The Litchfield Mystery

This is the third mystery IF game by thesleuthacademy. I enjoyed the previous ones, and I had a good time with the exploration and deduction process in this one too, ultimately successfully figuring out the killer, motive, and means (although I did miss the actual murder weapon). Some of the criticisms I had of the previous game, The Case of the Solitary Resident (my review) were resolved here, making for overall smoother gameplay, although some of them still apply (namely, the lawnmower nature and not distinguishing between visited and unvisited links).

But the biggest issue with this one is something I only mentioned in passing in that last review. There’s a limitation to these games in that the scenarios and the characters all exist solely in service to the deduction puzzle. With this one in particular, that setup really didn’t work for me. While we meet a whole cast of characters, with names and emotions and secrets, in the end, all that matters is finding whodunnit; the details—the human details, that is—aren’t important.

This is a straight-up spoiler of the solution, so be forewarned: (Spoiler - click to show)at the end, having successfully solved the case, we’re told: “Lionel Litchfield, a workaholic [and the murder victim], barely had a social life. He ended up having an affair with the young Marguerite Hansel [the culprit].” Marguerite is Lionel’s child’s governess. Lionel is married. So these lines reveal him as both a cheating husband and an employer who’s fine with starting a sexual relationship with a young woman in his employ.

The short story A Jury of Her Peers, in which (Spoiler - click to show)two women choose not to share their conclusion that a neighbor murdered her abusive husband with the local sheriff, came to mind as I thought about this game. In The Litchfield Mystery, (Spoiler - click to show)Marguerite doesn’t get a jury, of her peers or otherwise; she gets a male police detective, embodied by me the player, whose only pursuit is of law-defined justice. There’s no option to take the power imbalance implicit in an employer-employee relationship, in the even-more-sexist-than-today society of 1937, into consideration; neither is there any concern for what Marguerite’s fate may be as a young women convicted of murder at that time. I think a version of the game that did consider these things, and perhaps let you choose whether or not to reveal your findings after solving the case, would be a stronger one.

Just as a heads up to readers, I have a personal bias in favor of mystery games.

This is the third thesleuthacademy I've played. I've come to expect a long exploration section where everything needs to be checked out more or less in order, followed by a quiz on whether you solved the mystery correctly or not.

This game mixes it up a bit from the last two, with some non-linearity in both exploration and interviews (so you can follow up on hints from one person to another). I did peek at the hints where I thought of multiple solutions to one puzzle and didn't want to waste valuable ifcomp time on the wrong one.

The characters here are also more developed than in the past two games. They were mostly distinct and interesting, outside of a couple of background characters. It's fun to see the author improve in both writing and programming in such a short time.

This is a classic murder mystery set in a 1937 manor house where a body is found with a dagger in its back. You have to investigate the cast of characters, including servants and family, to discover the murderer.

I got the mystery mostly right but completely botched the motive. I thought (Spoiler - click to show)The L in the letter was the brother, and that the zoologist was in love with him and wanted to off the victim to get the brother some money, not knowing what the will contained.

Overall, I enjoyed this, and if I had any advice for the future, it'd be to continue the development in characters and interactions. I loved the unusual bits in this, like the (Spoiler - click to show)pufferfish and snake meat. While the interaction was more engaging this time, there is still a lot of buildup with examining a ton of things in a row that could be a little more fun, I'm just not sure how. Good game overall.

Motive, Means, Opportunity. Any consumer of detective entertainment has heard this mantra many times. It is so ubiquitous it kind of loses its meaning a bit, becoming shorthand for ‘slow down: procedural ahead.’ LM is a work that, if you let it, attempts to shed the cultural crust and expose the beating heart of this hoary old formulation.

