interesting idea with the character change, itll be cool
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MacLeod is indeed a very Scottish name, and the thing was that Gordon in the first drafts was actually from England. Apparently we have updated all the bits except for this one. Thank you for pointing it out 
On you comment about MacLeodâs house, itâs actually a discussion if we should give the players so many options that would have little to no effect in creating atmosphere. Weâre possibly going to streamline it at some point, yes
Thank you for your attention to details!
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Ohhhh thatâs amazing, and sad too. I mean, i loved my coke addict - mentally unstable - criminal Sarah who probably got her head smashed with hammer in that house. Will the new character be gender-locked? Hmm⊠I wonder will the two MCs meet at some point in the game(considering the first MC stays alive) And what about our buddies, will they eventually show up, or at least be available for our new character? Either way, Its really interesting and ambitious so kudos to you for great work so far!
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[spoiler]Haha, thanks! Yeah, we want to convey emotion on the game, and I personally think that players always care more when they are âattachedâ to something. When your first character dies/disappears, a part of you goes with him.
You(as a player) will want it back, or at least get some closure. Even revenge.
About the two characters meeting, weâve actually have what I considered to be a very impact scene draft in that regard, but that will depend on some things weâre still deciding about Chapter 2.
The buddies on the prologue are very important. They know both your first MC and Alexander, so they are an important plot device, and persons of interest in the investigation too. We have some really nice stuff prepared regarding them and how the last 10 years - along with the 1st MC disappearance - have affected them.
They are not the second MC buddies, but youâll have some deeper interactions with them if you chose to go after it.
And yeah, I agree it is ambitious. One of the main reasons we wanted to keep up with schedule(which he have managed to, so far) and wanted help testing the prologue was to see how well we could handle that many variables, possible paths and customization, along with the time we would take fixing bugs.
So far Iâm quite happy about the progress of the game. Weâre actually doing Chapter 1 much more efficiently than we did the Prologue.
About the second MC being gender-locked, no way! Weâll have even more customization than before, weâll just present those choices in some more dynamic ways so as not to sound repetitive.
For example, your first character had a predefined sexual orientation , but youâll get to choose what kind of sexuality youâll want for the second one, along with a wide variety of customization on its home and even stuff from your past that might come up later.
All in all, you guys are helping us A LOT with the game. Many thanks![/spoiler]
EDIT: Posted the same post two times and forgot spoiler tags.
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yes, it was my 3rd time getting that, Iâd only gotten that on Bookworm i thinkâŠ
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Something in the murder file mentioned that the knife probably came from the kitchen. My first thought on entering the house was to check the kitchen to see if there was a knife missing.
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I stumbled upon some kind of infinite loop when I talked to Alexander over the phone, i picked âI have to goâ:
Then this showed up:
So i clicked âI have to goâ again and it returned to:
So from there it just goes in circles.
Uh i forgot to mention that the call was from the hotel, after I did all the investigation and searched the old oak.
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Iâm still looking for that one. Have you tried since my other post?
Thatâs actually a good point. Weâve made an observation about that and weâll look into this.[quote=âUnicornswillcry, post:48, topic:20808â]
I stumbled upon some kind of infinite loop when I talked to Alexander over the phone, i picked âI have to goâ:
[/quote]
I think I know why this is happening. There are three places you can go back to after a telephone conversation with Alexander, depending on where you were when you called.
Basically, âAngus Hotel 1â, âAngus Hotel 2â or the âcrossRoadsâ, how I call the place between going to places. All three are hub-like. If you were calling from your second night at the hotel(as you were), you would probably be stuck since I forgot the checking for that one. It should be working now - if that was indeed the error, which I think it was.
Thank you guys for the feedback. Iâm updating the files right now.
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When I see ???, I immediately think of Bloodborneâs secret âChildhoodâs Beginningâ endingâŠ
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There is only one post mortem file, shouldnât there also be one for Gordon?
Iâm sure it said he landed on grass but after leaving the murder house you glance at the concrete where the body landed.
Examining the outside of the house reveals 3 large Windows and a small window, looking at the plan of the house shows 6 Windows.
He fell from the 2nd floor window. In Scotland donât they go ground floor -> first floor and not first floor -> second floor? It may be better to say bedroom window or upstairs window.
How did the police access the house?
When going to the murder house once you examine the door you are unable to check the rest of the outside area for clues. I checked the back, then Windows and it skipped straight to the door leaving me unable to find the clue about the body being moved. When leaving the house it still said I knew the body had been moved even though Iâd missed the clue.
When speaking to the cop he knew automatically which case I was talking about even though I avoided telling him.
After taking the drink and choosing to let go I got a 404 error.
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Well,we have two explanations for that: 1) It isnât necessary for the resolution of he puzzle and 2) those documents were acquired extra-officially by Alexander, and perhaps he didnât take the same effort in acquiring the one from Gordon.
