Fair play?

[Knox]

So, if anyone enjoys the puzzle to the detective fiction genre, could anyone tell me if this game is a fair play mystery?

Is a person as a reader able to solve it or will it come down to a bunch of incomprehensible clues? Also in a similar vein, does it follow any of the sets of rules for fair play mysteries?

[imaginarycreatures]

If your question is, "Is this mystery 'solvable'?", then I would definitely say no. The story definitely violates at least one of Knox's commandments, and arguably violates two others:

The criminal is not mentioned in the early part of the story, and, in fact, would require extant knowledge to even suspect.
The player is never given enough clues to figure out the criminal until it is explicitly told to the player near the end.
The story relies on a heretofore undiscovered poison whose effects aren't explained at the time.

(The preceding in spoiler text is an elaboration of which commandments were violated.)

Overall, this game has an entertaining story, but it is definitely not a "detective" story in the golden age sense of the word.

[Knox]

Thank you very much. That was exactly the sort of thing I was wondering.

[The Tear Collector]

Maybe you should have a look at the game with the silver earring.
At the end of the game, right before the classic unraveling of the mystery, you get to solve the case on your own by answering a lot of questions. Everything you put in there is valid and will let you continue to the unraveling giving you a chance to see if you were right.

Therefore I would say that it's possible to solve that mystery... I was wrong though ^^

[Knox]

That sounds much more like what I am looking for. I will have to try it. Thanks :)

[Dracon]

Originally posted by imaginarycreatures:

If your question is, "Is this mystery 'solvable'?", then I would definitely say no. The story definitely violates at least one of Knox's commandments, and arguably violates two others:

The criminal is not mentioned in the early part of the story, and, in fact, would require extant knowledge to even suspect.
The player is never given enough clues to figure out the criminal until it is explicitly told to the player near the end.
The story relies on a heretofore undiscovered poison whose effects aren't explained at the time.

Almost every Mystery novel violates or at least bends a knox rule, they are not absolute its pretty save to apply them though until you get the feeling that they won't help you to the solution.
Other than that I got to disagree, it IS solvable, you need to look at the story from Watson's perspective (thus watson as the detective) though, instead of Holmes'

Here my take on this and Knox rules, attention actual game spoilers inside:

- The culprit is a well known holmes character, and doesn't really require an introduction in the sense of knox rules. - Holmes is to be seen as a series.
Though you can easily get who the mastermind is around the point where it is stated that the Mastermind has to be a genius. Holmes doesn't have many adversaries befitting that title.

- The poison isn't really a part of the mystery, as they tell you very soon what it does and that it was actually applied, so yeah you are right its arguable if the rule got actually vialoted

Another problem of this story is said trick in the perspective which a Holmes story shouldn't have as they are meant for beginners.

Originally posted by Alchemist:

Maybe you should have a look at the game with the silver earring.

Earring was the worst of all those games in my opinion - I never made it past the guard dogs (Which was a totally unecessary minigame) and skipped every other sherlock holmes game bar testament ever since.
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Tbh, I count myself to the group of persons wanting to solve a mystery novel, and while I enjoyed this game I'm not sure If I should buy Lupin or Jack the Ripper as I'm unsure whether its even solvable, or more precisely 'fair' as the OP fittingly said.

[Knox]

I too enjoy solving them. I don't allow myself to read to a conclusion unless I have a cuprit and explanation for all of the mysteries involved. I in part do this because the first one I read was "And Then There Where None" and was pretty young so I knew nothing of even being able to solve mysteries in stories, so I really missed my chance to attempt to solve a great one. Not wasting another.
At the same time I really hate putting a lot of thought into something and finding that I would basically not be able to solve it no matter the thought put in. It always becomes this very careful game, as shown in this thread, of learning if a story is fair play or not and avoiding spoilers simultaniously.

[Dracon]

Well its hard to tell you if the culprit is fair play without spoilering.
Without that one can only (truthfully) say it is fair but it isn't at the same time.

The meanest about is the perspective trick, which is hinted very vague on the first crime scene after the tutorial.
While you will probably make a 'meh they borke a knox rule' remark when seing it you won't undderstand its meaning until much later when its already too late. So should you decide to buy it consider Watson the detective this time around, then and with a bit knowledge about Holmes novels, its fair enough.
So if you want it in fair as in strictly by knox rules you might want to wait until its on sale, or miss out entirely.
Silver Earring on the other hand isn't exactly something I can recommend though. As there is this 1 totally unecessary 'puzzle' (more a stealth minigame tbh) that can actively push you back over and over again without a chance of skipping it.

[Knox]

It can be hard to say if a story is fair play or not without giving some spoilers, especially as it is rare that any of them don't break atleast one rule.

I do like Knox's rules, but honestly the reason I have this name is that my usual online name was taken or something and this was the first thing I thought of.