First of all, this is probably my favorite game of the comp so far, and I’ve played or skimmed almost all of the games in the comp. If you bounced off it, like I did at first, because it seemed like it was going to be slight, I recommend revisiting it. It isn’t slight at all. This is one of my biggest criticisms of the game, honestly – the beginning is VERY much less engaging than the game proper. (For context, this is a “should I score it a 7-8 rather than 9-10” type of criticism, and there is a decent chance this is going to be my highest-ranked game of the comp. But I’ve talked with one person who had the same reaction to the beginning, so it isn’t me.)
That said, I’m not sure if I’ve seen it all:
[spoiler]I discovered the murderer, I got a confession out of them. But there is very clearly much more to the story, w/r/t all the clues you don’t want to think about. Some of them very strongly imply connections – the letter written in orange is probably the most obvious example – but I can’t link those clues in-game. No matter how far I get, even when I know who the murderer is, the PC doesn’t want to think about any of it.
So I really would like to explore these avenues – they seem like major components to the backstory here, and the ending doesn’t mention anything about them at all – but I can also see this theoretically be an intended aspect, an unreliable narrator/“things left unsaid”/“sometimes you can’t always learn the truth” thing.
The problem is that I can’t tell whether this is intended behavior – whether the PC just refuses to go there at all – or whether I’m missing something I am supposed to do with those. The walkthrough – “Some of the items, such as the Rap Sheet, cannot be combined with any other items to unlock memories. They all have the same statement on them indicating as such, and you can set them aside using the feature. Don’t ignore them though; there’s mysteries in this game aside from who the killer is.” – is ambiguous on this point.
A thought I had, probably wrong: Am I supposed to be wrongly accusing other people in order to gain insight into that – is that an intended mechanic? (The “wait, no!” option makes me wonder if it is, but I hit Restart so I’d have to play through again.)
The other reason that I’m curious about those avenues is that, from what I gather, those components touch on a number of themes that can be handled well or very, very poorly.[/spoiler]