To advance through the story sections of the game, left-click or press the space or enter keys. When at a menu, left-click to make a choice, or use the arrow keys to select a choice and enter to activate it.
To solve mysteries, you must select a Target, an Action, the appropriate number of Minions, and optionally, any inventory items that provide bonuses. You can use either the mouse or the keyboard to select and activate targets, etc, in the same way that you would menu choices. When all options are activated, use 'Assign' to send the request to the Out-Tray, and 'Done' to begin the day's investigations.
The game can only be saved at the beginning of each week. A Load/Save button will appear on the calendar screen. Select that, then click on the 'Save' tab next to the slot you wish to save in. You can use the 'Jump to Page' post-it notes to move to a new page of save slots. There is no limit to the number of saved games that you can have.
While you can only save at the start of the week, you can load at any time, if you decide to abandon your current week's playthrough. Right-Click or hit Escape to take you to the game menu, then select Load.
The game will make an Autosave for you at the beginning of each week. The Autosaves page is before Page 1 in the save listings. Only the most recent six autosaves are available. Older autosaves will be overwritten as you continue to play.
In the early game, saves will automatically have a photograph of Elsa clipped to them. After the Harvest Festival, this image will instead reflect your chosen partner.
Music Volume and Sound Volume - adjust these bars to the desired level for music tracks and sound effects. There is no voice acting in this game.
Window and Fullscreen affect the game display. The game graphics are designed at 1366x768. Any other setting will squash, stretch, or box them as your graphics card prefers. Clicking the Window button on the option menu will reset the display to the standard 1366x768.
The Chance of Success panel affects whether or not you will be given a summary of your chances on any task. If the target includes an unknown individual, or a person or location with skills that have not yet been revealed, this will always show Odds Unknown. If you hide the odds, you will have to use your own math to add up your skills versus your target's skills and decide whether or not you are likely to succeed.
Misc Options - Updates allows you to download new patches as they are made available. Privacy Options allows you to disable network access if you do not wish to be able to download patches or upload error messages. On some systems, there are also options here for enabling encryption for uploads. Controller Options will let you configure a joystick to play the game if you choose to use one.
The Video Driver panel lets you change rendering modes, which may fix some display errors. Selecting options at random, however, may cause your game to break. If your game is working, you probably don't want to change these.
The Difficulty panel affects the way that dice rolls work in the game. At the Loaded Dice level, probability is adjusted so that your minions tend to roll high and your targets roll low. At the High Stakes level, either of you could roll any number from 1-20. This makes the outcome much less predictable, and the game a lot harder.
The red bar next to each minion's small card shows how close they are to their stress maximum. When maximum stress is reached, that minion will need to take time off before she can be assigned to new tasks.
The 'Log' button on the top of each case folder will let you read over actions, results, and clues that have come before.
You can tell what skills will be used in an action by looking at the small icons on the sides of the button. The left side shows the skills your minions will need, and the right side shows the skills the target will use. In rare cases, a icon will appear next to actions when the skills to be used are unknown, or may vary. If no skill icon is shown at all, then no skill is required to succeed in that action.
Completing a case will grant you skill points based on your performance. The number of available skill points is displayed on the Training Room card. All available points can be assigned to a minion with the Train action.
When replaying the game, a Skip Scene button at the bottom of the screen will allow you to bypass some early story scenes if you do not wish to see them again. Not all scenes can be skipped, as they may contain important choices.
For example, a Guard action uses Intimidation and Observation skills. If you have one minion with 40 Intimidation and 10 Observation, and one minion with 10 Intimidation and 30 Observation, then assigning them together will use the highest available Intimidation skill (40) and the highest available Observation skill (30), therefore giving a better result than either girl could get on her own.
However, if one minion had 30 in both skills and the other minion had 20 in both skills, there is no benefit to assigning them together, because only the highest skills would be used.
If an action uses only one skill, there's not much point in assigning two minions, since only the highest skill present will be used. Adding more minions does not provide a bonus.
If one of your minions is a secret traitor, she will tend to sabotage you by failing at tasks you assign. Even fetching supplies might go wrong: traitors are much more likely to bring back Lemons. But just because she found a lemon once doesn't prove that a girl is a traitor!
If one of your minions is a secret traitor, she can't sabotage a task if you assign another minion to the task with her. This is one time where adding an extra minion can be useful even if her skills do not add to the roll.
