The Killings in Wasacona

This is a murder mystery game in which you play as an FBI agent who’s been called in to investigate a string of murders (possibly the work of a serial killer, possibly not) in a small town in Washington. Over the course of several days, the player must choose how to spend their investigation time, and at the end they are asked a series of questions to see how much they’ve managed to figure out.

The Killings in Wasacona clearly takes heavy inspiration from tabletop games, starting out by making you distribute your character’s stats and then having skill checks done via a link that says “Roll a d20.” The simulated dice were kind to me in my playthrough and I passed most checks for skills that I didn’t have penalties to, so my experience wasn’t frustrating in this regard, but I still didn’t love this as a design choice. I found it made me feel like, rather than playing a game that was simulating solving a murder, I was playing a game that was simulating playing another game that was simulating solving a murder, which had a distancing effect that kept me from ever truly getting invested. The many spelling/grammar/punctuation errors and occasional clunky attempts at poetic language in high-drama scenes also distracted me, although as an editor I’m aware that I notice these things more than most people do.

I was also kind of uneasy at the way that it used the possibility of a racist cop committing violence against people of color as a red herring, and at the way that procedural red tape that exists to protect people’s rights, such as the need to obtain warrants, was treated as an annoying and unfair imposition. (The latter is of course very common in the genre, but that doesn’t mean I like to see it, and the fact that the game doesn’t even give you the option to actually do this stuff—you can either circumvent it via intimidation or give up—doesn’t help. I gather there are negatives to taking the intimidation route, but there are also negatives to just not getting the information, so it doesn’t quite feel like a “giving the player enough rope to hang themself” situation.)

Also, I don’t like picking on this kind of thing because in real life people can have all kinds of names, but when you have one singular Latina character in your game, naming her “Jamal” gives the unfortunate impression that the writer reached for a name that seemed “exotic” without bothering to check which cultures it’s commonly used in or which gender it’s commonly used for. The Somali refugee siblings also have the somewhat unlikely surname "Brown", and the country they come from is referred to as “Somali” instead of Somalia. Individually all of this seems like nitpicking, but it adds up to a sense that not a lot of care is being taken.

On the positive side, I liked the built-in graphical map, and I think the mystery was well-constructed (I managed to solve all the pieces of it and didn’t feel like I was wildly guessing on any of them). I liked the way the game laid out your evidence for each possible culprit before asking you to answer questions at the end, although I did wish it had used the suspects’ names (titles like "the drifter" may be clear enough, but there are a bunch of suspects who are professors at a local college, and they’re listed in this end-of-game evidence rundown as “the $subject professor”, which I had trouble keeping straight). And I enjoyed seeing the statistics at the end that showed what percentage of players had gotten various outcomes.

So the game does have a number of good aspects, and as far as I can tell most players liked it substantially more than I did and my opinion is not terribly representative of most people’s experiences. But I thought these points were worth raising, in case anyone else is particularly bothered by any of these things.

This Twine game feels very independent from other Twine traditions, with a gameplay style, styling and structure that seems derived from TTRPGS and gamebooks more than other past IFComp twine games, for instance.

It's a class police procedural murder mystery. Three bodies have been found, and you have to find the suspects! As an FBI agent, it is your job to investigate, interrogate, and accuse.

The game makes use of skills, which are set for you based on archetypes like 'Negotiator' or 'athlete'. This skills boost d20 rolls, which determine whether yo you fail or succeed.

This gives a random element to the game, and, according to the walkthrough I read after my playthrough, there are other, hidden random elements as well. This makes the game amenable to replay, but makes it difficult to win on the first try, especially without outside knowledge about the game.

The characters were generally interesting. I liked the family members most, then the suspects. The cops seemed fairly generic. The town and college had a vibrancy to them.

Overall, the game seemed very polished. I didn't agree with every gameplay decision, but I felt like I was playing a quality product while I was in the midst of the game.

The genre listing for The Killings in Wasacona is one of those things that drifts right by you when you read it, but gets increasingly odd the more you think about it: “Crime Detective Mystery”. Combining these words in exactly this way feels natural at this point: stories where criminals are brought to justice by investigators who apply their intellects to solve the mysteries presented by their misdeeds are a dime a dozen. But I wonder how much of this seemingly-intuitive melding of the crime story and the brain-teaser would be left if we somehow were able to subtract the influence of a century of Sherlock Holmes? Real criminals, after all, are decidedly irrational, and are less often caught by an ineluctable web of deductions slowly closing in on them than by people they’ve pissed off ratting them out to the cops. On the flip side, the forensic methods used to identify and convict suspects frequently are just a patina of pseudo-science atop hunches and prejudice (if you ever want to make your blood run cold, read up on the people “arson investigation” has sent to Death Row). On this evidence, why would we think the messy, squalid stories of crime should render up their secrets if the detective does the equivalent of solving a sudoku?

