Out of curiosity, if a character is mentioned in game 1 but not in game 2, can he still be the culprit? Since the basic setting of both games should be the same, the character should exist in game 2 in the same capacity as he did in game 1, even though he was never explicitly referred to.
It would be a mean trick, but these two games could be thought of as parts 1 and 2 of a single story, thus making anyone mentioned in part 1 satisfy Knox even if they were not mentioned in the second part.
I wouldn’t pull that kind of trick, no. The pool of suspects is the same in both games.
Guess I have to bury my brilliant theory about captain Kawabata being the culprit, then. Though he still could be used as an extra corpse in game 1. I recall there being a problem with the number of corpses one could use as substitutes or whatever, which could perhaps be solved with adding him to the list of possible bodies. But that’s a theory for another time.
Now that we’ve gotten the death toll for the forum, I probably should try to solve some of these Gameboards. If the esteemed @midsummer hasn’t solved this one, then it must be much better then my pleb locked rooms. But don’t worry! I have an idea-
Never mind. It’s impossible. Time to go home.
On a serious note, I’ll give this a shot. A lot to catch up on though! Thank goodness I have tomorrow off. Expect something by Feb. 27th.
I’ve been pretty busy so I haven’t had a lot of time to sink into thinking about this mystery, but I’m certainly not giving up yet. Still, now that @ghagler is here, it’s reassuring to know that we’ll have the correct solution before the forum shuts down.
Anyhow, to keep things moving forward, here are some notes I’ve compiled so far. Some individual observations, a crude timeline of events, and some thoughts.
-Nanjo’s doctor’s bag stolen at some unspecified time, possibly before narration begins.
-Evening of day before stuff happens: Kanon goes serve Kinzo tea, Kinzo shows off poisons. Someone had already met with Kinzo.
-9:30 PM: Kanon meets with Jessica for 20 minutes, then hears about George’s condition.
-11 PM: Kanon goes to shut off guesthouse heating, Shannon is already asleep, Nanjo asks if Kanon has seen his bag. Nanjo goes to the mansion. Kanon goes to sleep after shutting down the heating.
-10:20 AM(?): Jessica wakes up in the vault. Battler was already awake.
-Some time over half an hour later, they heard faint noises, arguing. Only two distinct noises. Louder than Battler and Jessica’s shouting. Coming from the floor above, it seems.
-An unspecified amount of time later, Battler coughs up some blood and Jessica vomits. Afterwards, Jessica hears some noise from the room just as she falls unconscious.
-12 PM: Kanon wakes up. His alarm clock was gone, and he thus overslept. He goes to the mansion, and on the way, finds Shannon’s corpse. Among other mutlations, a sword was stabbed through her mouth. Reaching the mansion, he finds writing on the door.
-Kanon grabs a decorative sword. One was missing. Does not note a shotgun being missing.
-Kanon goes to dining room, finds it deserted – doesn’t look like anyone had prepared breakfast that day.
-Kanon goes to the kitchen, finds the heads of Genji, Gohda and Kumasawa.
-Kanon passes by the vault, finds writing on door and poison box with one antidote vial. Tries to communicate with anyone inside the vault, has no success.
-Kanon finds Kyrie in her bedroom with Rudolf’s headless corpse. Kyrie takes the sword from Kanon and interrogates him. Kanon screams in pain.
-Power goes out. The generator is in a shed next to the mansion.
-The two arrive at Krauss and Natsuhi’s bedroom. The key is in the door, but Kanon hadn’t seen it there when he passed by the room previously. Natsuhi joins the party.
-They find Hideyoshi outside his bedroom. Eva and George were inside, mutilated. Hideyoshi joins the party.
-They go to Rosa’s room. Door is locked, they break in. Headless bodies presumably belonging to the servants are in the room, along with Rosa’s corpse. Locked room with key inside.
-The group checks in on Kinzo. Kinzo is holed up in his study.
-Group goes to shed, finds generator smashed with an axe. Nanjo is there, stabbed with a scalpel. They find the moon key on him.
-The group grabs food and candles from the pantry and kitchen. Kyrie picks up a shotgun from the main hall and fires it. Then the group holes up in the parlor.
