Winter-Over

I beta tested this game.

This is a murder mystery set on an Antarctic ice station. A murder has been discovered, and you are highly motivated to solve it. Unfortunately, without any real authority, all you can do is gather evidence and hope people find it.

The game is set out on a time-based system. You have a certain number of days until the real authorities are available. Each day is split up into 4 time periods (I think). During each time period you can interview someone, bond with someone, or do a couple special activities. Sometimes timed events come your way.

Conversation can be down just by clicking each link, but sometimes a new piece of evidence can add new topics, which adds complexity to the game.

Some actions require a closer relationship with someone or extended time, which means you may have to replay if you make poor choices early on.

I found the mystery intriguing and the clues logical. It's in the format where the player amasses enough evidence to satisfy themselves, and then you select a murderer to accuse (like Toby's Nose, for instance), but the game can prompt you when you have enough evidence.

Overall, I liked this mystery. The time and stress meters add some extra complexity, and the Notes system helped me stay organized and not have to worry I was going to forget something important. I think this will do pretty well in the competition, although there are many good games this year to compete against!

Note: This review was written during IFComp 2024, and originally posted in the authors' section of the intfiction forum on 22 Sep 2024.

This is a tightly written crime mystery set in an Antarctic research station. Implemented in Twine, and running over a taut 10 days of investigation.

I liked an awful lot about this. The writing is strong, building a palpable increasing sense of tension as you play. The emotional stakes for solving the crime are high ((Spoiler - click to show)I had terrible fears from the start of the game). And the constantly advancing time, and the knowledge that you only have a tight time limit to work within, was gripping.

There are some neat tricks in the game interface. Just at the point where you start investigating, and the game says you’d better take notes, a notes section appears in the web interface, which updates as you find new information and clues. There is also a handy character list you can refer to.

I did find the running around from location to location a little exasperating. I’d often be looking for a given person, but unless they were in the obvious place I seemed to spend a lot of time going searching. Which, to be fair, maybe represents how it would feel on the spot in this setting. But was a bit frustrating for this player. Though on rechecking a save file I seem to have missed the location schedules for the characters, which are provided in game in (Spoiler - click to show)the notes section. How did I miss those previously?

There are resource management issues to contend with. You need to look after your welfare, but that uses up time and opportunities for further investigations. What to prioritise becomes quite a decision, and can influence later outcomes.

At the end of the ten days - if you last that long - you get a chance to accuse someone of being the murderer. I am moderately astonished that I got this right at first go. Though I had saved just before, so tried reloading after to see what happened if I chose someone else. Even if you accuse correctly, I think the nature of the ending will vary, depending on choices you made earlier. Which is nice.

But yes, a very good game. Highly recommended.

Wrapping this year's reviews with one more murder mystery! This is another one in the vein of The Killings in Wasacona: you have a limited amount of time to solve the case, important actions all consume fractions of this time, and the clock controls various opportunities (e.g. a character might only be available in the evening, since she's asleep in the mornings). It's also a choice-based Twine piece.

Winter-Over, though, crosses this with a classic closed circle scenario: a murder occurred among the staff of an Antarctic research station in the middle of polar winter, and nobody will be able to enter or leave for ten days. Which means the killer must have been one of your coworkers…and until you can find and confront them, you're locked in with them, with no means of escape. The game is named after the "winter-over syndrome" that affects people wintering over in the research bases, which is definitely getting to the protagonist as the game progresses—managing your levels of stress is vital, and all the descriptions of rooms and characters in the game change as you become stressed, becoming increasingly paranoid.

The atmosphere is excellent, but I admit I struggled with the interface. The majority of the gameplay involves exploring the station, figuring out which people will be at which places at which times, and asking them questions. Questioning one person might unlock new dialogue with another—if Alice says her alibi was playing board games with Bob, then you can go talk to Bob to confirm or deny it, and then potentially go back to Alice to push her on the contradiction—and a convenient NOTES tab automatically keeps track of what you've learned about everyone's schedule.

Another part of the gameplay, though, involves doing various tasks (gardening, dishes, etc) with people to reduce your stress and improve your relationship with them. The better your relationship is, the more they'll tell you. But I got hopelessly stuck on this part for a while, because I thought I needed to find the appropriate NPC in the appropriate room for it—you don't, if you choose to do dishes, you can summon any NPC from anywhere in the station to do them with you, instead of only the one in the cafeteria.

(On the interface side, I also didn't love how often the game presented text one paragraph at a time with a "click to continue" link, instead of an actual choice or a full page of text to read. But that's not uncommon in Twine, it's just not my style, so I can't dock points for that.)

Once I figured out the interface, I quickly ruled out all but one of the suspects. But I kept searching, since I didn't have a motive, and I wasn't sure if the rest of the staff would accept my logic without one—and thus gave the killer the chance to try to silence me! Maybe I could have ended the case a few days earlier, but having that uncertainty, and getting attacked for it, was a high point. It felt like it was happening because of how I was playing the character, rather than just being scripted (even though, of course, it was), and immersed me well in the situation.

I also found the two twists (what (Spoiler - click to show)Victor was up to and what (Spoiler - click to show)Bob was up to) excellent, and it ended the story on a very high note. The ambience, and how it changed with my stress level, was great, and the logistical management was very fun. There are just a few things I wish had been different:
- I wish the stress-reducing activities tied into the logistics of the station more, instead of being able to summon NPCs anywhere at any time; this would probably need more activities in different rooms, but it would also play up that stress gets worse when you're alone
- The days and nights kind of blurred together, which I'm sure is intentional, but also meant I quickly lost track of how many days I had left; adding something like "three days until the authorities arrive" to the date display would have helped that, since I have no idea if I finished with one day left or with five (I very quickly forgot which date the deadline was)

Overall, though, a very fun mystery, and a good note to end on!