Show HN: mystery-o-matic offers a daily random murder mystery
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Also, the 15-minute time blocks don’t make sense to me. From today’s mystery:
> Clue #1 Eddie said "I saw nobody when I was leaving the bathroom at 10:45"
> Clue #2 Eddie said "I saw Bob when I arrived to the living room at 11:00"
I would immediately ask him why it took him 15 minutes to go from the bathroom to the neighboring living room. Are they in an electric wheelchair that’s almost out of power, or did they in-between commit the murder?
Also, the suspension of disbelief isn’t there for me:
- looking at the victim, how hard is it to choose between poison, rope, gun, and knife, especially given that it can be deduced that the body wasn’t moved?
- if they don’t dare lie, why not just ask them “did you do it?”. A murderer that can lie would IMO make things more interesting.
Minor items that affect play:
- the player has to open all clues up to the murder weapon is revealed. Once you know that, opening those each day will become a chore.
- in today’s puzzle, when I make an incorrect accusation that includes “Carol”, the text says “After apprehending the suspect”. Isn’t she dead?
> I don’t find this engaging as a murder mystery. Firstly, the player doesn’t have agency other than revealing other clues. I think it would be more entertaining if the player could choose what questions to ask.
I tried to keep the game simple, but it is certainly possible to introduce more interaction. I guess, in its core, detective work is mostly reviewing clues and making accusation, but this is supposed to be fun as well.
> > Also, the 15-minute time blocks don’t make sense to me. From today’s mystery:
> > Clue #1 Eddie said "I saw nobody when I was leaving the bathroom at 10:45"
> > Clue #2 Eddie said "I saw Bob when I arrived to the living room at 11:00"
> I would immediately ask him why it took him 15 minutes to go from the bathroom to the neighboring living room. Are they in an electric wheelchair that’s almost out of power, or did they in-between commit the murder?
I have to think about this, but the clues could be rephrased to convey that Eddie spend time the bathroom and the the living room, between 10:45 and 11:00.
> > Also, the suspension of disbelief isn’t there for me:
> - looking at the victim, how hard is it to choose between poison, rope, gun, and knife, especially given that it can be deduced that the body wasn’t moved?
I'm not completely sure what you mean here.
> - if they don’t dare lie, why not just ask them “did you do it?”. A murderer that can lie would IMO make things more interesting.
I agree, and I will be introducing a murderer that could lie, which will make the game more interesting (potentially, harder in some cases).
> > Minor items that affect play:
> - the player has to open all clues up to the murder weapon is revealed. Once you know that, opening those each day will become a chore.
This is not the case in fact, you can deduce where the murder weapon is located and discard the ones in rooms that were not visited.
> - in today’s puzzle, when I make an incorrect accusation that includes “Carol”, the text says “After apprehending the suspect”. Isn’t she dead?
Something to fix. I think Carol should not be in the list of suspects (except perhaps, if we allow suicides, which is an interesting idea)
In any case, thanks for all the comments and suggestions!
> I'm not completely sure what you mean here.
They found the victim, figured out the body wasn’t moved, but managed to do so without noticing the gunshot wound, so they can’t rule out poison, cutting their throat, or strangulation?
Technically, there could be two would-be killers, with the one using the gun shooting an already dead victim, or killing the victim minutes before the poison would have, or one killer doubting the poison worked, and making sure with a knife, but the presentation makes me think we can rule out such cases.
Now I think of it: poison typically takes some time to take effect, so if the cause is poison, the killer need not have been near the victim at the time of death.
If it’s a gun and that was used as a gun (and not to club her to death, for example), wouldn’t everybody have heard the gun shot in such a small house? That works in Cluedo and Agatha Christie stories, but those typically are set in large country houses where sometimes people happen to show of their guns to their guests.
And for today’s puzzle: what house has a bath room next to the living room? I think that’s even illegal in many building codes.
As I said, this doesn’t engage me as a crime story. The typical story has some intro, and then somebody finds the victim. Who did that? Why did they go to their room?
What has changed since?
* Progressive Web Apps support
* More types of clues
* A more balanced gameplay (should not be too hard)
* A few smalls changes based on the HN feedback
Some emojis are not visible in my old computer? Perhaps you can add the initial of each room to the tables at the bottom.
Thanks for the feedback. These puzzles are randomly generated, the code for it will be open-source soon! Regarding your issue, which browser/operating system are you using?
PD: the code will be open-source soon, I'm finishing with the cleaning and refactoring..
https://chat.openai.com/share/07baf217-2b00-4e24-a6eb-1b14c6...
https://chat.openai.com/share/8ccce564-5285-45ea-a616-34cf37...
There were a lot of time slots, and the clues did not intersect very much. I went through 17 clues before i guessed, and there were still logical options. Can we have wordle-bot analyze our play at the end and tell us how we did?
Right now, the suspects will never lie, but the killer will avoid revealing "too much".
> Is the rating at the end based on minimum numbed of clues required, or just on total number of clues used?
The number of clues used. The mysteries are generated with a variable number of clues, so it is still an open question how the score should be adjusted.
> Is the rating impacted by number of available choices when i guessed?
Yes.
> Can we have wordle-bot analyze our play at the end and tell us how we did?
What do you mean exactly with this?