Sherlock Holmes and the Three Mysteries

Backstory

Everyone has heard of the old game "Sherlock Holmes und drei Geheimnisse", but now it's been translated and released to a wider audience!

Instructions

Walk around.

Interact with objects.

Maybe solve a mystery (or two).

Controls

Arrow Keys/WASD - Move

Enter/Space - Interact

Escape/Backspace - Menu, Leave Interaction

Notes

• The email and patreon are real, try them out!
• Any time you see the question mark or hear the associated noise, a new location has been unlocked.

Spoilers

• The loading screens are fake, I've updated the game so they don't take as long.
• To reach the end of the mystery: talk to Musgrave, this unlocks a new location (Manor Hurlstone); at Manor Hurlstone, walk behind the shed, this unlocks a new location (Shed, Interior); talk to the third chest on your right, this unlocks the basement of the shed; in the basement of the shed, navigate your way to the top right corner and talk to the skeleton.
• To reach the end of the game/meta-story: You can reach the credits by following the instructions in the response email, but they'll just reveal the last meta-story beat and tell you to press 'end' on the mystery select screen.

Post Mortem

• My basic idea was "bootleg a game that doesn't exist". That necessitated creating a meta-story about what was "really" going on. Execution is key with that sort of thing, and I don't think I executed very well.
• Oh boy I tried to do way too much.
• The build I submitted for judging is somewhat incomplete, the "ending" doesn't really explain anything.
• It became hard to tell what parts of the "story" I had actually put in the game and which parts were still in my head. In the future, I'll have to find ways of keeping track of this.
• I found ways to de-scope the game as the jam progressed (and I ran out of time). I like that my design was flexible enough to have 80% removed and still function (probably).
• A lot of the "narrative" I was going for ended up "outside" of the game proper, in other places, but are still mentioned in the game. I wonder if players will be interested in seeking those out. If they'll even believe the website and email address are real.
• Without the full story, I'm not sure I took full advantage of the theme. The game as it is probably doesn't match that theme much at all.
• Thinking about it, the game turned out to basically be a 2D "walking simulator". There were a lot more mechanics and content planned, but I couldn't execute.
• In week 2 I got really sick, very high fever, etc. I lost about 5 days to that.
• With 4 days to go, a friend asked me to be a part of their wedding party, at a destination wedding on the last day of the jam. That ate a lot of time.
• Life happens, you can't design for that.
• Open-sourcing my code was fun, I sort of got a release rush every time I pushed even the tiniest feature to github.