[T] A Turnabout On Rails ● (Privated for edits)

[ikuzonos]

Played through this case to completion, and thoroughly enjoyed it! There were some presentation hiccups (mostly related to fades/lack thereof), but overall I thought it was fun! Definitely give it a try if you haven't.

[Enthalpy]

I apologize for the extremely long wait. To make a long story short, I've been having some personal issues since April that dramatically intensified about a week after receiving the review request. While they're not completely resolved, they're no longer as consuming.

I should hopefully be able to get back to the review. I'm doing some traveling this week, which may afford me time to resume the review. Regardless, expect an update from me next Sunday.

[CodingAnt]

I apologize for the extremely long wait. To make a long story short, I've been having some personal issues since April that dramatically intensified about a week after receiving the review request. While they're not completely resolved, they're no longer as consuming.

I should hopefully be able to get back to the review. I'm doing some traveling this week, which may afford me time to resume the review. Regardless, expect an update from me next Sunday.

Take as long as you need. I'm not in a hurry to get this case reviewed, seeing as I'm working on an entry for the Takumiverse case competition right now, and I totally understand any extenuating circumstances.

[DeathByAutoscroll]

This is (overall) a pretty fun case, albeit rough around the edges. I enjoyed playing though each part (mostly, will get to that later) and am excited to play another case by this creator. With that being said, here are some specific overall thoughts about each case, with any bugs/critical specific points DM'd to CodingAnt separately:

Spoiler : Part 1 :

Overall, this is a great introduction to the the premise of the case. The premise of Trucy being accused of murdering not just 1, but 2 separate people on a train in motion is intriuging, and seeing the WAA cast having to cross examine Phoenix Wright to prove her innocence helps further the mystery and tension. The Trial itself proceeds nicely, with all crossexaminations being logically and reasonably solvable. The arguments after a given crossexamination do take a few pages out of Lionel Hutz's playbook however this is acknoledged in trial as neither side really having evidence due to the nature of glove prints, and this was not really a problem that majorly affects the mood of the case. The competent implementation of the mood matrix added a lot to this section of the trial, having to untangle emotions to wrangle the witnesses into actually telling the truth of what actually happened. Having Phoenix Wright being accused of being an accomplice is also a really good hook into the followup investigation and multiple trials, each focusing on a separate murder.

Spoiler : Investigation :

The investigation picks up after a hallowing court day with Athena and Apollo each individually taking a murder, yet still investigating together. Switching to Athena and seeing all the evidence and profiles update with different descriptions is wonderful attention to detail, and something I always love seeing. The investigation itself was enjoyable, talking to well developed characters filled with personality and figuring out what to show them to get them to talk to us, or elaborate on a certain subject. Unfortunately Athena Cykes was subjected to a long walk around every possible location re-talking and presenting things for ages until I gave up and consulted the almightly walkthough, to find that the engine room had to be clicked in a few specific pixels to reveal an impossible to see piece of evidence... on the 4th attempt at clicking on that spot. Now that we have real evidence, and the start of a theory of what *really* happened.

Spoiler : Part 2 :

This is easily the best part of the entire case. Now armed with real evidence, Apollo can actually start to defend Trucy. The Judge arbitrarily declaring the murders are separate and any mention of Raine's murder raised an eyebrow, but is overall executed well, with the only thing prevented by that literally discussed at the start of the next trial. All the CEs here are good (bar one which has a bit of hindsight logic to it, and one with a simpiler solution that can't be presented), with some having 2 contradictions in them you are required to find. The introduction of a new witness bursting with personality, and a video of the crime, really made proving Trucy was innocent fun and enjoyable. Everytime (bar one) I thought "Hey, that's not right, did the creator forget about..." it gets brung up and addressed in a really elegant way. The trial of Vicky Claudeston was very fun to play and complete.

Spoiler : Part 3 :

Unfortunately, unlike the trial of Vicky, the trial of Timothy Raine was a slog to play though. This is when the wonderful galloping horse of this case bucked me off. The trial focuses on following up Raine escaping out the window from part 2, and their circumstances of death. The crime itself is interesting and fun, with the murder itself being cleverly staged, however the trial at this point starts to bombard the player with unrelenting sudden evidence presents, blind evidence presenting (half the time I didn't know what on earth the game expected me to present) and the dreaded multi-evidence presents. The crossexaminations turning the present button from "I've found a contradiction" to "I need to guess what the case author wants me to do a glorified press on" didn't help, as I completely fell out of any case immersion left early on. There being a fairly obvious and critical contradiction of the timing of the second last character's testimonys being impossible that was unable to be pointed out didn't help either. Relying on the walkthough for most of the sudden evidence presents of a new theory with no breathing room, and having to mildly save scum the thought route (A third of the penalty bar for the thought route seems just a tad steep.) Phoenix Wright is eventually found innocent. In the best of the AA traditions. While everything after a present made logical sense, it seemed to be unfair for the player at times to figure out what exactly to present with their current knowledge.

