I tried to load a save game, but all it did was lock me into the status menu.
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Thank you!
We have updated the first post with new information and descriptions. To the people considering testing the game, please check it out 
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Sorry about that, but this is probably related to the recent fixes. I think every time I update the files everybody loses their saves.
There is a new option now - to skip the Prologue - so it should help people to at least not have to play through that again. You can also jump to further chapters but it can get quite buggy and I wouldnât recommend it unless you just want to know what the hell happens.
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Itâs wonderful to see this finished. Iâve been watching this for a long time.
There are bugs and minor grievances, though. I filed some out on forms, but then realised I forgot something, so I guess Iâll repeat myself.
Unknown Unknows are still present.
Scholar can pull out their None and threaten Alexander with it.
You canât score 22 on final deduction. Unless you do it twice.
Olivia can be called, lost and then called again. What a wonderful woman.
I donât see the point of furniture/paintings buying. Is there any?
I didnât like the fourth wall leaning and self-reference. It breaks the immersion like a sledgehammer breaks a moth.
Lost/repeated bits of dialogues. Listed some on forms.
Sanity system is shady. Havenât seen much benefits/cons from being at the verge of a paranoid breakdown. Or many ways to prevent it.
Second investigator canât have a sugar addiction.
Alexander says that first F.I. said something about drinking and then Joanne happened. Should be reversed.
Canât tell you much about technical details, but everything seemed to check out.
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So the mysterious notlegit@fake was you? It feels good to have an opportunity to thank you for such a detailed feedback! There were parts of it that made me laugh a lot, like the one bit about the ******* enthusiasts. It also felt good to know that the dog encounter had some impact, it was a thing that came out of nowhere while I was filling some blanks in that scene and I remember how it felt just right to have it there, putting some flavor in an otherwise bland encounter.
So, about the reports themselves:
1 - Unknown Unknown is quite a bummer. My best guess is that it comes from the fact that the variable that gets your name and surname and put them together into one isnât being set correctly at some part of the game. Thinking about it now, I guess this can be easily fixed by jut writing the name and then the surname into the code, instead of using the joint variable for both, like I was doing before.
2 - The problem with the gun is that it is only set later in the game(I forgot this). It should be fixed now.
3 - You were on point with your report on the Final Deduction. The maximum a player can get(Without the conditional things) is 19, like you said. It should be working properly now.
4 - Olivia is actually an intentionally paradoxical focus point that represents how meaningless your actions are as an human being and that time is circul⌠Ok, it doesnât make any fucking sense that you can call her more than once. Probably I forgot to set some variable there.
5 - It was something that we put in the game just a way to spend money other than bribing people, but from the start I had some plans on what to do with that stuff. I ended up putting it on the list of things to do and forgot about it until recently, when someone else reported on this.(previously a good chunk of the game would occur in Glasgow) So we did a specific scene that happens after the events on the Ritual, between leaving Invernock and the possible Epilogues. It should appear only if you bought something, and it finally puts some use to the stuff you bought (In quite surprising ways).
6 - I agree with you that fourth wall leaning and self-reference can break the immersion. Were there any other parts that you felt were doing this other than the forum one? I have some mixed feelings about other portions of the game that do this, because some of them(the dubious ones, specially some very specific branches where it serves as a metaphor to hint that there is someone else influencing your actions, because it can be interpreted both in the ways that there is a âplayerâ and that there is some supernatural force in the works, which is true). Of course, there are also the bits where this is used as perhaps misguided attempts at making jokes or puns.
7 - The report mentioned repeating bits of dialogue, and I think I found it on the part where Alexander can plant some bombs and fixed it. The Kevin ones I will have to inspect more thoughtfully, because they were made in a very chaotic and repetitive way, when I wasnât so familiar on how to make a decent structure for the labels.
But I donât remember anything about lost ones. Can you be more specific as to where you found them?
