Development Roadmap

I thought it'd be useful for anyone giving feedback to know what's in store in the upcoming months, so here's a rough roadmap of things I still need to get working, in rough order of priority. I would love feedback on it!

What's already working:

• You can ask any character about any topic, including other characters, and even about themselves.
• Characters will reveal new topics, that you can click on to add to your "dialogue inventory".
• You have access to a team of crime scene experts:
  • Forensics Expert, whom you can ask about physical evidence
  • Medical Examiner, whom you can ask about the victim and the cause of death, and possible murder weapons
  • Records Keeper, whom you can ask about criminal histories, relevant current events, and documents
• When you are ready, you can accuse the murderer, but you'll also need to specify the murder weapon and the motive.
• If you are unsatisfied with your results, you can undo the accusation and resume playing.

What I'm working on right now:

• Help system. You can ask each of your CSI teammates for help, and they will give you some clues on how to proceed. They might give you a general tip, or hint at characters you need to talk to more, or topics you need to ask more about.
• Procedural generation of different murder mysteries: any character can possibly be the murderer, with their own unique motive. Different locations, different cast of characters, motives, causes of death, evidence items, etc.

Whats on the roadmap

• Red Herrings. Characters with motives who might be the murderer, but who you discover are not, and with an interesting reason why they were being so suspicious.
• Catching lies, probable cause, and warrants. If you can catch someone with a lie, you can then have probable cause to get a warrant to search them or their property, revealing more damning (or possibly exonerating) evidence.
• Difficulty levels. I like the NYTimes Crossword approach: easier mysteries earlier in the week, harder ones later.
• Better art. I have just placeholder art right now for each character. I'd like to commission some artists to draw better character profiles.
• More complicated relationships and dynamics between persons of interest, ranging between hatred, apathy, jealousy, obsession, etc
• Better UI? Its pretty basic right now, but maybe its good enough? Would love your feedback on it.
• The ability to create a new murder mystery daily, or an infinite amount of murders