A minion will occasionally be absent due to stress, injury, or personal situations. When this happens, you will see her card in the tray with a label on it explaining why she is absent, but you will not be able to select her until she returns. If a minion is expelled or quits the Student Council, her card will disappear completely.
A minion's Loyalty score also serves as her stress maximum. Loyal minions can be assigned more tasks without needing to rest as often. Minions with low loyalty will refuse to work on holidays.
Only one minion at a time can be sent to fetch supplies or boost skills in the training room.
Suspending or expelling a student is an executive action. You do not need to assign a minion to perform this task. However, it will still fill up a slot in your Out-Tray.
Inventory items provide bonuses and/or penalties to your skill rolls. Most items only affect certain skills. It is possible to use an inventory item in a case that doesn't need its skill. If you do that, the item will have no effect, but it will be used up.
If you have a Lemon in your supply tray, you will need to use it on an action to make room for better supplies. You can dispose of lemons safely by Questioning suspects you've talked to previously. If you collect enough Lemons, another option may appear.
If there are five items in your supply tray, you cannot visit the supply closet again until you use up one of those items on a task. Just assigning an item to a case is not enough, it must be used. Otherwise, cancelling actions might cause there to be too many items for the tray.
When you have items in your supply tray, you can assign as many of them as you want to a task, but you must assign a minion as well! Supplies can't solve mysteries by themselves.
The Sedative item provides a bonus of ten in any action against a human character. Sedating the Patio does not have any effect.
The Question action only reveals the information that the suspect wants you to know. Even on a success, the suspect can still choose to lie or refuse to answer. Stronger actions may be needed to get a response.
Trying and failing to Harass a suspect usually leads to a loss of karma. A successful Harassment will still lose karma if the suspect is innocent.
Questioning a suspect is a safe action that never loses karma. It's a good way to get a look at a suspect's skills before planning other actions against them.
Students tend to object to having the Student Council break into their rooms and search them. If you get caught, you will lose a lot of karma.
In a Persuade action, you are being very up-front about telling your target what you want them to believe. If you want to convince someone more subtly, an action that includes Stealth is required.
Successfully Guarding a location will prevent criminals from getting inside to cause trouble. However, it doesn't stop them from going somewhere else, and if you've scared them off, you may not be able to see who they are. The reverse is also true - successfully Staking Out a location will let you see who the people trying to access it are, but it may not allow you to stop them from doing whatever they're doing.
If a Detention succeeds at breaking the will of a guilty suspect, the council will gain karma. However, if you put innocent students in detention, or fail your skill roll against a guilty suspect, the council will lose karma.
Some hardened criminals can resist a Detention even if your roll is successful. You will not lose karma, but you will not resolve the case either. You will need to try something else.
The options to detain, suspend, or expel a student are only unlocked if some evidence against them is uncovered. Even the Student Council President needs justification to order an expulsion.
Suspending a student is a strong punishment. Most guilty parties will break down and apologise after being suspended. If suspension isn't enough to stop bad behavior, only expulsion remains.
Expelling a student should be a last resort, because expulsion always damages the school's reputation. However, if a student is a danger to herself and others, it is better to remove her permanently.
When the two total numbers on a skill challenge are within ten points of each other, the result might be either a success or a failure, but you won't be told which. It's too close to call.
If you get a Success result on an action, then there is nothing more to be gained from repeating that action unless new evidence is discovered in the case.
Cases may start off similarly to each other and go in entirely different directions. Be sure to check your evidence rather than leaping to conclusions from past experience.
Each case has a time limit, after which it will resolve itself for better or for worse. Solving cases before the time limit will result in a bigger bonus and a better grade.
Not every case is a mystery worth solving. Sometimes the wisest course of action can be to do nothing. Pick and choose which cases seem most important to pursue.
The game will end if you run out of either karma or reputation. Sometimes it may be better to let a case fail and lose the reputation rather than lose too much karma trying to investigate it, or vice versa.
Failing to solve the major cases Miss Talmage assigns, such as finding the traitor, will lead to a game over.
The traitor, if there is one, is randomly selected in each new game. It will not always be the same person. You must rely on your own observation skills to monitor the successes and failures of your minions and detect which one is not on your side.
This game is copyright 2015 Hanako Games and Spiky Caterpillar.
This game uses source code from a number of open source projects. For a list, and a location where the source code can be downloaded from, please view the LICENSE.txt file in the renpy directory, or visit http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/License .
If you have installed GnuPG to provide encrypted traceback upload, it is subject to the GNU General Public License and the Lesser GNU General Public License, found in the game/gnupg/ directory.