Paris on 10 March. Whereas the article says his third visit to Redfield will be on 10 March.
  
• I'm not 100% sure the dates match the 2014 calendar year? Since some articles don't mention what day of the week it is, but only mention a day of the week in the article, it's hard for me to match dates.
  
• I couldn't find anything more about the impersonation incident, and I felt like there should be further information somewhere.
  
• Linking two events because those are the only two news subjects on a website was too detached from reality for me.
  
• Similarly, a surreal process of elimination mindset seems to show up a lot. There are only three pig farms, and two have been used already, so clearly the third is next? Is there something I'm missing there?
  
• Searching for "maps" isn't very intuitive, especially since locations like "East Redfield", "Redfield Community Centre", "Love Street" and "Quackfit" turn up nothing. An actual tab would probably better convey the feature existed, I'd have had no idea if not for your screenshot.
  
• I was stuck for a long time because I typically spell "tyres" as "tires".
  
• After calling tyre shops, I couldn't work out what to type. I tried numerous keywords, but the questions seem like what I type should be structured like a conversation. So many possibilities... I hit a wall here and couldn't get any further.
  

[close]

Sorry that most of that feedback was critical. Conceptually this is very interesting, but the investigation genre is a tough one to make user-friendly, and you seem to want it to be hard anyway. Have you played Her Story? I feel like it provides a good example of the sort of sacrifices you might have to make to the experience/linearity of your discovery process in order for the experience to be more enjoyable than frustrating. In this case, it operates more like a database than a traditional story, so a few overly clever or lucky players might figure out the solution much quicker than is ideal, but I feel like it's worth it.

Cheers for the feedback. No need to apologize, I prefer constructive criticism. I've made a few changes based on your feedback, added synonyms etc as well as a few more web pages.

Spoiler

I've also added the News as a clickable hotspot now on the Redpress website so that should help accessibility. As well as adding a note about Maps on the kadabra site.
That date thing was a pretty critical typo. Should have been April. Amended that now too - no clue how I missed that!
The farm thing is actually an obscure reference to a bible verse. Based on the timings of death it was a clue to the quote. Trying to vary the difficulty of clues was my intention to stop it from becoming too frustrating.

[close]

[Mandle]

Very interesting game which held my attention from start to finish...

Yes, I did manage to solve the crime but (SPOILERS AHEAD):

Spoiler

I still really have no idea what the motives of the killer were: I suspect he was killing women that he saw as sinners at certain locations and on certain dates as some kind of ritual?

As there was really only one suspect it was pretty easy to see that he had been in the area on all the dates of the previous two crimes and to track down when he would be next back in the area.

I never managed to talk to the tyre shop people at all (I couldn't figure out what exactly I was supposed to say...tried many keywords and all failed), but I just assumed that the suspect's car's tyre print would match the one in the paper and called the police anyway.

I couldn't understand why the next location was what it was except that it was just the only one that hadn't been used yet...

So yeah, I solved the crime but I didn't really feel 100% satisfied in doing so in that the game just let me guess most of the important stuff that I was probably supposed to track down during the investigation phase, but could just guess by assuming a lot of things...

I also understand that the game structure you are attempting here is very difficult. With the game never changing its state it is a huge challenge to you, the mystery author, to balance the difficulty of the clues and the difficulty of the solution when you call the police. Obviously there can be no penalty for getting the police call wrong as restarting the game just allows the player to call again immediately even if the police thought them a crackpot in the previous game.

I would suggest that the police ask a few more detailed questions about the tyre tread and the model of car it belonged to, and maybe a few more questions about the motive (which I still do not really understand)...

Also, the tyre shop calls have to be a bit more user friendly. I still have no idea what to ask them...

[close]

All that being said: This is a very exciting new game concept which I have never seen attempted before so of course the first attempt is going to hit a few snags in the gameplay but:

You could be creating a new and pure genre of detective games here which has the potential to get very exciting!