Spoiler : All parts :

The custom art used for the characters and evidence is great, and all of the clearly programmer art works wonderfully for the case (though the video showing the room was filled with fog could be made much clearer). The character writing is superb, with each feeling unique and like a genuine personality. The canon portrayal is mostly accurate, if a tad exaggerated on some points (someone get Franziska a chill pill), and the overall mystery, twists, and turns feel like an AA case that could feature in the games. The presentation is rough in places, with word wrapping and timestamps not being centered, however CodingAnt is a master at timed frames, with each time she uses them looking amazing. Writing wise this case does not shy away from some funny interactions, and a few references to other AA games (Proving how that indeed doesn't make sense), and everytime I mispresented the humorous dialogue helped to lessen the sting of getting it wrong (which helped a lot in part 3).

This is a case worth playing, and far better than other first cases I have seen. With a bit of cleanup, hopefully Enth's long pending QA review can find this case worthy of featuring.

[CodingAnt]

This is (overall) a pretty fun case, albeit rough around the edges. I enjoyed playing though each part (mostly, will get to that later) and am excited to play another case by this creator. With that being said, here are some specific overall thoughts about each case, with any bugs/critical specific points DM'd to CodingAnt separately:

Thank you for giving this a shot! (And thanks for the very detailed review, holy moly.) I'll do my best to go through this with my own comments, and see if I can address any improvements I could make.

Spoiler : :

The arguments after a given crossexamination do take a few pages out of Lionel Hutz's playbook however this is acknoledged in trial as neither side really having evidence due to the nature of glove prints, and this was not really a problem that majorly affects the mood of the case.

Spoiler : :

Haha, yeah. That was intentional (sort of?), because the investigation phase overloads you with A LOT of information, so I wanted a trial segment before that with a simpler premise of just one defendant as opposed to two... But because of this, a fair amount of discussion occurs when neither side has much of an argument to begin with. Unfortunate, but unavoidable without a major rewrite.

Spoiler : :

The investigation itself was enjoyable, talking to well developed characters filled with personality and figuring out what to show them to get them to talk to us, or elaborate on a certain subject. Unfortunately Athena Cykes was subjected to a long walk around every possible location re-talking and presenting things for ages until I gave up and consulted the almightly walkthough, to find that the engine room had to be clicked in a few specific pixels to reveal an impossible to see piece of evidence... on the 4th attempt at clicking on that spot.

Spoiler : :

Thank you for your compliments on my character work! It's one of the things I was particularly proud of with this case, and with the exception of maybe Rosetta (just for not having much relevance in the plot), I myself got really attached to almost all of them, particularly Ben and Hubble. As for the barely visible rope... Yeah, I've gotten that complaint before, and I probably should've fixed it then. Don't know why I didn't. When I end up polishing this case up to a higher standard (which will happen, trust me) a nice outline and/or brightening should go a long way. It'll still have to be tucked away in the corner, though, seeing as that ended up being an element to the mystery near the end.

Spoiler : :

Unfortunately, unlike the trial of Vicky, the trial of Timothy Raine was a slog to play though. This is when the wonderful galloping horse of this case bucked me off. The trial focuses on following up Raine escaping out the window from part 2, and their circumstances of death. The crime itself is interesting and fun, with the murder itself being cleverly staged, however the trial at this point starts to bombard the player with unrelenting sudden evidence presents, blind evidence presenting (half the time I didn't know what on earth the game expected me to present) and the dreaded multi-evidence presents. The crossexaminations turning the present button from "I've found a contradiction" to "I need to guess what the case author wants me to do a glorified press on" didn't help, as I completely fell out of any case immersion left early on.

Spoiler : :

Horse? It's a train! But really, when I first read this I was kind of surprised... I didn't think the presents were really that unfair. But then I looked back at the editor, and... Yeah. Rather than catching the witnesses in out-and-out contradictions, it's a lot more like catching them on something they didn't mention, which makes it a lot harder to predict what I'm looking for. And maybe I went a little overboard with the amount of presenting you have to do... Which lead to the gloves being reused like five times in one trial, and the diagram way more than any diagram should be used in an AA case.

