The Killings in Wasacona

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.