These contradictions can be noted against just about any game in this capacious category, of course, but Killings in Wasacona raises them more than most, on both the cops and the robbers sides of the equation. The game offers a solid framework for building a mystery: as a rookie FBI agent, you’re brought in to help solve a trio of small-town deaths, at least two of which were clearly murders, in the course of a week. The interface shows potential investigative hot-spots on a map – the crime scenes, the houses of the victims and their families, and more – and once you choose one to visit, typically chewing up an hour of the limited clock, you pick your way through conversational gambits, searches for evidence, or whatever else is needed to reveal clues. After time is up, the final passage helpfully sorts everything you’ve uncovered according to the different theories of the case that it supports, and based on what you’ve found you select the appropriate culprit and motive for each death.

Some details of this setup, it must be admitted, don’t make much sense (where’s the federal jurisdictional hook? Why are we sent out alone for fieldwork just days after graduation from Quantico? Why is everybody so tall, with the shortest victim being a woman who’s 5’10”?) but it’s a well-designed structure for a mystery investigation. Similarly, while the prose regularly veers into melodrama (the prologue narrating the first killing uses sentence fragments to illustrate the crime, culminating with “A new demonic visage. A face of fire. Teeth. Pupils. Hands”, which seems to imply the murderer’s hands are part of their face; meanwhile, the proprietor of a party house refers to the protagonist as a “square”, which, come on, it’s not 1957 anymore) and the writing occasionally drops details that don’t make sense (a down-on-his-luck drifter “looks twice his age”, which given that he’s 45 seems quite extreme; a co-worker of one of the victims volunteers, without prompting, details of her and her friends’ drug use), the story itself is generally fine, turning on reasonably-plausible small-town secrets and eventually encompassing a stereotypical but reasonably-drawn cast (there’s a racist cop, but the game and other characters recognize that’s a problem, e.g.)

As a mystery, though, I found it less satisfying than I wanted it to be; I was able to logic my way through most of the solution, but key details eluded me. Possibly this is just because I’m a bit of a dunderhead, but I do think those twin issues I flagged above played a role. Starting with the criminals’ side of the ledger, it’s difficult to get at least one, and possibly two, of the murders “right” because in those particular cases the motive of the killer is bizarre and self-defeating. Guessing that it was Moriarty who committed a crime, and sussing out his methods, is hard because he’s so smart, but equally, fingering Inspector Clouseau and identifying his M.O. is tough precisely because he’s an idiot. This isn’t necessarily unrealistic, certainly, but it does make the puzzle of solving the mystery less satisfying.

The methods of investigation are also not unproblematic. Clues are unlocked not primarily through player skill – there’s more than enough time to visit every relevant location in the game, and you generally don’t have too many options at any of them, so lawnmowering is relatively easy – but through character skill. Yes, Killings in Wasacona has RPG-style stats, which you set at the beginning of the game either by picking a pre-rolled archetype (jock, nerd, face, etc.) or manually setting your bonuses or penalties across five different investigative approaches. Frequently a choice will lead to a test of one of these skills, at which point you roll a d20, subject your character’s relevant modifier – if the sum is 11 or higher you succeed and get the clue, 10 or less and you fail.

The specifics of the implementation make me feel like this might be a mechanic derived from Dungeons and Dragons, but it’s notable that these kinds of approaches to clue-gathering are very much out of vogue in tabletop RPG circles: these days, the mechanics for mystery-focused games are likely to focus on resource allocation, like spending a limited pool of points to automatically succeed at certain rolls, and mitigate the impact of risk by allowing for rerolls or partial success. And my experience of Killings in Wasacona bore out the wisdom of this shift, as I didn’t roll above a 6 more than once in my first seven or eight rolls (and since none of my bonuses were above +3, that means I failed nearly all of them).

