Reflections
A downloadable storytelling game
They tell you not to get ahead of yourself, to do things by the book. But you’re dedicated to this case and you’re going to make your name solving it.
They tell you to move on. That you have to let this one lie. That there are battles you can’t win. But you know they’re still out there, and you can still make sure justice is done.
They tell you to enjoy retirement. To take up fishing, or jigsaws. But you have cupboards full of files and notes, and maybe the answer is waiting somewhere in them.
In Reflections, you and two other players take the role of a single investigator, chasing down a single case - as the rookie cop trying to prove themselves, as the rogue detective unable to let it go, and as the retiree trying to use their new free time to put old notes together.
The game was inspired by the fragmented storytelling of True Detective Season 3, building a mystery story that's interpreted and re-interpreted through time. To play you'll need three players, an hour or so, and a deck of regular playing cards.
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Just finished playing it with a couple of friends. Overall a very fun concept and an interesting experience. As for more critical feedback a few point came up:
- it wasn't clear enough how much any given player is allowed to push the investigation forward as none but Elder can possibly solve it,
- some kind of prompt for wrapping things up could help avoid the feeling of an investigation that goes in circles as it was fairly easy to fall into that kind of pattern as we build up clues, suspects, connections, etc. but can't actually progress the investigation,
- prompts for what kind of thing or change a player can introduce would be amazing as a way to lessen the cognitive load on participants,
- and the most important bit of feedback, repeated by everyone: the game doesn't feature enough interaction between players. I understand it's supposed to be merely contact through time, echoes, etc.but that ultimately made the experience quite isolating, at times lifeless. Perhaps expanding from just single player narrations to showing uncovered stuff through scenes where players act as different characters in the story could alleviate that issue.
Nice story weaving. It works for solo play too. The young-cop-old sequence doesn’t need to be repeated. I’ll try picking the time before taking a card