-An unspecified amount of time later, Natsuhi has to go to the bathroom. Kanon escorts her there, searches the room, and then lets her in. Roughly eight minutes pass, and Kanon breaks into the bathroom to find Natsuhi dead, stabbed in the forehead with a kitchen knife.
-Kanon returns to the parlor, explains, Kyrie points the gun at him, but Hideyoshi prevents her from shooting. Kanon escapes.
-Kanon drops his sword and apparently doesn’t pick it up. Kanon ends up in front of Beatrice’s portrait, it has writing on it. He’s totally depressed and spends an unspecified amount of time, possibly hours, wandering around aimlessly.
-On the ground floor, Kanon sees a person wearing Genji’s black raincoat and Nanjo’s boots. Face covered by a plain white mask. They point a shotgun at Kanon. Communicates nonverbally possible disappointment. Throws the skull key to Kanon.
-Kanon rushes to the vault through an indirect route because the culprit blocked the fastest way, picking up the sword from the main hall on the way. Since it was referred to as “the sword”, was this the same sword that he had dropped previously?
-Kanon enters the vault, finding Battler convulsing on the floor. Jessica is dead, having apparently coughed up quite a lot of blood. Kanon evacuates Battler and locks the door to the vault behind him.
-Kanon goes to Kinzo’s study. Hearing no answer from Kinzo, he breaks down the door and finds Kinzo dead, shot through the head. Study key was on Kinzo.
-Leaving Kinzo’s study, Kanon gets shot. Hears an angry voice, though it is weirdly static-y.
-9 PM: Battler wakes up in the guest room where Kanon put him.
-Battler sees mystery person lurking around with what is probably a shotgun.
-Battler finds Hideyoshi stabbed with a sword and Kyrie with face smashed.
-Battler hears what is probably a gunshot.
The last part of Kanon’s POV probably overlaps with Battler’s POV - the gunshot Battler hears could be the gunshot that kills Kanon. Then again, it could also be misdirection.
Another possibly relevant detail is that Battler and Jessica have no way of truly knowing when they were locked up in the vault. They can only check the single clock inside the vault, which could’ve been tampered with rather easily.
-Kinzo has a scar…?
-Poison ensures slow and painful death over the course of hours. Takes some time to kick in. However, Jessica and Battler didn’t seem to be in that much pain. Could it be that they weren’t actually injected with the snake venom?
-If the clock in the vault is correct, whatever argument Jessica and Battler heard apparently happened before Kanon woke up, or perhaps right around the time when Kanon woke up. Jessica and Battler note that whoever are arguing, they’re being louder than Jessica and Battler’s shouting. Is the soundproofing of the mansion just so good that nobody else heard this argument, or is there something more to this?
-Kyrie said she woke up about 10 minutes before meeting Kanon, the chain was already set, and that she probably woke up at night but was knocked unconscious immediately afterwards.
-In Krauss and Natsuhi’s bedroom, signs of struggle – a vase knocked down, a commemorative plate smashed and a mirror broken. Krauss hanged and bleeding from the mouth. Natsuhi was asleep and had to be woken up by Kanon. Natsuhi also claims she woke up and was knocked unconscious at night.
-Kyrie is weirdly gentle towards Hideyoshi.
-Hideyoshi claims the same story as Natsuhi and Kyrie – woke up, was knocked unconscious.
-Kyrie locked the door to Natsuhi and Krauss’ bedroom when they left for some reason.
-…Kanon sure does drop that sword of his a lot.
And then some thoughts.
Damn, that locked room with Natsuhi seems tough. Since Natsuhi didn’t say anything, I’d assume that she never saw the culprit enter the room and attack her. This, in turn, would suggest she was unconscious. The window seems like the only entry point the culprit could use, but Kanon confirmed it was locked. It was previously suggested that the culprit had somehow tampered with the window in advance to make it possible to pass through it even if it was locked from the inside, and in response it was stated in red that the window was not tampered with in any way. I would assume this red blocks any kind of tampering with the window that doesn’t have to be prepared in advance as well, but since there doesn’t seem to be too many possibilities, I might as well suggest that [color=Blue]the culprit entered the bathroom by taking the window off its hinges, stabbed Natsuhi who had fallen unconscious due to whatever was ailing her, and left, putting the window back into place before Kanon barged into the room[/color]. This also would make my previous escape theory pointless, since the culprit would have no reason to not use the window to leave the room as well.