That being said, I think that the right answer probably should be âYes, there should be one for Gordon tooâ, and weâll probably make it 
Thatâs correct! I actually remember that being changed from Nerullâs first drafts, but I forgot to update the material in that specific part.
How much Sanity did you had in that specific point? Nah, Iâm kidding. It was just a mistake on our part. Weâll be fixing it right away.
Youâre right. Iâll have to update the image too. Will do that ASAP.
The explanation should be that they used the backdoor(because the front door lock had signs of being messed with), but we havenât made that clear. Weâll do some brainwork on this.
This two in particular Iâll be fixing in two ways:
(1) You will be able to go back after examining the door (no reason why the player shouldnât be able to do that)
(2) You will be able to get the clue by looking from the window that he fell.
So it should become one of the conditions to leave the house to know it as well.
Damn, thatâs weird. Iâll go check that, but do you have more specifics? The conversation with the police officer on the Prologue was one of the points that wet too far in trying to make too many branches, and as the Prologue is all in one big chunk of text(Yes,a design flaw I had done based on the wrong notion that you couldnât easily jump through .txts and carry variables with you), it sometimes is quite hard to identify a bug just by looking at it.
Was it during your first night in town? During the conversation with Alexander or after it, when deciding to stay for a drink? Iâll try to find it, but this might be a tricky one to get.
Anyway, thank you so much for those reports! These are the best kinds of feedback we can get, and they are vital for us to fix and improve the game.
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The 404 error was while drinking in the manse
hey! i dunno if im doing something wrong but the link isnt working for me. It downloads and then pops up blank
Thank you. I think that might have something o do with the report bellow.
No, I just tested it and the link is doing that to me too, which it shouldnât.
Iâve heard before that some changes on Dropbox were going to make Choicescript games impossible to host there. Perhaps this has something to do with it. Strange because this happened overnight.
Iâll try to look for an alternative ASAP. Thanks for the report!
EDIT: Iâve put it in a new link, a really cool free hosting service provided by the user DashingDon.
The link is on the first post.
Random continuity note- you said that when the Joanne was stabbed in the stomach there was arterial spray? Pretty sure with a stomach wound, even a nicked artery, it would be a relatively low velocity spatter. Also, you said that she died slowly, but wouldnât death occur pretty rapidly with the arterial cut you mentioned?
I could of course, be incorrect, but I thought Iâd let you know just in case.
I also was not 100% sure that her husband died from the fall, his neck could have been broken beforehand and then he was thrown out of the window. I know I was wrong, but my logic behind this was that- just a spinal injury and a fracture in his arm seemed odd. If he tried to brace himself, as implied by the injury in his arm, thereâd be few more injuries, at least in the hand/arm. Maybe it would help if you described the position of the body where it fell? (EDIT: HAHAHAHA nevermind you addressed this)
The only reason Iâm so focused on the details like this is because your story definitely seems great, and you emphasize the importance of focusing on the details. Maybe Iâm just overthinking it 
Okay, Iâm definitely overthinking it, but others might come to the same conclusions I did and then wonder why their deductions were wrong.
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I also have some other notes, just on a small section, starting at the last bit of the victimâs house I checked and right up to part of the conversation with Alex.
-When youâre in the kitchen shouldnât you look for for a knife set that matched the murder weapon to see if itâs missing or if the knife was even theirs in the first place?
-You describe the ridge smell as intoxicating, which usually means something smells really good or it sort of draws you in and you could get drunk on it (though not always literally drunk) ex, âHer perfume was intoxicatingâ
-detail that I noticed that seemed important but is probably irrelevant- seems odd that the couple met at a college party, she was a sophomore but heâs 3 years older than her, was he a super-senior or was this a detail we were supposed to look into?
-whenever you ask one the of the neighbors a question it keeps taking you back to the main question screen. It might be better if it allowed you to ask multiple questions from one line of reasoning, but have an option at the bottom that says âIâd like to talk about something elseâ and THAT would take you back to the main list of questions
-at the police station, instead of âcall the buzzerâ shouldnât it be âpress the buzzerâ? or something like that?
-Talking to your friend about Gordon, you said âHe was born on Wales.â I think it should be âinâ Wales
-also you keep using â instead of â when people are speaking, any reason in particular for that?
-returning to the hotel, when the car is outside it should be âinvestigate the car furtherâ
-âDid Gordon usually went out of town to visit patients?â should be âgo out of townâ
-'It was a common thing, for all I knew.â should be âfor all I knowâ
-âTheyâve must have not noticed it.â should be âThey must not have noticed itâ
one other thing I have to point out- the wine bottles in the tea room of the empty house- wine DOES go bad relatively quickly after being opened, like just a couple of days, and you have to refrigerate it. If itâs not refrigerated after opening, it wonât even be good the next day. Maybe you want to replace it with âcheap vodkaâ instead, that smell is unmistakable and awful and it doesnât go bad like wine, it makes sense if someone left that in the cupboard
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Great posts. Really good to have this kind of detailed feedback on all fronts. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
Talked with Nerull(responsible for that specific part and most of the game, specially the forensic bits) and he said heâll come back to give you a reply on this one ASAP, but fear not, for he will bring his explanations with him!
