What Good Is An Alibi In 'Lucifer Within Us'
You might notice this isn’t a Substack post or a Medium post - apologies for the miscommunications, but you should be receiving uninterrupted newsletters from here on out!
Lucifer Within Us is a mystery game where you need to identify the killer (and the demon that compels them) in a number of closed room murder mysteries. You’ll need to tease out their motive, means and opportunity to do so, by picking out the inconsistencies in each suspect’s testimony.
At the core of the game is the testimony mechanic, which lets you scrobble back and forth across suspect and witness statements as they explain their version of events. You can then ask questions, or contradict parts of their testimony with evidence or opposing testimony from other witnesses. When a contradiction is found, the testimony is corrected, often being broken up into smaller and more specific pieces. Innocent people lie as much as guilty people do, obfuscating details that are boring, or don’t paint them in a good light.
It becomes quickly clear that when someone has a long stretch of testimony that it’s almost certainly a lie. They did not “go back to work”, or “go for a walk”. In other games, this kind of giveaway might read as ‘the UI spoils’, as when in adventure games the evidence you need is behind an old dialogue option that suddenly un-greyed out.
But actually, it makes perfect sense. These long stretches of time are intentionally vague and can’t be verified. Even without looking at a long bar and going “hey, I think this could be chopped up”, you would absolutely clue into it as the detective in that scenario. You were just… on a walk? This whole time? Where nobody could see you or verify what you were doing? It only begs the response: “Prove that I wasn’t.”
In the end, it’s a useful hint in play: This is where you should interrogate next, if you’re not sure what to do. But it’s so utterly consistent with the thought pattern of ‘detective’ that it hardly feels like a hint at all.
Oh, Also
Speaking of detectives, Disco Elysium: The Final Cut is out on the 30th, and it’s already sparking controversy, as it’s banned in Australia.
On Friday afternoon, the Australian classification board announced Disco Elysium – The Final Cut was refused classification on the grounds the game was found to “depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena” in a way that offended “against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults”. It ruled the game should not be classified.
For everyone else, it will be available as a free patch on PC for people who already own it, or on consoles (except for Xbox, because… reasons). I will probably be writing about it next week. It’s a very good game.