(WARNING, THIS REVIEW IS VERRY LONG AND SPOILER HEAVY )
A verry interesting idea, though I feel it could have been worked out better gameplay wise ( Story-wise as well, though I feel the two are two are interweaved enough to mean the same thing in this case ). I’ve done my best to give constructive criticism, please don’t be discouraged by the wall of text
I'm gunna start with some negative pointers. One, it was a bit too easy. Ending Jordy's dialogue with "My dear friends" gave it away right at the start and evidence only piles up after that. Have him have some good counterpoints, just shrugging the situation off with “I guess your dear to me” doesn’t take away any suspicion. Two, you could have used your environment better. I know, it’s a small elevator, there’s not much to work around with. However, small environmental clues could have been more widely used ( Or say, the elevator gets more damaged as time goes on ). It gives the player new information to work with, and makes the puzzle more interesting rather than just discerning clues from dialogue. What little environmental clues there were, came far too late. Third, the dialogue itself. Its written decently enough, but I have one glaring issue with it. Though it could have been another hint, some characters and with that especialy Jordy, use solid logic to try and solve the case. However, they leave out of the equation that all off this is the work of a supernatural being. That means, none of the murders per se have to follow conventional means. You used this to hide the killer ( by having him kill himself, confused me for a bit, good plot-twist. I’ll get back on that in my positive points ), but that’s all I saw that gave . They also are very overly hostile, and go at each other in this situation right away. There's no one who panic's or in any way is strongly repulsed emotionally or morally at the whole ordeal ( I almost chuckled that the Detective shrugged off his lost limb after three lines of dialogue, ah well I'm letting that slide ). It’s good to have people throw the player off by making accusations, but this shouldn’t be the only way they interact with each other it also ties in with my last negative pointer: the characters gave away hints too easily. Yes, to make it more believable it’s good to have the individual characters figure out some stuff on their own ( Like how Jordy was basically parroting Proxy ) But almost every hint was also mentioned by a character. You shouldn’t be afraid to complicate the situation, or have something that can be easily missed by the player, it’s what makes and breaks these kinds of games.
Now then, positive pointers: The overall setting/idea to begin with. I’ve seen this setting before, but that doesn’t take away that I liked how you built a game around the idea of a supernatural killer being beaten out by deductive reasoning. If you bring more contrast between figuring things out detective style, and wrapping your head around the unknown ( by adding in more unexplainable things, or using settings where normal reasoning won’t apply ) this game can become infinitely more interesting. Now, the music is fitting, but it’s a bit barebones. It’s not overly spectacular, but it does its job fine enough. Experiment a bit with this too, then this can really become a plus-point ( build more tension by using the music to your advantage ). Third, the conclusion. Though I had expected a thing like this, I still appreciate you being able to decide who you kill. Making separate endings for that choice was good too, but it leaves a few things to be desired. First being, you can’t target yourself ( would have been interesting, not having this option assured me off who to shoot ) Second, the decision is a set moment at the end of the game. If the gun had been an intractable object during the entire game, it would have been more interesting as a result. It could have been used for rewarding a resolute decision for those who thought they had the mystery figured out from the start, and thus saving more people in the process You could try things like making multiple endings ranging from good to bad, depending on how many people you saved. Or by giving you longer dialogue with Proxy depending on how quickly you fingered him out. I can picture a pissed proxy because the player shot him as soon as the game started XD. Either way, it’s still a good thing in the long run.
There are more points, but these are the most forthcoming positive and negative aspects. I hope this review is off help to you, and I’m interested to see what you do regarding your next project ( Maybe giving the idea behind Proxy some more thought, and developing a game with more features out of it ) Either way, I enjoyed this game. I feel that even with its issues, it did more things right then it did wrong, and as such it deserves a decent score.