I suppose that’s a serious issue, no matter how I look at it. Assuming my previous theory on how the culprit might’ve escaped is true, which I feel somewhat confident in due to the odd position of the corpse (and because the narration bothered to give these specific details about the layout of the room, thus suggesting they are relevant), if entry through the window is possible, why not exit as well? I can’t really think of any good reason why the culprit could’ve used the window to enter but not exit.
Well. If the culprit did not enter through the window, they entered through the door. It would’ve been impossible to enter through the door while Kanon was guarding it. Therefore the culprit must’ve entered before Kanon started guarding the door. Kanon searched the room and found nobody in there. Therefore the culprit must’ve entered after Kanon searched the room. [color=Blue]The culprit slipped inside in the small frame of time between Kanon leaving the bathroom and Natsuhi entering it. Perhaps the culprit had somehow convinced Natsuhi to not say anything to Kanon, or perhaps Natsuhi was just so dazed and out of it that she didn’t even notice. Perhaps by coincidence both Kanon and Natsuhi were facing in such a direction that there was a gap of time during which the culprit could’ve entered the bathroom unnoticed.[/color]
Or perhaps Kanon’s examination was not quite as good as he would’ve hoped. [color=Blue]The culprit entered the room unnoticed by Natsuhi right before Kanon had finished his inspection of the room. He was prepared to kill Kanon if he was noticed, but he managed to stay out of his sight. It would require some luck, but it was by no means impossible, and failure wouldn’t have been devastating.[/color]
Anyhow, moving onto something different, I feel like the narration kinda sneakily glosses over the deaths of Kyrie and Hideyoshi, but aren’t they quite interesting? Kyrie had a shotgun. She was presumably holed up in the parlor with Hideyoshi until death. She was extremely cautious. The culprit could’ve hardly just waltzed in and killed them both. Without a ranged weapon of his own, could he have ever gotten close enough to Kyrie to kill her? And if he did use a ranged weapon… why did we never hear a gunshot? If we assume that the gunshot heard by Battler is the gunshot that killed Kanon, then it seems like the entire timeframe in which Kyrie and Hideyoshi could’ve been killed is covered by the narrative. Yet, no mention of a gunshot exists. If Battler indeed heard the gunshot that killed Kanon, then it is clearly possible for someone in the ground floor to hear gunshots from the third floor. Unless the shooting happened when Kanon was in some soundproofed location, such as the vault, he should’ve heard it if the culprit shot Kyrie.
Kanon was in the vault only for a very short time, and he probably left the door open. It would be unlikely that a gunshot would’ve happened in that frame of time and thus have gone unheard by Kanon. So. Can we conclude that Kyrie and Hideyoshi were not killed by shooting them to death? And from this, can we conclude that Kyrie is actually the culprit…? Granted, the Natsuhi problem becomes even bigger if Kyrie is the culprit, but that might explain why Kyrie wasn’t aggressive towards Hideyoshi unlike towards everyone else. Perhaps things went more or less how she planned for them to go, and having Hideyoshi not on his guard around her would make it easier for her to kill him.
Anyhow, I suppose that’s it for now. If people post thoughts here every so often, even if they don’t give any blues, we’ll probably end up somewhere eventually. Maybe. Hopefully.
Technically, ‘Salvation’ being the antidote is specifcally said to just be an assumption.
Granted assuming the opposite doesn’t check out at all, but… just saying, I guess?
Salvation not actually containing the antidote totally fits within my theory about Battler actually being the culprit and the whole Jessica shabang happening way earlier than they think it is happening. Battler was just playing dead as Kanon charged into the room, and he had killed Jessica himself. Everything totally makes sense if Battler is the culprit and the gunshot and people lurking with shotguns is totally explainable. Obviously the gunshot actually was just thunder, and the lurking person with a shotgun was holding a sandwich or something.
