The Wrong Mushrooms
An interactive murder mystery
It's time for some interactive fiction! The Wrong Mushrooms is a murder mystery in the traditional style, but a modern setting.
I've never written any IF before, so I would love any and all feedback that you have!
Made with Ink and Inky by Inkle Studios, which are amazing for games like this. I had never used Ink before but became productive within hours.
Post-jam changes: added a cover. Hope that's okay.
Comments (8)
You certainly nailed the theme. As for the body — I liked the options you gave for examining it, that was one of the better parts of the game. I liked some of the characters as well, e.g. Mrs. Garcia.
One suggestion is to have dividing lines (if possible) between each segment. Sometimes, after choosing an option, it was a little awkward to distinguish the new text from the old. Also — this may be just me — I found it to be a bit complicated. But that's probably because I am not good with mysteries like these. Even so, maybe something a little shorter would have more of an impact. Finally, I noticed that when I went to speak to Mrs. Garcia once, we went to the study, and the only option was: “That will be all for now.”
All in all, though, I think you did a very good job, given the time constraint. I especially like the way you integrated the theme into the story. The characters were convincing. And I like the way Ink works, I am tempted to try it some time.
I liked this a lot! The story is engaging from start to finish. What was a bit annoying is that if you get the last answer wrong, and you didn't save, you had to click through everything all over again. But that is more a problem with the engine I suppose. Overall, this was a very pleasant surprise and I hope you will get more ratings soon! :)
I absolutely enjoyed this one!
We played it on my stream on Wednesday. Here is the link to the VOD with the timestamp. :)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1420488754?t=1h18m47s
I enjoyed reading through your story in my stream,
I'm sorry, I sometimes struggled with difficult words.
But thats just my reading skills not your game. :D
Somewhere close to the end, you can almost hear my brain clatter from all the thinking. Unfortunately, I have not yet found out who the murderer was as I may have overlooked some clues.
I really enjoyed this one. Its fun to play something different. I liked the story and a great fit for the theme. I thought the writing was generally ok, but a bit clunky in places, some of the descriptions were a bit abrupt (I have never written anything myself though, I imagine its pretty hard so props for trying). Spotted at least one spelling mistake (taylored) so maybe running it through a spell check would be good.
//SPOILERS
I liked the fact I could choose different options for who did it, although I chose the wrong one because although I had correctly guessed what happened all 3 options murder/suicide/accident could be used to describe it, so I chose 'accident', but it was a dead end, so i ended up replaying twice until I chose the option that matched the expectation, I didn't see the save/reload buttons :( ) Really nitpicky here and maybe I watch too much crime fiction but it also seems weird to be making accusations of what happened without waiting for the coroners report (if one is going to appear at some point as it does in the ending), so maybe writing in some excuse of why you need to reach a conclusion so quickly would be nice.
Anyway a fun experience, thanks.
Great feedback @automatonvx, thank you! You're not the only one who overlooked the save option… I definitely need to tweak this default stylesheet to make it more obvious next time.
Kudos for getting the answer right! Yes, I should do something about those dead ends; it would have been easy enough to redirect them to the same section.
You're absolutely right that it's weird that we need to make an accusation on the spot, but that's what always happens at the end of a murder mystery novel, so I'd never even thought about it! I'm not sure if even Agatha Christie always comes up with a good reason…
I usually don't play adventure games / interactive novels becuase I tend to get easily bored or distracted, but I enjoyed this one. It's short, so there's no lengthy introduction or character building, and you get into the meat of the story right away. The progression is sort of linear but nicely paced. And there's a nice twist. Again I'm not sure how this can be compared to other adventure games, but I'd say the job's well done.