A Death in Hyperspace

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

Man, is hyperspace a great metaphor for my experience with this game, especially THIS game’s version of hyperspace. Isolated enclosure murder mysteries are well suited to a sci-fi implementation - what could be more forbidding, more confining than the depths of space? Add a super well-conceived vision of hyperspace as a psychologically corrosive OTHER space just adds fuel to an already glowing fire as it were, and gives the game a ticking clock to solve against: stay too long and the humans might go insane!

Not only is this really cool conceit very effectively established, I cannot describe the charge I got seeing that it was an ACTUAL REALTIME TIMER! Holy crap, I better start clicking! Good thing I am an AI computer that thinks in nanotime! In the moment, I didn’t even have cause to question, “Wait, WHY is that timer so definitive? Surely sci-fi forensics would solve things, once we land?” If nothing else, as the ship’s AI, I wanted to solve it, not leave it to some meatbag with a tricorder.

From there, gameplay segues into a series of suspect interviews, where, as these things often do, it seems EVERYONE has a reason to kill the victim! (Why are we ALWAYS traveling on (Spoiler - click to show)the Orient Express in these things??? Can’t we just once take the 7:21 train up three stops?) The mystery solving gameplay is kind of an underutilized one, at least as far as my mystery IF experience goes. You are looking to match stories to physical evidence to buttress or refute testimony, and thereby establish who might be lying. Between the ever ticking clock and the breadth of suspects there is a LOT to do, and the speed with which it gets done is equal parts frenetic and deliberate. I was constantly metering my impulse to speed up, to ensure I didn’t miss relevant details. I was fighting the mentally clouding effects of the timer as things speeded on, just like the hyperspace effects on my meaty passengers! That was pretty cool. The notebook portion of the game was just about perfect - summarizing interviews and evidence, and allowing me, robot detective, to decide whether this made them more or less likely to be the criminal.

Eventually, I had secured enough interviews and evidence to make an accusation, and I was right! Hooray computer detective, we did it! This was the point where the game dropped out of hyperspace. Now with clearer eyes, I noticed the game professed 11 endings. 11 endings, surely that doesn’t mean…?

So I played a second time. This time, notwithstanding the timer’s relentless ticking, I was no longer under the spell. I could skim dialogue I had seen before, was much more efficient at physical evidence gathering, and quickly had my post-hyperspace suspicions verified. I also had deliberately turned my suspicions a different direction. SERIOUS spoilers from here. Turns out, (Spoiler - click to show)this is kind of mystery where no matter WHO you accuse, you are right. I just don’t know about that. It is kind of a betrayal, no? What seemed a tense web of testimony and evidence didn’t really need untangling, EVERY thread was (Spoiler - click to show)the ‘right’ one. Even exculpatory evidence could be spun to damning with seemingly no drag on the proceedings. This wholly transformed the experience from a kind of clever mystery-solving jam to a facts-don’t-matter, (Spoiler - click to show)collect-all-the-endings jam. Not only is that NOT what I look for in mysteries, it runs counter to all the frisson that first runthrough had and kind of undermines the glow of that run! For me anyway, collect-the-endings is inadequate compensation for that loss. On one level, I get it. Mysteries always have the ‘problem’ of post-solution replay value. Removing the tension of ‘will I solve it in time?’ is a pretty big impact on the gameplay experience though. For me, too big to justify.

As a rating, where does this leave me? My first playthrough was a white knuckle run of pure, uncut Enagement, there is no denying that. Subsequent playthroughs exposed the illusion in a way that retroactively diminished even the first run. It dropped me out of the hallucinogenic bottle of hyperspace to the cold, clarity of real space. That difference feels like a penalty point.

Played: 10/1/24
Playtime: 1hr, two endings
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging/Mostly Seamless, penalty point for heel turn replay mechanism
Would Play Again?: No, experience seems complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless