Question About Leaving

[Mattrex]

After exploring the ship for a while, the option to leave comes up--long before you've deduced all of the identities and fates. I stuck around to continue, and made quite a bit more progress, but it's becoming harder and harder to figure things out as I move on.

I've hesitated to leave, in case that finishes the game prematurely with a bad ending or something. But there are some of these identities and fates I can't see any possible way to figure out with the information I have. Do I just need to look closer and think harder, or will leaving the ship progress the game further so I can get more information?

[djsnowboy267]

If you leave early (as I just did) it will give you a bad ending, you need to piece together more info

[djsnowboy267]

However, if you do decide to leave early, you can load your save afterwards from the menu and rewind back onto the ship to finish what you had left

[Gyre]

Slight spoilers:

There's one or two people that going to the ending (which will be bad if you haven't done all available chapters) helps you with, but otherwise all of the chapters you can access (i.e. not bargain) should be possible to puzzle out.

One of the things you have to do a lot of is leaps of faith and broad assumptions, as well as carefully looking at the drawings you're given. Sometimes something isn't logical, per se, but if you assume such-and-such might be true, it all falls into place. It's just not easy; I'm still trying to figure it out mysel, several hours in.

[fiat luxia]

Look at the 3 drawings
they are extremely helpful. for example

some of the mate's stewards are standing by their respective mates in sketch 3

and

all of the ships stewards wear very similar clothing as do the mates. others like the butcher wear things like aprons

people like the helmsman and gunners are standing in very informative places

[WoM]

You will receive a very clear message when you've exhausted all there is to deduce abord the ship. If you choose to leave earlier than that, you'll get a less than perfect ending.

[Sheepy]

Also useful to note:
people sleep in the hammock numbers assigned to them