Whether it’s novelty books like Murdle or mystery game-inspired novels such as Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife, the puzzle mystery and mystery puzzles are proving very popular at the moment. We seem to be reviewing more and more of these books here at Crime Fiction Lover. So, it’s interesting to see the arrival of the online mystery game Small Town Secrets – created by two brothers in Canada called Peter and Will Tanner.
If you visit the website Small Town Secrets, you can sample what they’ve conjured by playing the first episode of The Bellweather Case for free. The prominent property developer Daniel Mercer has disappeared. He was last seen departing a heritage fundraiser in the town on Saturday night. Mysteriously, the door to the local court record office is found left ajar early the following morning and on further inspection blood is found in one of the storage rooms. A wadge of files is missing, relating to a controversial property dispute.
Around the same time as this discovery, Mercer’s SUV is found empty and abandoned down by the old mill. As a player, it’s up to you to figured out what happened.
To do this, you’ll review a whole range of exhibits – witness reports, photographs, CCTV images, and so on. As you go along, you can store these pieces of evidence in your file, make notes in your notebook, and form a theory as to what happened. You type this in after going through everything in the episode and then move on to the next one, as long as you’ve signed up for the case, which currently costs $11.99 in Canadian funds. Once you’re all caught up, new episodes come out on Sundays.
The bare bones of a story are definitely in there, and the characters all have a history and many of them have secrets to keep, the main focus is on sifting through the evidence and spotting the anomalies. Then, you’ll be on your way to typing in the right questions and/or answers when you conclude the episodes. While the imagery has been created using AI, and some of the code too, I imagine, the story itself and the overall design of the game are the work of its authors.
I’m old enough to remember puzzle games like 7th Guest and the point-and-click adventures and mysteries of the 1990s. This is certainly more cohesive and realistic. Being web-based, it’s very easy to play as well. While it’s not quite like reading a crime novel, instead of playing mentally by remembering what’s relevant as you read here you’re participating in a more engaged way. There is a little less atmosphere than a book, but a bit more doing. It’s certainly a puzzle mystery and it’s waiting there for you to solve.
Give it a spin and let us know what you think. It’s likely we’ll see more interactive mysteries like this, so we’re interested in seeing how people take to it. Here are some images from the game. Part two of The Bellweather Case is already in the making.
