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Review
Ah yes, the second mystery game from the writer (in terms of what I've played so far). I have mixed feelings about this one. As with the Solitary Resident, the writing is engaging and leaves you wanting to find out what happened. From a gameplay perspective, I like the way this game is constructed, with the ability to investigate different sections to uncover clues slowly. I managed to find all clues on my first attempt, and having an organized menu of clues found does help from a presentation standpoint.
There are plenty of clues, little puzzles, red herrings which you can get out of the way with some investigation and so on.
That said, even at the end, I was unable to figure out who the murderer was, and had to brute force it. When I did, and had the mystery revealed to me, it just left more questions than answers. A lot of it didn't quite make sense, even after reading over the final reveal a few times and trying to make it make sense.
Plenty of spoilers from here. You have been warned.
(Spoiler - click to show) This is what happened. Hansel murdered Lionel Litchfield. She traveled to Africa, spoke with a professor at her old university, stole some black mamba venom plus a needle and returned home to carry out her nefarious plans. She placed the venom in a needle after reconstituting it to liquid form, and embedded it in a chair. Lionel Litchfield sat on the chair, and died from venom poisoning after sitting on the needle. Later, Hoffman went to the study to confront Litchfield, and found him dead in the study. Thinking he was asleep, he stabbed Litchfield in the back with a letter opener, thinking that he was committing a silent murder. Still, Litchfield was already dead.Questions:
(Spoiler - click to show) 1) If Lionel Litchfield sat on the needle, he would likely have put his full body weight on it. The needle would likely have been embedded in his body even after death, and his clothes and the seat cushion would likely have been bloodstained. Yet, you remove the needle from the seat cushion without noticing anything. 2) I might be wrong on this, but snake venom is made from complex proteins and would require advanced methods like ELISA to detect trace quantities of it in blood. I don't think a lab in the year 1937 would have been able to detect it, yet these are in the autopsy results. 3) Hansel is quickly established as a snake expert from the evidence. Yet, it doesn't seem possible to ask her questions pertaining to the snake venom in the autopsy results during the investigation.Anyway, I enjoyed finding the clues and slowly unraveling the case, even if I had difficulty making sense of the final reveal.