8 - It is indeed shady. It is not properly balanced yet, and we will have to check each file to consider how much sanity a player can have in a specific point in the game, and perhaps balance the values. But it also works in a way that the player doesnât know exactly how it affects him, and I think that is mostly OK from a point that, while roleplaying, you get the world from the characterâs eyes.
What I mean with that is the fact that descriptions are unlocked or changed according to your Sanity, but the game does not tell the player that they are being changed. So there are a lot of bits and options that only appear or appear in different ways according to your sanity or archetype, but you wonât know that this is happening (unless you play the game in a different way).
As to how to restore Sanity, every time you satisfy your Addiction or Take a Nap, it should be restored.(taking naps actually can be tricky, as sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down, if you have a nightmare). Again, the values could be improved upon.
About preventing sanity loss, many of the choices that decrease it are associated with either intrusive thoughts(that the player decides to pursuit) or by selecting strange choices or conclusions. So, ideally, you can prevent losing some of it. (Not going after weird things, not thinking about weird stuff).
9 - You can have âno addictionâ instead, if I recall correctly, which was what the âsugar addictionâ was trying to actually represent, perhaps in a misleading way.
10 - Whoa, thatâs quite weird. Iâll look into it right away.
I had spent the morning fixing the other stuff you mentioned on the report. Again, thank you very much for it. It is just the kind of thing we have been needing.
Weâre finishing working on an update to the game that will add some scenes that were missing: going after some of the people from the cult before the ritual, a better way around the HUT puzzle, letting Father Grant live, etc. It should help people achieve their Final Deductions properly and give an evident resolution to the first case. Hopefully everything you mentioned will be fixed with it as well.
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Yes, leaving no address and then coming here - Iâm enigmatic like that.
Also, did the forum censor that?..
1 - If itâs any consolation, you have really weeded Unknowns out since my last playthrough.
Also, why does Alexander calls the F.I. âinvestigatorâ more than once? Itâs a bit unnatural to do so when the name is not a secret.
5 - Oh. I donât think I got any uses for the books. I will try buying something else.
6 - There was that weird part where you can accuse F.I., but your S.I. has never seen the guy or any mentions of them in their current state.
I was hoping for an encounter, but it never happened. Did I miss it? Because if it isnât in the game, then the deduction is asking for an out-of-character knowledge, which reminds me Iâm a reader.
I am unsure about âLizardryâ and âThe choice of loveâ. Technically, these are valid names for books and they didnât ruin immersion too much, but, you know⌠Deal with it as you see fit.
The âmetaphorâ joke was alright.
If you have doubts about something, could you point me in their direction?
7 - Iâve ran through one more time, because I couldnât rememberâŚ
(By the way, inspecting the oak at Seannloch redirected me to the inspecting of the Rock this time.
Scholar never notices the bloodied rag, but mentions it to Jack anyway.
You can only buy one painting. At least, it doesnât let you anymore after you buy the Mind.
After visiting the Lone star, you see teenagers, but they never say anything to you. I assume they insulted my Renault.
Apparently, Alexander dated F.I., who pointed to Olivia, who pointed to F.I. Or do I have two Emmas?)
âŚeventually I found what looks like the snipped text:
"but Iâll come back to this later.â
my folks died. That was around 2002."
I thought I have seen it somewhere else, so I looked some moreâŚ
(âI actually remember Emma wordsâ.
âThings had ended badly with Emma [F.I.], so I was very depressed at the time. Then Joanne came for me. Like she always did.â
âI donât know how he [she] found outâ
ââHmmm⌠#{fakeName}.â She tries to convey a sexy toneâ - thatâs a good one.
"You might have something there,
mister Adam."
âhow Unknown Unknown had noticed about the lockâ - noticed that the lock had been picked?
âHow well do you knowâ - how much do you know.
âwas born. mah mammyâ - a few letters are not capitalised.
With S.I., entering the left room at the Mayberry again replays the same âlocked roomâ question.
