I played this last night and had a great time. Played with two and this really worked well. The instructions are good, but a few more examples would really help - especially for the investigation phase where it’s not totally clear about how the investigator moves.

Anyways overall this is a giant success and really got me thinking about what other genres could be played in this format. Horror would work really well, though you might want to make it a bit more lethal.

Some things I think I’d house rule in - 

throw in the jokers and use those to trigger flashbacks, 

add an epilog at the end and have players take turns picking up a suspect card and giving a 1-2 sentence ‘what happened to them’ summary of their future after the murder. Also a good way to clean up the game!

And some suggestions for the kickstarter: 

1 have a couple of setting suggestions that are a bit flushed out as scenarios - you could use the plots of famous books eg, you’re all on a luxurious island and everyone has been summoned here under mysterious circumstances, including the investigator, etc . Just something to give people a bit of a sense of place.

2 add some rules for other genres (eg horror, etc)

Thsnks for the great game!

Played this game for the first time last night, and had a great time! We were only able to get through the first journal phase due to time, but we're hoping to come back to it in a few weeks. There were a couple of points we stumbled over while playing — some of which are answered in other comments here — so I rounded up some feedback from my play group in case it's helpful for future editions:

• First off, love that this game is formatted to be read through as we played. It made the game very easy to bring to the table without having to do a bunch of reading ahead or facilitating.
• Some of the killer's movement rules could be more explicitly spelled out:
  • It moves diagonally (not clear if you don't know chess)
  • It does not move onto Suspect squares that have not been filled out/added (unless you want to add a Suspect?)
    • Note: we were playing in Google Slides, so I made a grid of text boxes as shown on page 6, akin to the Worksheet
    • Including a diagram of an in-progress journal would help; all current visualizations depict a complete grid
  • Mini movement diagram like the one for the Sleuth would be helpful
• What should happen when the killer moves onto a Suspect with no open adjacent spots? That is, all the Clues and Suspects around that Suspect have been filled out.
  • We skipped the Chapter and drew again, unless The Pieces [Were] in Place.
• Optional random tables/oracles would help Suspect creation go faster, e.g., names, commendable qualities, abhorrent qualities
  • Could use 6-Q cards for additional details
• Some example Chapter titles would be helpful; wasn't sure how to title these differently than just whatever the Clue is (this might become more clear in the second part of the game?)
• Loved word choice of "commendable" and "abhorrent" qualities, very evocative
  
• Defining the abhorrent quality made clues flow naturally once we had Suspects established, great mechanic
• Only got through the first Journal phase, but had a good time and the note-taking of the game means we can pick it back up later

Hope this is helpful! Thank you for creating this game!