Thank you so much for the kind words, I’m really glad you’re enjoying the story so far! Indeed, I’m gonna have to comb through to find all of the gender hiccups once the book is finished. Alternatively, if you ever find exactly where one is, if you post a screenshot of it here or tell me exactly where it was I can fix it right away and if it out with the following update!
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Chapter 4 Victim’s House route is FINISHED!
YOU WILL HAVE TO RESTART THE DEMO IN ORDER TO PLAY
Hello all! As the title says, the newest part of Chapter 4 is completely finished and ready to play! A couple things to mention, there is a TW for mentions of SA and Torture in this chapter. I don’t think the way they’re mentioned is explicit enough to get them thrown into the adults category, but I’ll be messaging a mod or two just in case to make sure. This is a mature story with mature themes, and the themes in question are handled with the utmost of care and respect.
Another thing worth mentioning is, TEXT BOX INVESTIGATIONS ARE A THING! I FIGURED OUT HOW TO MAKE THEM A THING THAT WORKED! Okay, so they break randomtest in CSIDE, small downside. But other than that, from what I tested (for hours today) they work just fine and I am very proud of myself for figuring it out. It may be a pretty small feat, but darn if it doesn’t feel cool to be able to implement a feature in these games the isn’t just click a button on the screen.
It took a lot of work, and there are still additional features that aren’t going to be out until the full release of the game/when I get around to adding them (like a record of all the clues you’ve found for the current investigation, which will be able to be accessed through the stats menu). For people that aren’t a fan of the text box investigations, I would like to add that in the final product, they will be optional.
This has been months in the making (mainly because school was a thing) so I truly hope you enjoy, and let the investigation now fully be under way, and don’t forget to check out the new EXTRA SCENE in the stats menu in the beginning of the game, after reading Special Agent Lance’s session with Dr. Cullen!
Patreon link, but still entirely optional: https://www.patreon.com/TheBureauIF
Also, all of the RO’s now have preview WiP images available up above in the original post of this topic!
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Thanks for the great work, we appreciate it.
I’ve never heard of this, what is it exactly and is this really important to the story or just optional?
There’s nothing wrong with a story getting thrown in the the adults category if you’re afraid of it, in fact less restrictions can bring out the best in a story imo.
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Generally it’s sort of a mystery mini game where you try to pick out a clue or inconsistency in the story. Maybe you’re going over a crime scene and at the end it’ll ask you what was out of place and you enter “boots” because why were the guy’s boots all muddy if he’d stayed home all night like he said.
It’s more difficult than choosing from a list because it doesn’t prompt you with possible answers, so it really tests what they picked up from reading.
I have a few suggestions regarding these.
First, I think you should consider the input casing. Lots of people play these games on mobile devices that will auto capitalize, so if you can check for something like “if (input=“Thing”) or (input=“thing”)” it would probably catch a lot of things and make it a bit more user friendly. This got me a couple times testing it, because my iPad autocapitalizes words.
Also, I’d consider some possible alternate phrasings people may use. For example, I tried to look at the “table” and could not. It was not until I checked the code that I realized I should try to look at the “massage table”. When the “table” attempt failed I had just figured it couldn’t be looked at, but it turned out to be a keyword issue.
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When you choose to go to the corners, you get sent to the victims house instead.
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These are genuinely good suggestions, and while I may be able to implement the capitalization change in the future, the similar phrasing change may be a bit much. That would expand the amount of work and ‘what if’ thinking I’d have to do while coding exponentially, and while I would love to do this, I am only one person. I was instead bouncing around the idea of a hint feature that might be something along the lines of, if you type in things that are not valid options three times in the same text box investigation sequence then you’d have the option to highlight the important text in the scene. Surprisingly, that would be a bit less complicated to work through I think from a coding standpoint.
But yes, as a PSA to everyone playing the update: text box investigations do not take capital letters right now. Everything will be in lowercase.
@Supporter Unfortunately the Coroner Office scene is not written yet, so I rerouted that scene to go to the victim’s house for now so that people could get the most out of the game as it is currently.
EDIT: To put into perspective how totally out of my depth I was at tackling this beast of an idea (little spoiler peak behind the curtain):
There were about 10 possible clues, some of which have slightly different text whether you have or don’t have other clues already, or if you’ve already looked at the current clue. (If I’m remembering correctly, 7 unique text options for the Massage Room and 11 or 12 unique text options for the bedroom?) Then there were two different branches based on whether or not you unlocked the computer or not.
If you did unlock the computer, how you choose to react affects who pulls you aside to talk to you, and all of those conversations slightly change depending on whether or not you picked up a piece of evidence in the house.
If you did not unlock the computer, you always get pulled aside by the same person, but there are three main pieces of evidence that each change the dialogue you get during that scene, if you got any of them at all. With the different possible combinations of those, there are seven different ways that conversation can go.
Needless to say, there’s a reason why this update in particular had like, 50k extra words but only 12k worth added per playthrough (if someone finds all the clues). This is adding to the pattern of making sure I can add enough content to hopefully want to make people play it more than once, but still give a satisfying and complete story per playthrough!
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YAY, MORE BUREAU!
/sighfuckingbotneedsacompletesentence
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does anyone have some hints for the password on the laptop??
not the actual password but some clues on where I can find info on it etc.
I, unfortunately, am not a detective and am functioning on a single brain cell so any help would be appreciated! 
thank you!