These are the kind of feedbacks we need the most! It helps us to see from the player perspective.
Iâll reply to your other post as soon as I get home, gotta go!
EDIT: Iâm back!
We havenât consider that because itâs been quite some time since the crime, but youâre the second one to point that up, so I reckon we should at least acknowledge that ingame.
Might be something I wrote there, I will look into it!
Well, you got a point there, but I canât explain this without giving hard spoilers. Letâs just say thereâs more into their relationship than what is shown in the Prologue. Further chapters will explore this.
I agree. This was one of the first scenes I wrote/scripted and itâs quite messy to be honest. Weâre doing things more fluidly now, but I will certainly go back to fix it.
Makes sense! As you can probably guess, Iâm not as good with english as Nerull, but Iâm working to improve it. I certainly learned a lot of things(most from him) since we first started.
Our keyboards are CRAZY! I swear to you! Both our computers have different language inputs for the keyboard and sometimes they change by themselves and at some point we had 4 different types of comma on the text. 
We had no idea whatsoever how to fix that, so we decided to use the good old '. I think weâll eventually have to address that, but for now it keeps things going.
Iâll look into those. Thank you so much for pointing them out! Most of the times I would have no idea about those mistakes XD
Itâs not actually wine, that I can tell you. I think we probably can make that more clear, though.
AGAIN, thank you so much for all this!
Hey, thank you so for your detailed feedback. As you have pointed out, it is a narrative which often relies on details, and so this type of discussion actually helps us a lot in creating content for the further chapters of the game.
I will try to answer your questions below, in spoiler.
[spoiler]
This is what is written in the doc named Printed sheetsâ:
"The printed sheets constitute a post-mortem examination report. It was conducted by a pathologist named Gregor Griffin on 05.02.2006.
It states that the deceased was named Ms Joanne MacLeod, 33. Cause of death: homicide. Specifically, it states that the death was caused by internal hemorrhage due to stab wound.
A âcutlet knifeâ was thrusted about 6 cm deep into her mesogastrium. It caused small intestine perforation and laceration; a substantial internal hemorrhage followed the trauma.
A stab wound around 4 cm deep was also located in her left hypochondrium. Associated spleen perforation and artery laceration were identified. This stab wound, although not highlighted as the specific cause of death, caused a gross internal hemorrhage and arterial spray out of the victimâs body
No other bruising or superficial damage were identified."
You are correct in thinking that stomach wounds are not associated with arterial sprays (unless in very specific situations, perhaps). Thing is that the stomach was not directly mentioned in the report, and a knife wound of a depth of 4 cm would be capable of lacerating abdominal arteries located near the spleen - which was the case.
The term âarterial sprayâ could be changed I think, so not to create any misunderstandings between us and the players - we want to make the game as clear as possible, in the sense that the âdifficultyâ of it should not arise from trying to understand what was written. The intention was to indicate that there was an âarterial patternâ of bleeding (which contrasts with the venous pattern â basically oozing) coming out of the first wound, so the killer probably would have been stained. Matching this with the absence of stains on Gordonâs corpse⊠there you go.
And although it is common to depict âarterial damageâ as being the cause of a really quick death, this is often not the case. Of course it depends heavily on the artery and the type of damage - some high-calibre arteries would indeed lead to a quick hypovolemic shock and eventually death -, but medium and low-calibre arteries are associated with a fairly slow decline of the vital signs. In the MacLeodâs case, it was expected a considerable bleeding but no so profuse to justify that âshe died instantaneouslyâ.
The deduction mentioned that âshe died slowlyâ as opposed to âinstantaneouslyâ, meaning that she could have had time to get out of the bed. But she didnât. And so⊠well, thatâs a thing for the next chapters (:[/spoiler]
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So, we have been working on the main part of the game for the few months, and we just updated it to include a playable version of Chapter 1: Surface.
You can play it here:
https://dashingdon.com/play/lucaszaper/highlands-deep-waters/mygame/
The game itself (besides the Prologue) will be composed of three chapters: Surface, Midnight Zone and Abyss. We are currently halfway through scripting the second chapter.
Chapter 1 has more than twice the size of the Prologue, something like 120k words. It will probably be the biggest part of the game. We are working around a final word count of 250~300k words for the complete game.
We also made a lot of fixes and changes that were pointed out by the feedback you guys provided.
Thanks to everyone whoâs been helping us by testing the game! Itâs nice to stress that your feedback and suggestions are really valuable to us, so please keep up with the excellent work!
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Was very excited to see this updated but sadly I ran into a problem during the prologue. I got to the scene whether you could either go to bed or research on the internet and it looped infinitely. Whatever option I picked took me back to the choice screen. There was no error message or anything, just a loop. Sorry about that, it might be a problem on my end if you canât find anything. I didnât take note of the exact decisions I made.
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