Admittedly, my luck eventually reverted to the mean, and I wound up getting some additional “morale” bonuses that made rolls much easier (oddly, I got these bonuses mainly by chasing red herring, suggesting that the most efficient course through the game is to start out wasting time on tangential matters so that your chances of success are optimized by the time you turn to the actual investigation). And again, cops miss stuff all the time. But it doesn’t make for a satisfying set of mechanics, and as I was scratching my head on the final screen trying to figure out the last details of my theory, it was unpleasant to think that I might not be able to fit the pieces together not from lack of trying, but because the RNG gods decreed I shouldn’t see the relevant clue.

All told this means I found Killings in Wasacona more successful at the “crime” part of the genre label than the “detective mystery” part. But the framework and overall presentation, modulo the dice-rolling, really were quite strong, and I have to admit there’s a dark charm to the Fargo-esque series of misadventures revealed at the end – I’d definitely sign up for a sequel using the same basic approach, but tighter writing and more intentional design.

It should surprise nobody that I'm playing the murder mysteries first, but this one feels nicely different from the rest in a way that makes a good change of pace. It's more "police procedural" than "whodunit novel"; you're a rookie FBI agent sent out on your first case, to find the truth behind a series of murders in a small American town.

The overall gameplay consists of driving around the town, trying to budget your time appropriately as you interview suspects, investigate crime scenes, and search for clues. Further events unfold at particular times, so it's important to watch the clock—the university president is only available in the mornings and afternoons, not the evenings, for example, so you might lose your chance to talk to her before the killer strikes again. This is a model that, to nobody's surprise, I think is very effective, and the graphical map (green circles for places you can visit, black circles for places you've exhausted all the options from) helps a lot in keeping it from feeling like a tedious list to lawnmower through. It makes Wasacona feel more like a town and less like a bulleted list.

The gameplay within scenes is somewhat different. Your character has five stats, chosen at the beginning of the game: Perception (finding clues), Academics (interpreting clues), Physical (moving around), Intimidation (getting information from suspects), and Intuition (reading people and detecting lies). They have to add up to zero, so I played as an "Analyst": Perception +3, Academics +6, Physical -6, Intimidation -6, Intuition +3.

Clues to the mystery tend to be gated behind one or more of these skills. When this happens, you roll a virtual d20, add your stat, and see if you got an 11 or above. Sometimes you need several rolls in a row to get a result—for example, you might need Perception to find footprints, Academics to identify the type of shoe, and Intimidation to get access to a suspect's shoe to compare it against—and this added an interesting tension to the investigation. You always know when there's something to be found, but your character didn't find it, which adds an interesting tone to things.

(Notably, getting information from suspects is always Intimidation; the killer is still out there and still killing, so you don't have time to get a warrant to access information the legal way. Your only recourse is to browbeat suspects until they let something slip, and whether you succeed or fail, they'll never talk to you again after that. It definitely gives the game a particular tone.)

I enjoyed my runthrough—and convicted the killer in three of the four murders—but I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much if I wasn't an Analyst. I only found two Physical checks in the entire game, for example, while Perception came up constantly. In the last murder ((Spoiler - click to show)Leroy Jameson), I failed an Academics roll early on, after which I never had a chance to get any more evidence about him, so I'm left with an impression that I could very well have gotten screwed by the dice out of finding evidence on any of the cases.

Overall, I liked this game a lot! It plays up the tragedy of the deaths in a way that a lot of classic murder mysteries don't, and the "morale" system (you get universal bonuses to all your rolls if you do things that keep the horror of it all from demotivating you, like eating a nice meal or bonding with some locals) played into that nicely. The writing was straightforward, but served its purpose well:

The neighborhood is quiet, very quiet; or perhaps that is just you, holding your breath.

I just have two main complaints (beyond the dice rolls, which—whether I liked it or not—I think it's good that the game stuck to its guns on them).

One, I wish it had been polished a bit more. The overall effect is so nice that the rough edges really stand out. For example, every time I take an action in the morgue, I get greeted by the coroner all over again; and even after I've built what I consider a very solid case against a suspect, the player character reacts with shock to finding each new piece of evidence: "If [NAME] was [new evidence], could he also be the killer?" Well, I certainly hope so, given that I've already arrested him for it!

Two, the walkthrough attached to the game shows how to get the best ending, but I have no idea how you could accomplish that without knowing the solution in advance. To prevent one of the murders, for example, you have to be patrolling in the right part of the city at the right time of night, ignoring the game unsubtly saying "you now get -3 to all rolls until you sleep". The only reason to do that (that I can tell, at least) is that you played it before and got the 911 call from that time and place.

