A rare and unique deduction game where the player is tasked to determine a ship's crew by seeing their moment before death. Determining the fates of three persons (by answering who died, how they died and who did it) makes the game manageable and rewarding specially seeing it validated. What makes this challenging and fun is taking in as much clues from the environment like the ship layout, organizational relationships, distinguishing personal marks and even the book itself to reward small yet significant observations. Since I have no nostalgia for the aesthetic style, I think it still looks very stylized and overall nice as well as helping me focus on the details much better. As an experience, this is a great and possibly new classic indie title for the puzzle genre.
Initially, determining fates can be deduced from clues; however as more are uncovered, the rest tend to rely on brute force and meta mechanics that brings the game down for me. One notable example near the end is having two assumptions and then using a third to check either by trying every identity on it until it validates or not which allows me to check which assumption is incorrect. Perhaps I am not as keen or knowledgeable enough to rely on such methods, but this has been my experience at the end of my rope. Given such a large cast, I believe this is somewhat intentional, but this kind of puzzles are not as enjoyable or rewarding for me.
The number of choices for what did them and who can be unnecessarily ambiguous and unneeded difficulty. I do understand the numerous choices is partly to avoid brute force and incite mystery, I just wish some of them did not have multiple interpretations based on them. Most of the time, the player knows how they died but rather has to intuit what the game wants which can break immersion. As an aside, I am disappointed in how the ending misses an opportunity to perhaps allow the player to change the book before reporting back which is the only point of humanity and mercy.
Another thing that brings this down is the several tediums of the puzzle solving. If the player wanted to review a previous moment, the player has to travel all the way back to the source that is a huge waste of time and a big pain point. I imagined the game would have provided an option to replay from the book to fix this walking tedium. Also, walking to the exit to close a scene just compounds the issue where a new button could fix that since only a few buttons are used.
The book interface I can somewhat live with but what I feel it is clearly missing the ability to input notes or associate/link pictures on any identity like in the artist renditions to keep track of assumptions or guesses. I was almost tempted to use an external note taking tool, but I did not have to go that far. Still some ability to just annotate would have saved some time and headache. If this is a limitation of the game engine, I think just allowing up to three name annotations per identities would be good enough. Perhaps if an accessibility update would arrive for these major tediums, it would elevate the game beyond its diagetic gimmicks.
This section is for my personal playing issues which is more opinion or preference. As a person suffering with minor face blindness, I am thankful I could recognize some of the character distinct portraits and doubly so with the button to describe a highlighted person in the artist's renditions. Without it, I cannot identity the people properly because of the minimalistic visual style. Guessing accents by their voice and nationalities by their color or appearance is a personal weak point while not trying to be accused of stereotyping. At least for voices, I do wish the recorded text has a character speaking annotation even just adding Voice 1/2/3 before their lines would help so much. I appreciate how certain nationalities can occur in groups but it can only go so far before grasping at straws again. For my last peeve, the story is serviceable and the framing device of the book is unnecessary. It is not possible to access the last chapter without returning and it does not make sense as the author does not everything. It would have been just as fine if the protagonist was given the watch from the company and do their job normally without complication. I do not know, I just found it unnecessary complex for what it is going for.
Nonetheless, the creative heart and effort is shines through that I can strongly recommend this if this looks interesting.
Initially, determining fates can be deduced from clues; however as more are uncovered, the rest tend to rely on brute force and meta mechanics that brings the game down for me. One notable example near the end is having two assumptions and then using a third to check either by trying every identity on it until it validates or not which allows me to check which assumption is incorrect. Perhaps I am not as keen or knowledgeable enough to rely on such methods, but this has been my experience at the end of my rope. Given such a large cast, I believe this is somewhat intentional, but this kind of puzzles are not as enjoyable or rewarding for me.
The number of choices for what did them and who can be unnecessarily ambiguous and unneeded difficulty. I do understand the numerous choices is partly to avoid brute force and incite mystery, I just wish some of them did not have multiple interpretations based on them. Most of the time, the player knows how they died but rather has to intuit what the game wants which can break immersion. As an aside, I am disappointed in how the ending misses an opportunity to perhaps allow the player to change the book before reporting back which is the only point of humanity and mercy.
Another thing that brings this down is the several tediums of the puzzle solving. If the player wanted to review a previous moment, the player has to travel all the way back to the source that is a huge waste of time and a big pain point. I imagined the game would have provided an option to replay from the book to fix this walking tedium. Also, walking to the exit to close a scene just compounds the issue where a new button could fix that since only a few buttons are used.
The book interface I can somewhat live with but what I feel it is clearly missing the ability to input notes or associate/link pictures on any identity like in the artist renditions to keep track of assumptions or guesses. I was almost tempted to use an external note taking tool, but I did not have to go that far. Still some ability to just annotate would have saved some time and headache. If this is a limitation of the game engine, I think just allowing up to three name annotations per identities would be good enough. Perhaps if an accessibility update would arrive for these major tediums, it would elevate the game beyond its diagetic gimmicks.
This section is for my personal playing issues which is more opinion or preference. As a person suffering with minor face blindness, I am thankful I could recognize some of the character distinct portraits and doubly so with the button to describe a highlighted person in the artist's renditions. Without it, I cannot identity the people properly because of the minimalistic visual style. Guessing accents by their voice and nationalities by their color or appearance is a personal weak point while not trying to be accused of stereotyping. At least for voices, I do wish the recorded text has a character speaking annotation even just adding Voice 1/2/3 before their lines would help so much. I appreciate how certain nationalities can occur in groups but it can only go so far before grasping at straws again. For my last peeve, the story is serviceable and the framing device of the book is unnecessary. It is not possible to access the last chapter without returning and it does not make sense as the author does not everything. It would have been just as fine if the protagonist was given the watch from the company and do their job normally without complication. I do not know, I just found it unnecessary complex for what it is going for.
Nonetheless, the creative heart and effort is shines through that I can strongly recommend this if this looks interesting.