Please develop this genre! I want more!!!

[yamipanda]

That was pretty cool. A bit rough around the edges, sure, but it has potential to be awesome. Make more plz!

[Toimia]

@Mandle

Spoiler

The motives are a bit of a difficult one to feed in without giving too much away. But you pretty much got it! The location and time of death was based from this bible story http://biblehub.com/niv/mark/5.htm but to curve the difficulty I included 2 farms prior to this, to allow guessing room. Both women's photos are mugshots, so the sinning goes in hand.

I did look at adding a penalty for calling the police, but I found most people would just close and reopen the game again. However, I'm sure I could do something running off the system clock. With the questions, due to the limited content I tried to be forgiving especially as there wasn't significant backstory. My future intentions are definately going to create a longer interview process, balanced with more content.

[close]

If anyone is struggling with the tyre shop (which it sounds like a few are) here's a clue to help:

Spoiler

Check the news articles for any witnesses on the type of car they saw, check with the tyre shops whether anyone has bought tyres for a particular model of car. "Do you sell X tyres/tires" should do it.

[close]

I'm happy to hear the response so far has been positive to this style of gameplay! Next chapter I'll try to deliver a deeper story which should create better connections and ease off second-guessing.

[Mandle]

If anyone is struggling with the tyre shop (which it sounds like a few are) here's a clue to help:

Spoiler

Check the news articles for any witnesses on the type of car they saw, check with the tyre shops whether anyone has bought tyres for a particular model of car. "Do you sell X tyres/tires" should do it.

[close]

So, I'm guessing you have to say:

(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Spoiler

"Ford Mondeo" and "tyres/tires" in the same sentence? The problem with this is that few people will try this as there is not actually a specific tyre-type for a specific model of car in the real world. All Fords do not have the same tyres. So it's not logical to most people to ask "Do you sell Ford Mondeo tyres?" I would say. This is probably where the problem stems from.

(Ironically...one of my first games also uses the AGS parser system:"The Adventures Of The Black Hand Gang" and I included as many synonyms as I could think of but missed the "tyre"/"tire" spelling differences and had to go back and include it after a player pointed it out...)

Also, I just tried the question at all three shops and it doesn't work at any. They just say "Sorry, I don't understand." What are the actual words the paser checks for?

I might have an idea to help you fix this though:
I think a suitable question to parse for would be: "Have you sold any tires to someone driving/owning a Ford Mondeo?"
Or something like that...But the text input box is not long enough to hold such a question. You would have to make it longer.
People would also ask "Did you sell any tires to the driver/owner of a Ford Mondeo?" and there may be other variations. But I think if you parse for:
sold, sell, tires, tyres, driving, driver, owning, owner, Ford Mondeo
it might work. Of course you may need to also change the staff's replies to fit this adjusted question.
I would also add a feature where if you type "dog" for example the staff says "I don't understand" but if the player types in just "Ford Mondeo" maybe the staff says "I need more information. Could you please speak in complete sentences?" as many players probably assume the parser is not very sophisticated and can only understand single key-words at a time, so they will just input words instead of a sentence containing all the needed words.

Maybe even adding the instruction: "Please speak in complete sentences." at the top of the conversation screen would help a lot.

One more slight point: Every time you hang up from a conversation you have to reopen the browser and search for tyre shops again. Couldn't the phone conv just quit back to the browser with the tyre shops list on it?

[close]

Hope that all made sense and is of some value. Again: I'm not complaining here, as I'm really excited about what you are trying to do with this game, as I'm sure many gamers would be if it was just slightly more accessable.

[Shadow1000]

I think I finished the game based on the fact that I got a message saying "End of Chapter 1"

However, I feel that I must have bypassed part of what others experienced.

Spoiler

I told the police the place and date he would strike next and the next thing I knew was that he was arrested based on a newspaper article and then it was over. I didn't open any maps and I didn't call a tire/tyre shop

[close]

Was that supposed to happen or did I miss part of the game?

