The Litchfield Mystery

The Litchfield Mystery is the latest in the author’s series of whodunnits distinguished by their fidelity to real-world forensics. The first was an engaging but rather dry parser game where various escape-room style puzzles didn’t have much to do with actually solving the mystery, which required consulting some medical reference book in details; the twist was that there wasn’t actually a murder, just an unfortunate drug interaction. The second was an engaging but rather dry choice-based game where solving the mystery involved interviewing suspects, sending evidence in for analysis, and consulting some medical reference books in detail; the twist was that there wasn’t actually a murder, just an unfortunate drug interaction. And here we are, third time out, with some commonalities – the gameplay structure is once again choice-based and the evidence and suspect-interviewing mechanics are unchanged – but some differences too: we’re in the early 20th century, the reference books are decidedly less tome-like, and this time the eponymous lord has shown up with a letter-opener stuck in his back, so the the-murderer-was-nobody twist is off the table. It’s still a bit dry, but Litchfield Mystery has loosened up and thereby manages to be the best installment yet.

The actual setup here is pure English country-house murder: you’ve got the dead paterfamilias, the grieving wife, the shady business partner, the dissolute brother, and household staff occupying various points along the Downton Abbey trustworthy-to-devious continuum of English servants, all gathered in the drawing room for you to interrogate after you’ve done sweeping the study, the bedrooms, and the grounds for clues. It’s all slickly managed through a clean interface that keeps track of your notes and leads in the sidebar, and the mechanics do a good job of creating a structure for your investigation: at first you’ll want to go through each room, looking for fingerprints and hair samples alongside documents and other traditional clues, sending anything more recondite out to the crime lab to take a look at. While they’re running their tests, you can get into the interviews, which consist of a standardized opening statement and then a few pointed questions. At that point, you’ll start getting your evidence reports back, and the interviews will have thrown up new leads, allowing you to circle back around the mansion for a closer inspection or raise new lines of questioning with the suspects. Eventually, the game tells you that you’ve gathered enough evidence, opening up a multiple-choice questionnaire where you select the culprit, their means, motive, and opportunity, and find out whether your theory of the case is correct.

It’s hard to think how this framework could be improved, and it’s filled in with careful attention to detail and a clear affection for the tropes of the genre. There are no smoking-gun clues, but certainly a lot that are suggestive, and the hard work is less in accumulating them than in interpreting them. While the writing does have a few small infelicities like inconsistent tenses, it’s generally good at efficiently conveying information and comfortably inhabits the restrained voice of a veteran British investigator, so much so that the few times the prose takes a bigger swing (“She dabs her eyes with a handkerchief, but all you can see are her nails. Blood red. Like the blood of every victim in your cases, crying out: ‘Justice!’”) the awkwardness feels charming.

Cracking the case has more to do with weighing the evidence than delving into psychology – though a read on the interpersonal dynamics can be helpful – though as mentioned above, the materials you consult here aren’t quite as dense as those in the author’s previous games. The main point of scientific interest is the presence of meat from two different poisonous animals in the mansions fridge; there are a few reference passages to consult and cross-reference to help you assess what role, if any, they might have played in the crime, but it’s a long way from the detailed list of chemicals and drugs in the previous games, but I’ll admit I kinda missed the feeling that I was doing something resembling real forensics. Similarly, it took me a few tries to zero in on the solution to the mystery, because much of the evidence wound up being circumstantial and a key element (Spoiler - click to show)(the governess's affair) could only be guessed at; that’s certainly a valid style of deduction, but it’s distinct from the science-nerd just-the-facts-ma’am approach I’d been expecting.

Still, with my assumptions properly reset, the Litchfield Mystery was a satisfying one to unravel, and demonstrates the author’s success in taking what was originally a heavily pedagogical model and making it much more gameable – if anything, I think there’s room now to take it back a little bit in the other direction.