When they are first encountered in Yarnton memorial, maybe make the explanation a bit clearer.
Breaking the code wasn’t too difficult or too easy. Good level of difficulty. Was a bit like playing wordle.
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That puzzle gets easier or harder depending on what you do. If you find one code fragment, at either Yarnton or de Bruijn’s barge, it’s harder than if you find both because you start with fewer letters.
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Tell you what you should only let the reader have one fragment otherwise it becomes quite easy.
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I don’t mind that. Basically, that whole section is about balancing difficulty based on what the player has prioritized.
If the player has two fragments, that means that they have followed two “Archive” leads, and their “reward” is that the code puzzle is easier. But on the other hand, working out who Winter is will be harder, because they will have less information.
If the player has one fragment, that means that they have followed two “Winter” leads, and their reward is that they will have more info and have eliminated more suspects, so working out who Winter is gets easier, but cracking the code puzzle is harder.
So what is easy and difficult basically depends on what the player has prioritized!
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Just finished the chapter! I had a lot of fun with it, especially decoding the book puzzle and figuring out Winter’s identity. I felt like that was just the right amount of challenge. I spoke to the reverend first to discount him, and always had a feeling the nervous guy was sneaking off for something unrelated. Then I checked out Mrs. Glass’ room and successfully bluffed her husband to get his secrets too. That whittled it down to the two loudest Nazi sympathisers, lady professor and chief professor - sorry, I am very bad at remembering names - so I was hoping for a pronoun drop when talking to the Nazi spy. I made a guess it was the chief professor, and when that didn’t seem to click, but he still said Winter was a ‘he’… It was the unless there’s someone else you’re forgetting? that finally tipped me off. Sad, but hey, the guy made his choice.
So long as the Zhu part is true, I’m fine with anything else!
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Thank you! I’m so happy that you solved it! That means that it’s at least possible. Smart work, detective!
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Winter mystery is very much possible. The thing is you get 3 turns, I got Yarnton fragment, discount Glass couple and then Blake. In the end de Bruijn gave away too much as he gave a pronoun as well as time spent at Oxford and that he’s a full professor.Most players don’t see Grainger as a possible suspect and count him out. Maybe my one suggestion would be to make Hugh Glass a full time professor to make it more interesting as Simms and Blake too can be discounted by that last discussion. Valeria and Magwitch are also the same.
P.S.- Found something, while going straight to chapter 3 via character creation, skill raising in first as well as second interlude doesn’t mention carxite affinity. It should be there, I think
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Thanks for your thoughts! I’ll wait for more feedback, review it all and see what the balance of opinion seems to be! That means that so far we have 2/2 correct mystery solutions. Good job, team!
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While talking to old timer before de Bruijn barge Bruijn is misspelt as Bruiijn.
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Yes it should. Thank you! I’ll add that in. (And so should Maximum Health, too!)
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Oh crap, I didn’t even think about screen readers!
I’ll need to give some thought to that. People who use them, what is the experience of that puzzle with a screen reader? Is it possible? What can I do to make it easier?
(@Sujan_Dhakal Also, please could you spoiler your comment on the thought process that led to the mystery solution, it might give people who haven’t played too much of a hint. Thanks!)
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Honestly, the screen reader thing is less about the game and more about the screen reader itself; there isn’t really much else you could do with it. The symbols show up like they’re supposed to, it’s just a navigation issue but that can be dealt with by the player, it just takes more time
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If it’s really difficult, I could either redesign the puzzle, or come up with an alternative, screen-reader friendly puzzle for people who use screen readers (and let people choose at the start of the chapter which puzzle they want to encounter). I don’t want to be throwing up problems for one group of readers if I can help it.
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I would say leave it as it is, it’s not really much of a problem although I could show it to a couple other people who also use screen readers and ask them what they think about it if you think more input is necessary
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Ooh, yes please, if that isn’t too much hassle! More viewpoints will definitely be helpful.
Thank you!
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Maybe, since you need a good combat skill and gun-slinging is nice. I find I tend to often have the most fun with the Charm and Athleticism stats though. Charm is actually my mc’s best stat, followed by gunplay and athleticism.
I guess Zhu is one of those types who might say they’d like a relaxing vacation but I bet he’d go stir crazy after two days of sitting by the pool sipping cocktails tops. 
And my Spillane certainly is one of those types.
This weekend I’m gonna be a bad, bad man and lie to the playtest menu that I killed Maria, even if she is totally fine in my canon playthrough. 
Just so I can meet a potentially sexy male replacement version. 
