I just finished this story, and I enjoyed it a lot! Congratulations to Ben Sabin (who also wrote The Tale of Old Fritz from earlier this year) for writing such an excellent and engaging story! I look forward to even more stories in the future from this Exceptional Author.
What I liked:
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Being able to explore many areas in a new location without any time/action-based restrictions, which is something I always appreciate. I also liked how we revisited the same areas later to uncover new clues.
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Excellent writing and an engaging story. It was fun to gradually uncover the mystery of what exactly was going on during (and before) the party.
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Great characters! Most exceptional stories just have one or two well-developed characters, but this one had six (…and the butler), several of which even had new art.
What could have been better:
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At several points during the search of the house, qualities in the storylets spoiled what was going to be found. For example, when searching the art studio there is a quality you can see for having found Giles’ skin, before you’ve actually found it. It might have been better if these qualities were named and described more vaguely so as not to give away what was about to be discovered.
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As others have noted, there are quite a few typos. For some of them, however, I’m not sure if they were overlooked during editing or if they are simply the author’s writing style. For example, there are several uses of question marks in sentences that are technically not questions, such as “Ask what Giles had done?”. By contrast, sentences like “What is left in this little play you find yourself in…” seem like they ought to end in question marks rather than ellipses.
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One of the endings at the climax of the story requires the player to have a specific profession. I was fortunate enough to have this profession and so had the option available to me, but this restriction seems unfair to other players. I’m all for including minor snippets of additional text or non-essential storylets available only for specific professions (e.g., when you find the false wall in the Boudoir), but not for locking an entire ending.
That said, having chosen the profession-specific ending, I don’t fully understand what actually happened. Maybe it’s just supposed to be unclear. Can anyone explain to me what they believe happened in it?
Overall these are only minor quibbles and suggestions for A Dinner to Die For. I leave you all with this classic Poirot moment: https://youtu.be/EQRMFpbmgt0?feature=shared&t=14