The Immaculate Intellect sets about searching for anything that should not be here: in this house, that could be almost anything.
Few get to enjoy the pleasure of watching a great detective at work up close. Fewer still get to do so while attempting to evade the attentions of a murderous mastermind. Happily, this evening, you’ll get to do both: lucky you. Join the Surface’s finest mind as he attempts to expose the rot at the heart of London’s most enigmatic address.
Wine, dine, uncover conspiracies and unmask murders. Try to survive till the cheese course.
I’m about 42 actions in and there’s still more to go. I have to say, the railroading and dialogue grated on me at first, but I’m re-exploring the house again after the murder and this story is really growing on me. Still have yet to finish it and see how the ending holds up, but, it’s reminding me of old-school parser games in the best way.
Fallen London’s writing dabbles in the intertextual as a matter of course but this story has so specifically captured the feeling of having watched every episode of Poirot, feeling as if one knows M. Poirot personally, and yet (naturally) never having actually met him. It’s a Poirotsocial relationship. The turns of phrase, the craning of the fingers, the straightening of the bric-a-brac - I keep finding myself mentally adding the a biens, and wanting to interject things like ‘Good heavens!’.
…Okay, I finished it. This story was crazy. My document where I copy pasted everything is 20k words long.
I was really impressed by how the descriptions of the rooms changed each time you visited, even each time you made a choice in the rooms. The length of each of the choices really grew on me. Normally, I would be impatient during such a long story with so many choices without mechanical rewards, but this one was worth it. I was captivated and hanging onto every word by the end. Even the railroaded bits at the beginning I didn’t like (why is this man my friend?) were explained by the end.
(I haven’t ever experienced Poirot myself so I fear some of the story’s eccentricities may have been lost to me.) Still, easily one of my favourite Exceptional Stories. I was blown away by this.
Unfortunately, this is one of my least favourite pieces of writing in FL, ever. I was in the process of typing up a draft post here that just kept getting longer and longer as I found more things to complain about; but I thought better of posting it, as it amounted to several pages of harsh negativity. I guess I’ll leave it at that. Suffice it to say, I am sorely disappointed by this one.
I’m not super engaged in this one, but not because of the plot; rather, it is riddled with minor spelling errors and giving me a bit of a headache. I understand this one is a short novella’s length, at LEAST, possibly more if there are hidden options or branching paths I have not yet reached. But after a long day on my feet I’m not finding myself enjoying the story largely because of the minor but frequent letter drops, ex. “the” becoming “he”.
When searching the boudoir in what I assume is the final pass, I looked at a clue before listening to a certain person’s confession. Now the link to the confession is gone. I have searched clues everywhere else (and so now I get no options but to leave the room and return to whichever floor I’m on)… which means I’m now locked in this adventure with no way to conclude it!
The moment that the butler just walked out of the house with no resistance from myself or the other NPCs despite BARRING THE HOUSE TO PREVENT ANYONE FROM LEAVING with no prior option to interrogate him, my original “this was a lengthy murder mystery that I enjoyed some aspects of despite the tedium, how predictably petty most of the fellow diners were, and another NPC shoehorned into an ‘old friend’ I have absolutely no vested interest in” to “this is worst ES I’ve read all year, to the degree I’m seriously considering the cancellation of my Exceptional Friendship”
YOU DON’T LET SOMEONE WHO AID AND ABET A CRIME WALK OUT OF THE CRIME SCENE SCOTT-FREE UNLESS YOU ARE THE MOST INCOMPETENT DETECTIVE IN THE WORLD, and it was blatantly only plot armour that stopped you from interrogating him BEFORE that moment.
Semantics. He announced his involvement or not, and even with the twist at the end I find it hugely out of character that you weren’t allowed to interrogate the man the MOMENT he indicated he acted suspiciously.
Sorry - did we play the same story? Because in the story I played, the butler was one of the victims - he was ambushed in the kitchen and strangled before any of the witnesses could be interrogated. I don’t see how it’s ‘semantics’ to say that he didn’t walk out of the house despite the barred door when he actually stayed inside the house, being dead.
Edit: Just finished giving the Immaculate Intellect everything he deserves for the audacity of claiming to be my friend. Unless I’ve overlooked something important, the butler is neither confirmed alive or dead.
Well, the disappeared option reappeared so I could finish the game, but there is something buggy going on, as I also saw options that should have been eliminated persisting in further branches of the story.
As for the story itself… I really wish there’d been an option to irrigogate (hem-hem, Mr Pages) BOTH the detective and the murderer!
I checked. There was no option to interact with anything in the kitchen. So either you’ve discovered a different route in the game, or I’ve discovered a new glitch. Either way, it doesn’t change my opinion on the story’s quality.
Hmmm, interesting. Going into the basement costs an action, it’s not a free action like moving upstairs/downstairs to the upper floor and loft, so I only checked it once more after the initial round of investigation. After the witness interrogation started I don’t believe I ever went down there again. My last sighting of the Butler was Lord Tuffnell’s Library directly before the witness interrogations:
The butler nods and hurries out the room, returning a short time later with the salts. The Immaculate Intellect wafts them under Miss Petal’s nose and she eventually comes to… "Usher everyone to the billiard room, including the dear Colonel. I need some time to prepare. You ask him what for. “Why, to conduct the interviews, of course.”
I don’t think it was actually possible to leave the interrogation storylet while it was happening, but I don’t remember in any case because I only saved all the text. If the butler was supposed to have been discovered dead in the basement, well… That was incredibly out of the way and easy to miss.
Yeah, I went down to the basement and found the butler’s corpse. He turned out to be a paid actor, not a real butler, and was killed by a garrote. He didn’t walk out alive.
(Though he could have - it’s one of those stories where I kind of wonder if the characters should have just broken down the door and left, or climbed out of an open window- at least one was confirmed to exist).
