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So... why was he murdered again?, January 12, 2024Murder at the Manor is a short pulpy murder-mystery game, where you play as Detective Picton, tasked to solve the an unsolvable case. The game, however, only lets you interrogate the different suspects. The corpse and murder weapon have been sent for testing, and you don't even get to investigate really where the murder took place. You only get information about the case through the suspects' answers (who give very little, throwing blame on one another).
With the murdered chosen at random with every game, the whole mystery relies on a he-said-she-said about each other's alibis - each suspect never changing their location but sometimes changing their stance on whether they saw the other NPCs. After talking to everyone (which you are forced to because the butler is weirdly invested in being part of the investigation), you can accuse someone and the game ends. You are told whether your choice was correct or not in an ending sequence, which, if you were successful, mention how tight your investigation was, with a folder full of evidence (WHERE?).
Because of its length, and the surface-levelness of the investigation, neither the good or the bad ending feel quite satisfying. You accuse someone and thrown forward in time to after the court case, told only of the result. Not knowing why the suspect would murder the major, or even how they could have done it... what was the point of it? Where is the conflict? Why was there a murder in the first place? How could they have done it?
I restarted the game a handful of times, randomly picked a suspect without going through the whole interrogation... and managed to get the correct murderer half the time. I think it would have worked better if you could actually do some investigating, searching for actual clues, maybe get the coroner's report or more information about the weapon, or pressing for motives.
On the interface side, the chosen colours for the links made it pretty hard to read with the dark background. The "Undo" button wasn't working either when you reach the end. There didn't seem to be a "Restart" button either.