All in all, though, I enjoyed this quite a lot, and I really hope the author continues to make more works in this vein.

(This is an edited version of a review that first appeared in my IF blog during IFComp 2024.)

The Killings in Wasacona (KIW) by Steve Kollmansberger is a thoroughly involving and suspenseful police procedural murder-mystery game in which the player, a fresh FBI graduate, is tasked with unravelling the reasons behind an abruptly rising bodycount in the eponymous town. It comes as a choice-clicking Twine with some minor graphical embellishment in the form of maps. It also utilises a skill mechanics system. Whenever the agent's skills are challenged, the skill test is delivered transparently as a die roll, with the modifiers and results announced. The player can pick from various classes at the start to decide where they'd like their skill emphases to be.

In my experience, games where you have to solve crimes by producing solutions are challenging to beat. They're probably as difficult to create. Players will perceive all kinds of patterns in everything, assuming they get much of the everything – it's often part of the game design that just getting the information is half the challenge – and they can divine wild solutions that are rarely what the game wants when it's piper-paying time. Often these solutions can't even be inputted, leading to frustration or disappointment.

KIW pretty much avoids all these problems. It has tight mechanics that focus the player on the clue-gathering, prose that summarises what the clues might mean in relation to clues already gathered, and it offers an ultimate refresher on gathered evidence.

The game's writing mode has a Visual Novel kind of feel. I don't refer to graphics. I mean that the characters are perhaps a little overlit. They speak with a touch too many exclamation marks, a touch too much exposition and too many gestures. This isn't my preferred mode, but by the end, I realised I probably actually needed this extra illumination in order to have been able to take in the amount of info the game was dispensing. The prose is efficient, at times perceptive:

"The house is clearly lived in, but with the deferred maintenance one might expect from a single person trying to keep up with the demands of life and inflation."

KIW follows a cycle where turns usually take up an hour of the day, and there are on average five locations or people available to visit on any turn. The player can choose from amongst all the necessary tasks for the investigation: Visiting crime scenes, the morgue, the local college, interviewing other officers, interviewing townies, following hunches, even just driving around at random to see what hits. (Remember that Ted Bundy was twice caught red-handed by randomly patrolling officers in cars, just because they thought he was acting suspiciously, so don't neglect this option.)

KIW emphasises efficient use of the player's time, and a clock up in the corner creates a pleasurable suspense and urgency, even though technically, the game is generous in allowing you to get a lot done. The amount of apparently cross-referenced knowledge of the player's progress, used to cue developments in the prose, is also impressive. The game state looks to be complex but the game knows its state, and the player's. (Don't get me started on games that don't know their own state.)

Perhaps the only incident I found too unrealistic, and disconnected from other events, was when I was given the opportunity to accuse only the second officer I spoke to on the case of actually murdering the apparent drug overdose victim whose corpse she'd found – just because this officer displayed a prejudicial attitude towards drug dealers. With great bloody-mindedness, I took the game up on this offer. I admit I only did this because I'd yet to realise that the presentation of the skill-testing options (the first one had gone great! I'd had +3 on my roll) seemed to endorse them. Big font, imperative mode. I then realised all the choices appear this way. Lesson learnt, I botched this accusational die roll with a -6 modifier and thoroughly pissed off officer Amanda. However, I don't think Clarice Starling would have entertained this option in the first place.

There's finite time to solve the crimes, and when that time is up, the player chooses their solutions from an incredibly detailed menu of possibilities, considering the gathered evidence for each case in handy point form. Perhaps this has been done before, but I've not seen it, and it seemed a great compromise of all the systems involved. It helps the player a lot, but also doesn't make it at all easy to just guess solutions if one's not on the right track.

The results screen is also fun, showing how the player's outcomes fare against everyone else who's played the game. I felt very positive during my investigation that I was handling KIW at an above average skill level for me re: this genre, but my outcomes were all those shared by the majority of players to date, probably indicating my averageness. I didn't feel bad about this. The Killings in Wasacona is a game with a lot of details, but which makes those details accessible. It made me feel the pressure of the investigation, the opening of possibilities, of mysteries, the thrill of discovery, the possibility of solution – and still give that final reminder that yes, solving crimes is hard. I think future crime-solving games could take leafs from this one.