Show HN: Mystery-o-matic – A daily murder mystery to solve

Hi, thanks for the feedback, let's take a look:

> I guess it's implied that people only travel between rooms on 15-minute boundaries, or something?

Yes

> And maybe it's implied that the murderer always lies and the non-murderers don't?

Right now, clues are always true, but the murderer will omit saying something very incriminating. But since the website is a prototype, this will most likely change in the near future (e.g. murders can lie, but the other suspects will always tell the truth).

> I dunno. The clues are really confusing without understanding the meta-rules behind them, which don't seem to be written down.

I think you are right, the website needs better (and more) explanation, as well as an expanded tutorial.

Uhm, interesting, but I cannot find any examples of these story/puzzles. Do you know where I can take a look to them?

Good fun. I think, though, that precision in language might be a challenge. Some previous comments I concur. Over and above those, I was very strict not to infer anything outside the minimum of what was said. For example, “I was in bedroom from 10:00 to 10:15” does not imply that “I was not in the bedroom before or after that time”. Or, “I didn’t see anyone when I arrived” only means I saw no one in the destination room, not that there wasn’t someone in the kitchen (that I must have walked through) or the source room. Illogical that the murder could have happened up to 11:15, at exactly the same time that the police arrive—unless the victim phoned it in. These rules left ambiguity.

What do I make of these clues?

> Frida: I was in the $ROOM from 9:30 to 9:45

> Frida: I saw no one in $ROOM when I arrived at 9:30

> Frida: I saw no one in $ROOM when I left at 9:45

to me, the third clue felt wasted. I had already marked off that nobody was there during that time. but does this also mean that nobody arrived at 9:45, and that nobody left at 9:30? in other words, do these clues tell me that nobody was in $ROOM between 9:15 and 10:00?

anyway - pretty interesting game. I think it would be a lot better if the user could ask specific questions. "Where was BOB at 10:30?", and then receive the clue, "BOB was in $ROOM from 10:00 to 11:00" (because if you're investigating a murder, it would be unthinkable not to ask "for how long" as a followup... it should be a freebie). or maybe just "BOB was in $ROOM at 10:30 and left at 11:00" if you want to be trickier. this would give the player some agency and hopefully allow the chance to unlock a large amount of information with a well-chosen question.

also... does it really take 3 clues to determine the murder weapon? maybe that's a legacy of the older Clue game (which I haven't played), but I can't imagine showing up and having no idea which of (poison, knife, gun, or rope) was used to kill a person. by default, it should be obvious IMO (maybe there could be confounding issues, like they have stab wounds but actually died of poison and were stabbed afterward as misdirection), but I guess that takes away a big part of figuring out who did it by placing them in the room with the murder weapon. it would take some work to rethink that part, I guess.

Thanks a lot for the feedback. The website is actually a prototype, with rules subject to change.

> I think it would be much more interesting if each clue was a question, like, “Frida, which room were you in at 10:30?” etc. Then I would actually need to think about how to use as few clues as possible. Now I don’t think there’s any way to get the answer right except by guessing until all the clues eliminating murder weapons.

This sounds a little bit like Clue, right?

> The UI for filling in who is in which room isn’t great, it would make more sense to say which room each person is in than who is in each room - one person can just be in one room after all.

This UI is similar to the one murdle, which supposedly allow to make deduce (e.g. if someone is not in room A or B, then it must be in room C). I need to think on how to improve it..