âA prankâ achievement popped up at least five times.
Part with âthereâs this thing about a girl, Cassandraâ repeats itself.
ââIâm #Leonard Moore, P.I.ââ
âMatthew Wallace and Unknown Unknown.â
I would suggest putting âWe need to talk about Kevinâ before starting to talk about Kevin, not during.
âUnknown Unknown disappeared after visitingâ
You can ask Currie about Cassandra multiple times.
(!) I donât think you can actually read Ewanâs notebook.
âYou drive your #{car} throughâ
You can tell Alexander about the Black Kirk before going there.
âKirkâ is not capitalised half of the time.
Agreeing to work with Emilia changes nothing.)
âŚthatâs around time I stopped. Sorry. Thought I would find more chopped text sooner. You could play it through a few times yourself, some mistakes are easy to catch.
8 - Sure, I get the first part. Itâs just I have never managed to see a significant difference, I go down the slippery slope at roughly the same time.
9 - Well, it was listing addictions and them mentioned chocolate, so I just followed the trend. Nevertheless, I thought a sugar addiction is really neat. Could you leave it?
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What was the answer? -_-
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In theory you can ask a buddy for help inside the game or ask for help online in one of the archetype-based forums(I donât recall if the Criminal archetype can do it though).
Nonetheless, the answer should be âRICHMOND DRIVE, LINWOOD.â (or any other variation of these three words, with or without punctuation)
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Ah Iâd picked criminal for my second dude⌠Iâm also terrible at puzzles
Cheers.
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Donât worry, Iâm also terrible. 
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1 - Hmm, you might have a point there. I guess the real the word âinvestigatorâ kept being used was because it is gender neutral, so its easier that way.
5 - While I do not believe that every book available should be necessarily helpful to the case, we tried to keep them relevant to it at least in tone or mood. Some just work as summarized trivia about stuff like blood patterns and Celtic culture, others might have hints about ingame events(there is one written by a novelist you can meet during the prologue and he seems like a normal guy there, but as you can see from his writing ten years later, something has happened to make him crazy) and there also two short stories by Lovecraft wrote in there(public domain), along with one by Nerull.
6 - There are mentions in dialogue about the F.I. being turned into one of them and you are supposed to be able to see him/her during the meeting at some point(Iâm not sure it is optional or railroaded, though, but it only happens if the F.I. is actually turned and didnât die), and there is a letter you can receive from him/her, but I think this only shows later in the game, so youâre right there. I think the best solution to this deduction should be that you can point the F.I. as one of them regardless, but you will only get a positive score if you actually have seen it or gathered evidence, otherwise it will give you negative score. Actually, that should be the way it works with all of those who are not obligatory revealed as cultists through the game.
There is no direct confrontation between the two characters(unless in a very, very specific point in the game), but the consequences of the actions of one can have rippling effects in the game for the other. You can find a ritualistic weapon left behind by the F.I. if you decide to throw it away during the Interlude 1, for example. There is also a very specific way to deal with the ritual that depends on whether the F.I. is working from inside the cult and keeping his cover intact.
About the meta statements, I guess the ones I am more curious about are the following:
-
During the prologue there is a very specific branch where you can choose to sit on a table occupied by two men. Iâm not quite sure if this is gender related(Iâll have to look into it), but there is a point there where you might decide not to do what the âgameâ tells you to do and you might end up having a âdiscoveryâ that there is, indeed, something trying to manipulate you into doing things the way it wants you to. Then there are a few ways you can choose to "rebel against it.
-
At the start of C1 there is a point where you can decide that, in the past, you had been married. When the game asks you if it was a man or a woman, you can decide that it i "none of your business.â Then you get a âSorry.â and the story moves on.
There were some positive feedbacks about this, and I really like to keep specific rare-to-find branches with weird stuff inside the game, but I actually like to receive unbiased feedback.
