The Occupation

1 comment on Hacker News

1. PositiveehntoDec 20, 2021

   I think you need the "Aha" moments to let you complete some task, or lead you to some place, or interact with some thing, whilst still hiding enough information to keep you curious. That way the moments of deduction are exciting because it lets you progress the story, and gets you closer to the final deduction.

   For games with a grander theme like a whodunit, I think it's totally reasonable to have that just be revealed at the end, and if you got it right you can pat yourself on the back. Books and movies are no different, sometimes you figure it out before the book tells you what it was and you get to have a cheeky grin on your face when it turns out you were right, but that's all. If you really must gamify it, you could have your character accuse people, and if they get it wrong the cutscene shows who did it getting away or what have you.

   I feel The Occupation meets the authors requirements. You play the role of a journalist trying to figure out what happened in a bureaucratic scandal, wandering through beautifully atmospheric old institutional buildings collecting documents and clues. There is a lot of freeform deduction and you will definitely not get everything on the first playthrough as some things you won't even realize you were looking for, unless you made those freeform deductions and knew to look for those clues or documents.

   They do a great job of gamifying knowledge through meetings and interviews you have with different characters, and if you don't have the right bits of information then you simply don't have those questions to ask, and can't pick the right answers, and you get less information back out of the person.