Battler can’t be the culprit. I wrote down my reasoning on the Discord channel:
We know that the person Kanon saw at the end at to be the culprit, since:
◆ The culprit is the one who kills.
◆ There is only one culprit.
◆ There are no accomplices.
this forbids it from being anyone else
Jessica and Battler cannot be the culprit because:
The lock that requires the red key was set when Kanon tried to enter the vault, and this one could not be done or undone even from the inside without the key. This means that after appearing in front of Kanon, it would have been impossible for them to get back inside the vault, since Kanon had both keys, and Knox’s 3rd applies, which prevents them entering any other way.
Unless you solve this, you can’t claim that Battler is the culprit.
Almost all of @midsummer’s blue theories have been suggested at some earlier point by Xak. I think I found the exchanges relating to, if not exact, at least extremely similar suggestions:
In addition, in response to this one:
One last thing I should mention. I am currently in the process of writing Game 3.
Fear not! Unlike last time, there is no time limit. Mins the whole, you know, forum blowing up part. Thanks the way Game 3 is done, I have no need to wall off anything anymore. You are free to proceed as planned. It should be released sometime this week and will serve as a conclusion to the game’s story, while, of course, keeping almost everything you actually want to know about in shadows for you to attempt at solving everything that has happened up until that point.
I wonder if there is any way to induce someone to kill themselves without breaking the no accomplices rule. I imagine that straightforward coercion (“go stab yourself in the bathroom or Jessica totally dies or somesuch!”) is out of the question, but what if Natsuhi was never instructed by the culprit to do anything? The following scenario doesn’t fit the evidence so I won’t bother stating it in blue, but for example, if Natsuhi was injected with the snake venom, started feeling agonizing pain in the bathroom and realized that she’s going to die, and decided to take the easier way out by stabbing herself instead of dying of a slow and agonizing death by poisoning. In such a case, would the culprit still be the one who injected Natsuhi with the poison, as they are solely responsible for Natsuhi’s death? Since Natsuhi didn’t take any instructions from the culprit, and the culprit might’ve not even expected her to kill herself, she can hardly be considered an accomplice.
Hmm, since the culprit is defined as the one who kills, I suppose such a scenario would not work out, since if Natsuhi would kill herself, no matter the reason, that would define her as a culprit, and there can be only one of those.
…Wait a moment. I know this game is not meant to be played by staring at the reds too much, but as I compiled a list of reds about Natsuhi’s death, I couldn’t help but notice that only locking the window from the outside is forbidden in red. Unlocking, on the other hand, is fair game as far as the reds go. So, if only there were some way the window could be unlocked from the outside, things could work out. I previously wondered about why the culprit would not escape through the window if they could enter through it, but obviously the reason would be that they couldn’t lock the window behind them.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that I can’t find anything in the narrative to suggest there is a method to unlock the window from the outside. I could always claim vague stuff like [color=Blue]the culprit set up a mechanism that unlocks the window when the toilet is flushed or the sink turned on[/color] or that [color=Blue]the culprit set up some string trick that they could operate from the outside to unlock the window[/color] or perhaps that [color=Blue]they used ice or something to create a timed mechanism that unlocks the window and their psychic powers allowed them to time this perfectly[/color], or maybe simply [color=Blue]the culprit had some tool with which the window could be unlocked from the outside[/color], but as I couldn’t find any foreshadowing that would suggest any of those are possible, I’d imagine they all get slapped with Knox’s 8th, especially since Kanon searched the room and found nothing of interest. Though I suppose one could argue that Kanon was looking for people hiding in the room and thus wasn’t paying attention to small details that might give away a mechanism of some sort.
It’s pretty impressive I can still, after all this time, remember that I’d made certain reds.
Well, damn. Seems like I somehow missed that when I was going through your posts. I figured a transparent string tied to the bottle of soap might’ve been sufficient to unlock the window for the culprit… but that hardly counts as “directly, by hand”.
It seems like this particular headache will not be going anywhere any time soon.