7 - About the oak, thatâs quite strange. Iâm looking at the code right now and Iâm not finding anything wrong with this bit. Is it during the prologue?
I found the part about the Scholar and the bloodied rag that was missing and fixed it.
The bit about buying paintings was redirecting to the wrong place, with a hide_reuse in the option to buy stuff. I think it should be working now.
About the teenagers, all the first descriptions where wrongly assigned only to the Female gender, Iâm assuming you were playing as a male and that is the reason why you did not see it. I fixed it now.
Hahaha, you have two Emmas, donât worry about it. I guess I could check if the name of the character is the same as Emma at this part so as to make it less confusing if you create an Emma.
About the typos and grammar problems you mentioned, I think they should all be fixed now. There was actually a couple of variables not being properly set at the Police Station, so you would get some redundant or contradiction descriptions about F.I. findings.
Fixed the prank achievement, repeating bit about Cassandra, the door description, #name.
All of the Unknown Unknowns should be fixed aswell.
âYou can ask Currie about Cassandra multiple times.â Are they at the same point, while calling her? That is weird, there is a hide_reuse there. Perhaps it isnât working as it should or I have repeated that somewhere else along the game)
â(!) I donât think you can actually read Ewanâs notebook.â
True, I was using two variables for that and forgot to set the second one. Should be working now.
âYou can tell Alexander about the Black Kirk before going there.â
Oh. I fixed it now, forgot to put the conditional in there.
âAgreeing to work with Emilia changes nothing.)â
What the hell. I think I forgot to seet a variable as false if emilia is helping you. It should be working now.
8 - Hopefully weâll manage to make it more evident during the next few revisions. I do believe the game could be improved with more madness. (!?!)
9 - I also love chocolate. (!?!?!?!)
Again, thank you for the report. It really helps us to fix the game. While we try to play it from time to time, we are so âfamiliarâ with it that most of the times we end up skipping the typos or errors if we donât pay enough attention to it. Certainly weâll have to do it a few times, carefully and patiently though.
Iâll do a quicktest and a randomtest and then Iâll upload the game. Iâll edit the post when I do it, and it should become version 1.5 on the title screen.
Edit: the game has been updated on the host. You might need to refresh your browser or delete your cookies in order for it to work though.
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Iâll re-check the instances where the word âkirkâ was mentioned during the game. âBlack Kirkâ and âthe Kirkâ (as referring to the Black Kirk) should always be capitalised, but I think there were occasions in which âkirkâ was used in a general sense, so it shouldnât be capitalised.
Thank you for your reports! Youâre really helping us at this stage.
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I am honestly not sure if itâs better to quote you at this point or not.
5 - Never met a novelist. How can I?
I think the problem I have with furniture/paintings is that these are money sinks that didnât actually motivate me to spend money.
Itâs like âhereâs an investigation adventure, but if you like, you can play some Sims firstâ.
Binoculars motivated me right up. They at least have a potential to be relevant.
6 - And never saw any trace of F.I., as Iâve mentioned. I donât count the letter because it shows up too late to be useful.
Which dialogues do you mean? How can I get an encounter? I will try to find a knife later. Never did. I think I went to the Rock before the ritual. Still, a knife is not exactly a name.
Regarding deduction points: I donât think it should give a negative score if you donât have evidence. S.I. is guessing at this point, but if they are right, it doesnât exactly matter.
Aside from that, itâs a work-around for players who missed something, but have no inclination to restart the whole game and go on a hunt for some elusive option. Or forgot who was named what.
Oh, it was meant as a ârebellionâ? I just thought itâs an âindecisiveâ option.
It is nice to have hidden gens in the game, but if you ask for my opinion, I would prefer to be told how to get to them.
It is locked to females, as far as I can see. My official verdict: nice. I would prefer less malice. But nice.
My general opinion on the fourth wall interactions is similar to my opinion on a bucket of TNT: handle with care.
