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!

A murder mystery set in Antarctica!

The PC is a maintenance worker at a small station during the winter season, whose brother Daniel (also a worker there), has been murdered. First of all, this is such a good explanation for the “locked down with limited suspects” setup and why an ordinary person is investigating the case. The writing is evocative and represents this well — I loved the atmosphere of the isolated station, the cold starkness, the increasing stress as the killer starts to retaliate against you. The scenery descriptions change throughout to become more ominous, which was a nice touch. The writing was well done, you get the sense of a grieving, frantic person who's not the most professional at investigating, and the character dynamics and relationships felt natural.

The main gameplay revolves around talking to colleagues, establishing alibis, sorting out their relationships to Daniel and each other, and determining possible motives. The game responded well to the information you gained — if you learned an incriminating fact you could confront that person and get the option to talk about it. I rarely felt that I was stuck, at any moment there was at least one thing I'm following up on, it felt natural to chase one lead after another.

The game adds complications as everyone moves around the station, and it can take a while to track down a specific person. You have to sleep and engage in various activities to manage stress, and you need to do activities with specific characters to increase rapport with them and get them to share information. The officials arrive in 10 days, so there's a trade-off between paying attention to self care and friendships, and pushing through the investigation. The killer also sabotages things to distract you and waste your time, which nicely added to the increasingly tense atmosphere.

I identified the killer by (Spoiler - click to show) getting into Daniel's phone and finding a note the killer wrote, but I got too stressed at the end and killed him accidentally, oops, so I never found out his motives or the murder weapon (although I suspect it's related to Jack's faulty data and Daniel being nosy). It would be interesting to replay and focus on Jack, to see what else I can discover.

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.