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Review
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]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.[/spoiler]
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]pufferfish and snake meat[/spoiler]. 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.
