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How to commit murder inside a locked room

tedgioia.substack.com

21–30 of 95 posts

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#21
post #12

See Vanity Fair's excellent long-form article "The Body in Room 348" for a real life example! https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/05/true-crime-elegan...

Without reading mode, that site is unusable. All those animated ads and banners are the blink tag all over again.

> Without reading mode

You answered yourself. Read View is great even with well-behaved sites, use it generously.

Edit: I retract my comment, Reader View shows about the last third of the article, and I had already blocked JavaScript there in a previous interaction. Vanity Fair sucks.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#22

Saw this on Battlestar Galactica, killer vents the atmosphere from an external control box and escapes unseen. Later on its noticed that everyone in the room has died. ;) You think there would be alarms on an engineering station someplace that would fire off when the atmosphere gets thin.

Presumably the old BSG?

In the new BSG, atmospheric sensors feature in at least two episodes...the one where terrorists take over a bar, and in the one where Callie and the Chief get trapped in a launch tube.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#23
post #3

That just gave me a crazy idea for a game, based on some similar books I've read online. Make a game where, say, you revive every time and your goal is to survive some set period of time but it's a mystery how to do so as many things are out to kill you. Say you have X hours before a large bomb will wipe out your city or whatever and several folks are waiting to kill you in the mean time or such and the goal is basic…

Thats sort of the opposite of the game just released - Deathloop

And Deathloop is from Arkane Studios, who make very good games (Dishonoured in particular).

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#24
post #3

That just gave me a crazy idea for a game, based on some similar books I've read online. Make a game where, say, you revive every time and your goal is to survive some set period of time but it's a mystery how to do so as many things are out to kill you. Say you have X hours before a large bomb will wipe out your city or whatever and several folks are waiting to kill you in the mean time or such and the goal is basic…

The “Wandering” scenario from the Super Famicom RPG Live A Live[1] has a similar premise. You have a fixed amount of time before the final boss shows up, and you must find out ways to get and set traps that will affect that battle.

[1]: Which, by the way, is getting a Switch remake: https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/live-a-live-switch/

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#25
Umineko: When They Cry has a great deconstruction of the locked-room trope. It’s a very long story (5 gigabytes of voiced lines!), but a hugely entertaining deconstruction for any fan of the detective/mystery genre. One of the best mysteries I’ve ever read.

https://umineko-project.org/en/ is the definitive version, but please support the author by also buying the game on steam or elsewhere.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#27
I'd expect that committing a murder in a locked room doesn't really require much in the way of planning or knowledge. Put me in a locked room with someone and I don't need much (except the will and likely a weapon) to do the deed.

However, Getting away with committing a murder in a locked room is the hard part -- how do you exit the room and re-lock it from the inside? How do you make sure to remove all traces of you from the room? And a dozen other things that need to happen in order to get away with such a murder.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#28
post #3

That just gave me a crazy idea for a game, based on some similar books I've read online. Make a game where, say, you revive every time and your goal is to survive some set period of time but it's a mystery how to do so as many things are out to kill you. Say you have X hours before a large bomb will wipe out your city or whatever and several folks are waiting to kill you in the mean time or such and the goal is basic…

Raging Loop on Steam will scratch that itch for you. Every time you die, you learn something new and new choices open up.

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#29
post #10
post #3

That just gave me a crazy idea for a game, based on some similar books I've read online. Make a game where, say, you revive every time and your goal is to survive some set period of time but it's a mystery how to do so as many things are out to kill you. Say you have X hours before a large bomb will wipe out your city or whatever and several folks are waiting to kill you in the mean time or such and the goal is basic…

Edge of Tomorrow builds on a similar premise (Tom Cruise explores a decision tree): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1631867/

Part of the Groundhog Day genre of movies. https://filmbabble.blogspot.com/2020/08/groundhog-day-is-gen...

Re: How to commit murder inside a locked room

#30
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edge of Tomorrow builds on a similar premise (Tom Cruise explores a decision tree): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1631867/

>Tom Cruise explores a decision tree This is the most HN comment I've read all year!

Reminds me a bit of the famous "Wizard of Oz" description:

> Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.

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