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I think “envelop” is the verb and “envelope” is the noun. I’ll double-check that though, thanks!
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Apparently it’s “envelop” not “envelope” the term envelope is the paper used in mail letters. My bad.
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That was a pretty fun chapter. I do rather like a good mystery, and (as I’ve talked about before in the previous games’ threads) I always like it when you find a way to make a chapter noticeably distinct from all the others.
Regarding the difficulty (spoilers)
I will say that I thought the solution was ultimately a bit too easy. If you’ve been keeping track of the information given to you, it’s quite simple to deduce Winter’s identity just from the information Becker gives you, which makes the earlier investigation portions feel a little pointless.
In fact, I was actually a bit thrown when the game asked me to identify Becker’s “slip” (which I’ll admit I didn’t pick up on the first time through), because he actually had a lot of obvious slips, and while the one in question can solve the mystery by itself, as stated, it doesn’t really feel special when Becker also gives you enough clues to solve the mystery regardless. Basically, if the player has been paying enough attention to notice the Smithsonian clue, it’s pretty likely that they’ve also been paying enough attention to know who Winter is just from all the other stuff the guy throws out.
I think it would be better if Becker’s miscellaneous clues could apply to multiple people (meaning you either need to have eliminated suspects through investigation or be savvy enough to notice the Smithsonian clue), either by changing some of the details about some of the suspects (e.g. making Glass a professor) or just cutting down on the clues altogether (the pronouns in particular are quite conspicuous and immediately rule out two suspects all on their own).
Alternatively, perhaps there could be several questions you can ask Becker that provide different little hints, but you have a limited amount of options you can pick before he decides to cut the conversation short? This way you can attempt to supplement whatever information you may or may not have gotten from your other investigations, but you’d have to consider which questions would overlap with information you already know vs. providing new info.
Some other feedback (also spoilers)
One thing I felt was missing a bit in this chapter was the familiarity factor—while there are bits and pieces of reminiscence, and of course the relationship with David, just about every other character is completely unfamiliar to Spillane, with the only exceptions being the Glass couple whom we apparently didn’t know well enough to have any significant prior insight on.
While I understand that this facilitates the clue about Winter having been there for a long time, I felt like it would have been more evocative of the “returning to your old university” plot if we’d actually gotten to interact with some familiar faces besides David, especially if their earlier interactions with Spillane colored their mutual perceptions in a similar way. As it is, it ended up not feeling that different from if we’d been asked to investigate a totally new university that we’d never been to before—we’re interacting mostly with total strangers, either way.
I had a similar feeling regarding Maria—it felt like one of the “hooks” set up by the previous interlude was that we would have to present as a couple (whether we wanted to or not), but this aspect barely comes up, other than a brief interaction with David. We spend so much time grilling the other people at the table that it actually sort of stands out that nobody really bothers to question us, which feels a little odd given the premise of attending the event under false pretenses and in a possibly fake relationship with somebody that might not even get along with Spillane. It’s an interesting and potentially challenging dynamic that never really gets explored.
Again, this is something that I think could be more relevant if there was somebody else Spillane knew among the suspects—somebody who would have a reason to care about Spillane’s personal life and (if Maria is their partner) have reason to wonder how that relationship could have happened (or re-happened, if they’re exes).
A stat issue (minor spoilers)
So, at some point in this chapter there’s an option to try to sleep in the bed with Maria, which requires your relationship stat with her to be 65 or above.
But I don’t think this is actually possible.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but I did a quick Ctrl+F pass through the existing chapters for “mariarel” and from what I can tell, the maximum you can actually get at that point is 55: a base of 25 as established in the startup file, +20 from saying you have a “good” relationship with her during character creation, +5 for not betraying her in character creation, and +5 for asking to dance with her in the first interlude. (There are no options in Chapter 3 that can raise mariarel before the stat check in question.)
Of course, even the 55 is assuming you never pick anything that might lower her stat, which is, you know, never a guarantee with Maria.
And while I personally didn’t take this route, I see in the code that there’s also an option to confess to Maria about having an affair with Esme/Abdul, with a relationship check of 85(!!!) for her to not break up with you.
While this option comes a bit later, after there have been some opportunities to raise her affinity in this chapter, I have to assume that 85 is still quite impossible to reach at this point in the game. While perhaps a realistic number, given Maria’s temperament, I presume from the fact that you have a scene written for that potentiality that you intended for some people to be able to reach this scene.
Those points aside—this chapter was a refreshing change of pace, and a lot of fun thematically. Looking forward to the next update.
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