Erstwhile

This was one of of my favorite games of the competition. It’s a smooth Twine game that plays well both on desktop and mobile.

You play as a ghost who died, or was murdered, during Thanksgiving. You have to simultaneously learn (as a player) about the neighborhood while gathering (as a ghost) mental clues to find out what happened.

The game is divided into two chunks: exploration and linking. Exploration has you looking through the thoughts of others to gain clues, and linking has you pick two related clues to produce a new one in a complex multi-layered system. I’ve seen mysteries use this technique (and written one), but this is the best implementation of the idea I’ve seen so far, and very satisfying. I got stuck near the end, but I feel like a puzzle game is perfect difficulty if I do well until the end and need a hint then.

Great for mystery fans, and fun for everyone.