Incline Between Horizons - sci-fi detective adventure from the creator of Lacuna

[Zombra]

- Disliked the main character. She's clearly unsuited for her high-pressure job.

While I like her, you're right about the second part. Bear in mind though that this is a deliberate plot point - with only 1000 people on the ship, every child is forced to train from birth to take over the job of a parent eventually because a traditional "sink or swim" interview/unemployment model wouldn't work (the theory went). This system does have glaring faults and at least a few characters complain about it throughout the game. It's supposed to be a factor in your eventual decision whether or not the mission should be abandoned, and it's a good excuse to throw the player into a challenging situation.

I got all the cases correct in the end, but two of those were me putting the blame on a suspect based on very, very flimsy circumstantial evidence.

I found this to be a strength of the game, not a weakness. Having to make decisions without ironclad proof, based on the best information available, is thrilling. We've been programmed by games for decades to feel that once we collect 10/10 clues the answer will be obvious and we won't have to think about it. Here you sometimes have to think hard, lean on intuition, and take your best shot without knowing whether you're right beforehand.

The triangulation case had me stumped too for a while because they don't exactly spell it out what the reference pings mean, but it had a logical and unambiguous solution in the end.

I wish I knew what your process was. I went on the game's discord and explained mine, and the developer himself told me that I was doing it the way I was supposed to ... yet I still got it wrong. I gave a little more detail and he stopped talking to me

 

[3 others]

- Disliked the main character. She's clearly unsuited for her high-pressure job.

While I like her, you're right about the second part. Bear in mind though that this is a deliberate plot point - with only 1000 people on the ship, every child is forced to train from birth to take over the job of a parent eventually because a traditional "sink or swim" interview/unemployment model wouldn't work (the theory went). This system does have glaring faults and at least a few characters complain about it throughout the game. It's supposed to be a factor in your eventual decision whether or not the mission should be abandoned, and it's a good excuse to throw the player into a challenging situation.

Yeah, I contemplated whether to include that as a caveat, because I fully agree with your viewpoint and the bit of worldbuilding it brings to the ship's society. Still think playing with her was more annoying than necessary.

I wish I knew what your process was. I went on the game's discord and explained mine, and the developer himself told me that I was doing it the way I was supposed to ... yet I still got it wrong. I gave a little more detail and he stopped talking to me

As the network programmer tells you, vertical location of the room doesn't make a difference, so you only have to track horizontal coordinates of the possible hotspots. Since you get the low ping result in the public area, the server must be nearby, within the 33ms ping limits spinwise & counterspinwise you get from the references. You can narrow the possible server room options further from the other ping locations: the command area, residential area & basement pings for the secret server are all medium latency, so you know it has to be between the 33ms & 66ms reference ping locations from any of those. For example, the command area reference ping tells you that there's 33ms to the train station and 66ms to bunk XYZ in the residential area, so you know it has to be between those. Putting all these together, there's only one option that satisfies all the conditions.

Mulling over the game a bit more, I was disappointed by the lack of high-pressure interrogation situations in comparison to Lacuna. Those were very memorable "have you done your homework?" parts of the previous game. Or maybe there are, but I just didn't encounter them in my playthrough. It's strange if that big interrogation chamber room was completely unused.