SHADOW

[Mandle]

Was that supposed to happen or did I miss part of the game?

SHADOW

The way the game works is that it is a solid-state world. By this I mean that nothing changes based on your actions, hence savegames being redundant...

This means that you can:

Spoiler

Guess some of the clues without having to actually go through all the actions of finding them out for "real".

[close]

So yeah...you did miss some of the game mechanics but solving the mystery the way you did is not a bug or anything...

[Shadow1000]

Was that supposed to happen or did I miss part of the game?

SHADOW

The way the game works is that it is a solid-state world. By this I mean that nothing changes based on your actions, hence savegames being redundant...

This means that you can:

Spoiler

Guess some of the clues without having to actually go through all the actions of finding them out for "real".

[close]

So yeah...you did miss some of the game mechanics but solving the mystery the way you did is not a bug or anything...

I get that, but I didn't guess! I had all the answers I needed from the newspapers I had read to make the police satisfied. Maybe the system has a certain amount of leeway where you only need 3/4 answers or something like that?

SHADOW

[Toimia]

If anyone is struggling with the tyre shop (which it sounds like a few are) here's a clue to help:

Spoiler

Check the news articles for any witnesses on the type of car they saw, check with the tyre shops whether anyone has bought tyres for a particular model of car. "Do you sell X tyres/tires" should do it.

[close]

So, I'm guessing you have to say:

(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Spoiler

"Ford Mondeo" and "tyres/tires" in the same sentence? The problem with this is that few people will try this as there is not actually a specific tyre-type for a specific model of car in the real world. All Fords do not have the same tyres. So it's not logical to most people to ask "Do you sell Ford Mondeo tyres?" I would say. This is probably where the problem stems from.

(Ironically...one of my first games also uses the AGS parser system:"The Adventures Of The Black Hand Gang" and I included as many synonyms as I could think of but missed the "tyre"/"tire" spelling differences and had to go back and include it after a player pointed it out...)

Also, I just tried the question at all three shops and it doesn't work at any. They just say "Sorry, I don't understand." What are the actual words the paser checks for?

I might have an idea to help you fix this though:
I think a suitable question to parse for would be: "Have you sold any tires to someone driving/owning a Ford Mondeo?"
Or something like that...But the text input box is not long enough to hold such a question. You would have to make it longer.
People would also ask "Did you sell any tires to the driver/owner of a Ford Mondeo?" and there may be other variations. But I think if you parse for:
sold, sell, tires, tyres, driving, driver, owning, owner, Ford Mondeo
it might work. Of course you may need to also change the staff's replies to fit this adjusted question.
I would also add a feature where if you type "dog" for example the staff says "I don't understand" but if the player types in just "Ford Mondeo" maybe the staff says "I need more information. Could you please speak in complete sentences?" as many players probably assume the parser is not very sophisticated and can only understand single key-words at a time, so they will just input words instead of a sentence containing all the needed words.

Maybe even adding the instruction: "Please speak in complete sentences." at the top of the conversation screen would help a lot.

One more slight point: Every time you hang up from a conversation you have to reopen the browser and search for tyre shops again. Couldn't the phone conv just quit back to the browser with the tyre shops list on it?

[close]

Hope that all made sense and is of some value. Again: I'm not complaining here, as I'm really excited about what you are trying to do with this game, as I'm sure many gamers would be if it was just slightly more accessable.

The tire shop conversation is an interesting subject. Infact:

Spoiler

Originally I intended it to be the actual tyre set 195/55 - however, the parser does not like slashes which threw that idea out the window. I'm surprised as "have you sold/do you sell any ford mondeo tyres" should suffice in the parser. Good suggestion for asking for complete sentences, I'll have a mess around and chances are, will add it in - thanks!

[close]

I'll explore better ways to engage in the conversations in future chapters as the ambiguity of asking an AI questions will always have degree of guess work for keywords...