When I was prompted to input something, I suddenly felt as if I ran into a wall. I had so many possibilities and so little ideas as to what would be appropriate to say. So, like a closest thing to a God at this pointâŚ
I had no idea what would be a good atmospheric decision, so I just did whatever. People tend to do whatever when giver a blank space.
Yes.
Yes. After university, I think? If not, disregard that for now.
While we are at it:
âJoanne was attacked unknowinglyâ
That means the attacker didnât know he was attacking.
âGordon didnât stab Joanne; he died from another cause.
Gordon did not stab Joanne; he did not die from the fall.â
And these two mean the same thing.
ââWe donât want to talk to the press. You only publish lies anyway. Leave us be.â *page_break Leave their table.â
The party isnât started before someoneâs sanity has bled out from their eyes.
You could generalise it as âsweets and sodaâ. Point is, I loved the âsugar addictionâ spin on a typical smoking/drinking noir detective. (Even if, turns out, I mostly imagined it.)
I WAS SUMMONED TO SERVE
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I donât know if itâs been mentioned before because Iâm on my phone and am lazy but I got this error.
Choosing âFuck it. Have another pintâ(or something like that) after talking to Alexander at The Husbandâs Retreat during the prologue. If I recall correctly there are two ways you can meet him there: one by pretending to be a writer yourself to the bartender and another by asking about the Euncloiche/Rhiannonâs Rock at some point there, during the first night.
You should be able to see him/her on the Manor during the meeting, and if I recall correctly Father Grant has something direct to say about the F.I. as well. Iâm pretty sure Iâm missing some stuff, but either way I think the game would be improved with more information about the F.I. might having joined the cult (either willingly or not). I agree that by no means a knife is name. This is mostly there as a thing for the player, not the character(âoh, so the knife I left behind during the Interlude is here!â), so I actually shouldnât even mention it in the first place.
This is a bit tricky, because this section also tries to represent the gathering up of evidence in order to âexposeâ them. Thereâs even a particular bit of text that makes clear that accusing people without proof might undermine the value of your investigation, and I believe that makes a lot of sense. Having proof or evidence of what you say should be necessary at least in order not to make people think you are just some crazy conspiracy theory dude. (This reminds me a lot of Rorschachâs journal at the end of Watchmen)
But, having said that, there is undeniably a problem there: This segment serves two very distinct purposes that perhaps are not fully explained to the player or shouldnât even be put together at all:
1 - Making the deductions(or guesses) themselves about the details of the criminal organization in Invernock.
2 - Putting together the evidence you have in order to incriminate them and sending it to the media or authorities.
I think it would be too repetitive to do separate segments for both of those actions, but this does not change the fact that there is an inherent problem somewhere there. There also needs to be some balancing between letting the player have a satisfying conclusion to the case X embracing the idea that there is only so much you can do(a common trait in noir and lovecraftian narratives, I believe). And while I think that there is some replay value in the game, I also think that it is too big(and a little railroaded at some points) for that.
Thatâs a very specific ending It should only appear if you choose âGodâ during that part, and I believe the intention was to represent that âit is all on your head, after allâ or something like that.
Iâm having some weird reports about that. Iâm starting to believe that *Hide_Reuses do not work if you go back and forth from .txts. And that is really troublesome because we have been working with the assumption that it was all that took to make some options unavailable after the first time in recurring scenes.
Going to get working on those right now.
Perhaps even adding some energy drink like the one Nerull likes to drink, called DOPAMINE. (yep, this is actually a thing in our country)
Once again, your reports are really helpful. This kind of detailed feedback that ranges from typos and bugs to impressions about gameplay and narrative is just the kind of thing we needed right now. There is no reason why you shouldnât appear on the credits at this point.
Thank you for your doomed words. Thereâs some poetry in there, somewhere. (!?!?!)
That doesnât make any sense! 