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Hint for the laptop password: The green highlighter colored dollar sign described on the laptop
I hope that clue helps! I also made it so that you are not able to type in the password for the laptop until you find the clue needed to help deduce what the password is. So, if you’re able to type it in, you have indeed found what you needed to to know what the password is. Although seeing this, it has now dawned on me how important having that “notes” section is in the stats page, so I’m probably going to put out a mini update with that in there in the next coming weeks as well.
I hope the text box investigation is engaging so far, and if you can’t get the laptop password, there is another way to get the smoke and gun you need from the investigation. Sometimes things just take a second look 
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thank you sm for the reply!! now trying to work out what to type with that hint 
I think I have found the clue needed to type in the password as it lets me type one in but says denied if incorrect - so that seems like a good start.
By any chance, do clues that we find in the other room and bedroom help with the password hint or just the green highlighter colored dollar sign? Like do they contribute to the actual password?
Sorry for all the questions!! Seriously, the world would not be better off if I was a detective 
I am enjoying the challenge of having to find the clues ourselves btw - it’s different from IF I’ve played before and a good little ‘mini game’ to include.
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I’m stuck with the laptop password too
I want to say two things:
This investigation system is amazing! I’m having a lot of fun searching the rooms, even when my Brazilian brain tries to type the things I want to investigate in Portuguese LOL and then I forget the English word for the thing and need to search again in the text. 
Also, let’s talk really quick about S. How the hell I didn’t play their route before? After the first interaction, I thought “Well, S has a lot of PTSD and probably will lash on my MC a lot, so I’ll avoid it” AND BOY HOW I WAS WRONG
I played their route ONCE today and now I want to protect S and give my life for them. S is such a sweetie IT HURTS. Seriously the scene with them after the funeral is just… just… I love S so much. I just want to hold S gently and tell them everything is going to be alright. 
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Are the text investigation bits optional or mandatory for story progression?
There is one clue in particular that connects to the password clue, and has to do with the bolded text I made in my previous hint I would suggest, for right now, making a save slot at the beginning of the investigation just so you can go back and look at clues you’ve already seen until I get that evidence page up and running. And no need to apologize for all the questions, I’m just glad people are finding the investigation portion to be engaging and fun!
@RenataC I’m glad you’re also enjoying it! I hope it will get a bit more manageable once I have that evidence system in there so you can look at all the important clues you’ve gathered. Honestly, I should’ve held off and released the update with that feature, but I live and learn!
And S definitely has some PTSD, among other things, going on with them that make them a bit more complicated to communicate with than the others, for sure. But I try my best to make every character have those conflicts where they might butt heads with the MC, but in the end have that pinnacle wholesome moment as well. I might be biased, but I’d say it’s worth playing through all the routes LOL
@Heartbreak You do have to technically play through it to continue with the story, but I try to make sure there’s a route for everything, so you’re technically not forced to investigate anything. If it’s not your cup of tea, for now until I eventually end up implementing the alternative/legacy way to play the investigations, you can simply enter all three rooms then type “leave” in the text box and then you get the option to go back with the evidence you’ve gathered.
However I will say, doing this at this present moment will drastically cut down on the amount of content you get out of the update. I encourage people here to talk about the clues they’ve found and the different paths they’ve gone down to help each other out though!
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Yeah I would say me personally and most people who aren’t that big on mystery and investigations we prefer story and romance with drama and not having to think about investigations and stuff. Just not my cup of tea, I prefer character interactions over thinking about clues and investigations haha
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This is true, but props to you, because you made a character with all those issues going on that’s still approachable. S surprised me because, based on the first interaction we have with them, I thought they would be totally different! I thought they would be more of an “I don’t want to know you, I don’t want to talk to you, leave me alone” character.
I have played the post-funeral scene for Carter too and was very emotional, I liked it a lot! I need to play this scene for Kris and Arthur.
If I remember correctly in the last version of the demo I played there was a scene where you talk to the wife of one of the victims, is this scene being reworked or something like that? I didn’t find it playing today.
EDIT: ah, nevermind It. I didn’t find the scene because I went investigate de scrime scene with S and Arthur. The scene is in K and Carter scene. omg I’m so dumb
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You should still be able to play that scene. That scene is one you choose on the train after having the first possible one-on-one with one of the team members. You just have to choose to go with Special Agent’s Lance and Alvarez during the train scene.
@Heartbreak That’s fair, everyone has their preferences after all. When the game is finished, there will most likely be an option in the beginning of the game to forego the text based investigations in favor of the standard CoG playstyle if one wishes. But for now I’m going to focus on trying to fine tune this system for the people who would want the experience.
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Not in the least lol. I have tried soooo many variations of what that could be in my head. I’ve never been good at guessing games, I avoid them like the plague. I’ve been trying for twenty minutes. Thank God I’ve been using the same three passwords for the last twenty years, if I had to try and guess one I have forgotten I would be so screwed.
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If you’d like me to DM you the password for the computer, I’m more than happy to as I don’t have the proper tools for people to utilize to figure it out yet. I just don’t want to put it here just for spoiler reasons in case people still want to try and figure them out. But I definitely don’t want anyone to not enjoy the game as much, especially due to the proper systems not being implemented yet.
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Im ashamed to say it, but I just went code diving for it. Im not saying what it is, but geez. I feel like hitting my head repeatedly on the desk for being soooooo stupid. It’s literally so easy once you realize. Good job, I adore that it made me think, fail, then cheat to get through. Really sold the whole ‘trying to break into someones laptop vibe’ lol
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LMAO I’m at least glad it’s not objectively insanely difficult in hindsight! But yeah, it’ll be a lot more doable once all the proper things are implemented, for sure. Regardless, I’m glad you enjoyed it!