Miss Gosling's Last Case

This was a long game! It took me around 3 to 4 hours to finish, possibly because clicking links wasn't quite as fast as typing, but it went well.

Two of the most enjoyable murder mysteries of the last ten years are Erstwhile, a twine game where a ghost has to try to solve his own murder, and Toby's Nose, a parser game where a dog has to aid Sherlock Holmes.

This game combines the two! It's a parser-choice hybrid where you are a ghost that has to influence your dog to solve your own crime.

The setup is a classic murder mystery: you have died in the middle of the night, and four people stand to inherit from you. Each suspect has to be cleared or convicted before the day is through.

The game relies heavily on physics and on the five senses, as well as interactions with the neighboring humans.

Overall I found it very fun. I'd like to describe some nitpicks with the puzzles but those should come with the caveat that I had a good time!

The thing with some of the puzzles is that I could conceive of many possible solutions to problems but couldn't tell what the game was looking for or what effect things would have. How much do lights illuminate things? How far does sound travel? How does a dog communicate with a human?

I grew a bit frustrated, but a light bulb went off when I realized how few red herrings the game has (although they're there!). I changed from *deductive* reasoning to *inductive* reasoning. Instead of making a plan and trying to figure out how to achieve it, I looked at the items, actions and locations I hadn't used yet and thought, 'How can I do something with this?'

Occasionally there were plotlines that stretched my disbelief (especially the amount of things the dog got away with) but not so much more so than a normal mystery book.

Overall, I enjoyed the high level of polish. I realized later on that the 'find ____' options were actually really good at zipping you through the map quickly; if you remember where something is, you can just type it in and click on the 'find such and such' link and go there immediately. I also liked the characters of Watson and Davis.

The hint system works very well. The game has some automatic hints at the beginning which were a bit too spoilery for me, but fortunately the author has added a way to turn those off; the normal hints, on the other hand, can be accessed at any time.