My best guess is that you loaded an older save over the updated files and it got bugged. Variables are declared on the first .txt(startup), so if you played the game before and then some of the files got updated, it wonât find the new variables. Sorry about that.
Iâm trying to make sense of that bug. Perhaps it is related to the files being updated, but this doesnât make much sense in this case.
Hereâs what happens next:
*if (imOutside = false)
You take this opportunity to the descend from the stairs.
*if (killedAGuard = true)
*goto theySee
*if (killedAGuard = false)
*goto theyLeave
I donât think thereâs anything wrong with that code. (you either killed a guard or you didnât, and both labels exist). Either way, thank you for the report, Iâll keep looking into it.
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Itâs not an old save though, I played it for the first time on my phone yesterday⌠Strange.
Have you checked on the title screen under the âlogoâ what version of the game it was(The most recent one is 1.5)? Old cookies from the browser might not update.
Itâs version 1.5. Both my characters were female, first was criminal, second was detective. Idk what your code looks like, I can check when I get home. I really wanna finish it. Can your two MCs ever meet each other? If they canât you gotta make it happen.
You also have to be a local. Not the point, though.
I have presents for you.
When playing as the criminal, I stayed to drink â gave a fake surname â McLeodâs house â Sunderlandâs house, where I had no option to give a fake name, because I havenât input one yet. The next point where it happens would be in the police station.
My suggestion would be: have player input both fake name and surname at the hotel. And also give a few options, as with the real names. That would be nice.
If you donât tell Alexander anything in the prologue:
" â
The lock was slightly damaged"
First chapter, you can give a fake first name three times, at the hotel, at the McLeodâs, to Andy Brown.
When talking to Andy Brown, almost every option leads to âmy daughter herself just started itâ. Is it intended?
Pretending to be a lawyer â not telling the kid you are not â on the way out a guard stops you. Next page has no text, only options of âfederal crimeâ and âso whatâ.
You can get Ewan to admit he is Ewan, ask him about Matthew and he will insist he is Matthew.
Somewhere around C2hub1 my sanity blanked out. I donât think itâs a good sign.
âYou are inside the dim and cold room at the Angus Hotel. Or at least you think you areâ repeats itself. After each âwander aroundâ list of things to do renews.
Today was the first time I was given an option to go after Dr Young. You can lockpick the door multiple times.
Father Grant mentioned the âfourth oneâ, which you have to worry about.
Couldnât make anything unusual in the Manor to happen, Iâm afraid. Drank the liquid, kept the cover, gone in, gone out.
I agree that there is a problem, but I canât really think of a solution that will not force players to collect everything every time and be fair.
Canât say I got the meaning about âall in your headâ.
My point is: custom hallucinations are a good idea, but I donât know if it works well. You might want to gather some more data.
Also, are you sure you want to leave your game like this in an open beta?..
How sweet, how sweet. Thereâs no reason to refuse.
Doomed words: get 'em while they bite
Weâll try to fix everything you have reported, thanks again!
Weâre indeed having problems with that. Perhaps it would be better to allocate the whole âname generationâ thing in a same instance, both for the Prologue and for main story itself.
We worked on some ideas for this part, back then in the early stages of writing. I agree with you that this player input actually leaves ground for messages such as âhotdogâ, âlolggâ and âgobiajegoiajcopajâ, therefore shattering the narrative immersion. Another (abandoned) idea we had for this was to describe scenes with elements of the choicescript left visible. Some sort of âseeing through the realityâ kind of joke.
We are still creating content for the game, finishing some brief scenes that will fill some potential blanks created by sub-plots and NPC backgrounds. Right now, Iâm working on a scene where
the player can hunt down Calum Douglas and interrogate him about his part at the MacLeods case.
@MahatmaDagon deals with most of the script bugs, so heâll probably address your reports specifically. In terms of narrative, however, is there any part you felt that should be expanded? Any NPC background you wanted to explore further? And most of all: did the story explain itself?
(and btw, welcome to the team or something lol)
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