A Death in Hyperspace

A beloved spaceship captain has died, and ship AI, a lover of mysteries, is eager to investigate.

Unlike a traditional whodunnit, it focuses more on storytelling and exploring different possibilities. There isn't a single murderer to identify: you can accuse anyone and read a version of events where they're guilty. Some of them don't involve murder at all — so far I've seen endings where (Spoiler - click to show) the "AI" is a child playing pretend, one where the captain died of a natural heart attack, and one where he took his own life and staged it as a murder scene as a final gift to you.

This is a multi-author collaboration where each author wrote a character, and the endings have been fascinating stories in and of themselves. I find reading them to be a better experience than actually playing the game.

My playing experience definitely suffered from diving into this game right a different murder mystery game. There is a 30-minute IRL timer to identify a suspect, and since you can find evidence pointing toward almost anyone, plus the non-murder possibilities, the evidence for each suspect is sparse and contradictory. Going in I had expectations of a traditional mystery, but instead found plenty of vague clues and suspicious events without clear ways to either rule people out or confirm guilt. At 30 minutes in I couldn’t single out one person who seemed definitively guiltier than the others, and I had no idea how some of my evidence fit together. I was rather disappointed when I discovered that there is no additional evidence and the clues are deliberately contradictory. The limited clues made the investigation less smooth too — if I found an inconsistency, there was little chance I could follow up on it by investigating more or confronting a suspect.

I think this game would benefit from setting the player’s expectations better, making it clear that this isn’t a murder with a single solution.