I contrast this explicitly with what I have come to think of as detective games’ predominant paradigm: Catch The Lie. I do not assert this is the ONLY paradigm, just that it is prevalent enough that it is the default one, at least to me. Under CTL, the gameplay involves getting NPCs to give you detailed information, finding facts that contradict that info, then tugging on that lie to Confession. I do not mean to impugn this formula, it is ALSO hoary and tried and true. It has the dual benefits of playing to the extremely powerful human need for “GOTCHA!”; and being a laser-focused implementation problem. Here are facts A-Q. Here are Testimonies R-V. Aha, G cannot lead to T! I WIN, SUCK IT MURDERER!!!

To my chagrin, I first engaged the game on the latter terms, and was not having a good time of it. Facts, facts, so many facts, but NPCs who resolutely refused to lie to me (for the most part)! I spun around a long time gathering evidence, sending everything not nailed down to the lab (thank goodness our budget and 1937 tech was up to the task!), and circling the mansion like a vulture with a busted turn signal. And was unable to rule ANYONE out! Holy crap, this thing will never get solved! I actually got a little mad at the game, starting to think its construction was flawed and opaque and NOT FUN.

I’m not sure what flipped the switch in my head, whether there was some gentle nudge in the game itself, or just a random bubbling of detective entertainment in my head that surfaced MMO at exactly the right time - after all the legwork while I was scrambling for a path forward. Why not, let’s analyze all our suspects against the classic MMO trio. (Which, MOM is right there, cops. Have you no sense of whimsy? Actually, stupid question. Any culture which is so committed to body cam sabotage, NO you do NOT.)

Uh, back to jolly old England. When reflected against MMO/MOM the mystery shed its opacity like an exhausted carapace and blossomed into a butterfly. Methodology spoiler: (Spoiler - click to show)a simple spreadsheet of suspect v MMO, attempting to slot all available information was the key. And a super satisfying one! Analyzing and grading each atomic intersection, then digesting what that meant led inexorably to a clear best theory. Then, when the game threw a curveball into additional crime, the same approach solved that too! It was as satisfying a clouds-parting moment as you could hope for in detective gaming - surprising in its uncommon approach, but completely justifying and rewarding its conceits!

And yet, as satisfyingly rigorous and robust as its construction was, something tickled at me. Why was MMO not leaving me as triumphant as CTL games have? I have two theories and they both hinge on one inescapable fact: MMO is essentially CIRCUMSTANTIAL. My first theory is that GOTCHA is a powerful human impulse. More than delivering physical justice, it also delivers MORAL justice - humiliating malefactors as well as punishing them. Oooh that is so sweet, the more so as it so rarely happens in real life anymore, now that hypocrisy and shame are outmoded ideas. MMO leaves deniability on the table, and belligerent antagonists need not acknowledge their crimes, even after jury verdicts. Was justice even served if we don’t get the epic dissembling??

The second theory is that, on some level, MMO is actually not PROOF. While we can exercise the formula, we recognize on some level this is crime solving without smoking gun, a “likelihood of guilt” analysis. In the context of reality, this feels completely accurate but also highlights how imperfect justice can be. In the context of FICTION it is worse. So, so many clever mysteries play with the gap between appearance and proof that we EXPECT likely answers to be refuted by plot twists. We have been trained by years of detective media that without proof, we set ourselves up to be bamboozled by tricksy authors.

It’s not the lack of verisimilitude that undermines our triumph, it is the unfair sense that ‘isn’t there a missing twist here?’

None of this is against THIS game, well not directly. I went from Engaged to Frustrated, then to SUPER Engaged in my playing of it. I am not pining for a different game and laud the novelty of its construction, forcing a new engagement of something so familiar. This is an admirable twist of its own! I don’t WANT LM to be recast along more familiar lines, I LIKE its unique approach. I can’t help that human evolution puts this particular formula on a different endorphin footing than CTL. This is a more real-feeling investigation that eschews the cheap tricks detective fiction has adopted to tickle our lizard brain. Leaving our lizard brain just a bit put out.

Played: 11/7/25
Playtime: 1hr, finished
Artistic/Technical ratings: Engaging/Seamless, penalty point for entitled-ass lizard brain
Would Play After Comp?: No, experience feels complete

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