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Review
A murder mystery with a rather unique premise and mechanics: a lord of fairyland was killed, a bunch of nobles are claiming credit, and it’s up to you to poke holes in their confessions to find the real killer. But it takes a while, about an hour, before you actually get to the scene of the crime. I thought that was an odd choice, to advertise a murder mystery but put so much stuff before it. Some of the obstacles turned out to be rather fitting, like how the protagonist is in a wheelchair and struggles to get up the palace stairs, or helping the 'underfoot' spirits in their efforts to get accommodations. But other parts, like the word searches, felt unnecessary. In my opinion, the game could do more to sprinkle in news about the murder at the start, and better signpost that getting into the palace is the goal.
I enjoyed how the protagonist is in a wheelchair and this actually has an impact on the game mechanics. You can’t get up stairs, open a heavy door, or navigate the narrow stalls of the goblin market, and have to use spells to find workarounds. And the paperwork! Navigating the complex bureaucracy and filling out convoluted forms was the aspect of gameplay I found the most interesting.
The mystery itself was fun to solve. For the most part it was easy to tell that a suspect was innocent, either because they had no incentive to kill or from slip-ups they made in their statement. The real challenge is in finding concrete evidence that they couldn't have done the crime in the way they described. All of these puzzles had clever solutions, some involving submitting more complicated forms.
It did get tedious when I was pretty sure I knew who the killer was, curiosity satisfied, but couldn't prove it. This was especially the case when I died, without the chance to undo, and realised I'd have to redo all the convoluted form-filling (I suppose this is also true to life). I did like that the killer was (major spoiler) (Spoiler - click to show)the one person who didn’t immediately try to benefit from the death, and who killed the lord out of frustration at his assholery instead of for political gain. Proving she was the killer and helping her become Queen felt good.