Spoiler : :

[...]having to mildly save scum the thought route (A third of the penalty bar for the thought route seems just a tad steep.)

Spoiler : :

Aw, I really liked my thought route segment... But that's fair. I don't like arbitrarily increased punishments either.

Spoiler : All parts :

The custom art used for the characters and evidence is great, and all of the clearly programmer art works wonderfully for the case (though the video showing the room was filled with fog could be made much clearer). The character writing is superb, with each feeling unique and like a genuine personality. The canon portrayal is mostly accurate, if a tad exaggerated on some points (someone get Franziska a chill pill), and the overall mystery, twists, and turns feel like an AA case that could feature in the games. The presentation is rough in places, with word wrapping and timestamps not being centered, however CodingAnt is a master at timed frames, with each time she uses them looking amazing. Writing wise this case does not shy away from some funny interactions, and a few references to other AA games (Proving how that indeed doesn't make sense), and everytime I mispresented the humorous dialogue helped to lessen the sting of getting it wrong (which helped a lot in part 3).

This is a case worth playing, and far better than other first cases I have seen. With a bit of cleanup, hopefully Enth's long pending QA review can find this case worthy of featuring.

Spoiler : :

Again, thank you! I read your DM, and plan on fixing all the issues you found, easing up on what's expected of you for Trial 3, as well as getting the presentation up to a Sidelined Turnabout standard of quality... After I actually finish The Sidelined Turnabout. I don't have the time to work on two cases at once! There's a deadline to worry about!

Speaking of The Sidelined Turnabout, look forward to that when it comes out. Its presentation quality should be much higher, and it's by necessity a little shorter, so you shouldn't want to claw your eyes out from evidence present after evidence present. So... I don't know how to end this post. Uh,

[DeathByAutoscroll]

Spoiler : As this entire reply is excessively long, it has been hidden in this spoiler tag for those scrolling in the future. :

Spoiler : :

The investigation itself was enjoyable, talking to well developed characters filled with personality and figuring out what to show them to get them to talk to us, or elaborate on a certain subject. Unfortunately Athena Cykes was subjected to a long walk around every possible location re-talking and presenting things for ages until I gave up and consulted the almightly walkthough, to find that the engine room had to be clicked in a few specific pixels to reveal an impossible to see piece of evidence... on the 4th attempt at clicking on that spot.

Spoiler : :

Thank you for your compliments on my character work! It's one of the things I was particularly proud of with this case, and with the exception of maybe Rosetta (just for not having much relevance in the plot), I myself got really attached to almost all of them, particularly Ben and Hubble. As for the barely visible rope... Yeah, I've gotten that complaint before, and I probably should've fixed it then. Don't know why I didn't. When I end up polishing this case up to a higher standard (which will happen, trust me) a nice outline and/or brightening should go a long way. It'll still have to be tucked away in the corner, though, seeing as that ended up being an element to the mystery near the end.

Spoiler : :

Funnily enough, I found myself really enjoying talking to Rosetta with her accented speech and "I don't want to deal with this" attitude. The "random evidence" conversation joke after getting her to talk was especially funny. My main issue with the rope can probably be boiled down to just how busy the background is, and with the main area present being along the lines of 'look at all these bits and bobs all over the place' there isn't a reason to check the furnace in the bottom left, as it appears to be part of that examine area. It may help to simplify the background a bit alongside an outline to highlight the rope, or to recolour the furnace from an orange to a silverly blue to make it more clear that that is a separate examine area, as I genuinely didn't see it when playing.

Spoiler : :

Unfortunately, unlike the trial of Vicky, the trial of Timothy Raine was a slog to play though. This is when the wonderful galloping horse of this case bucked me off. The trial focuses on following up Raine escaping out the window from part 2, and their circumstances of death. The crime itself is interesting and fun, with the murder itself being cleverly staged, however the trial at this point starts to bombard the player with unrelenting sudden evidence presents, blind evidence presenting (half the time I didn't know what on earth the game expected me to present) and the dreaded multi-evidence presents. The crossexaminations turning the present button from "I've found a contradiction" to "I need to guess what the case author wants me to do a glorified press on" didn't help, as I completely fell out of any case immersion left early on.

Spoiler : :

Horse? It's a train! But really, when I first read this I was kind of surprised... I didn't think the presents were really that unfair. But then I looked back at the editor, and... Yeah. Rather than catching the witnesses in out-and-out contradictions, it's a lot more like catching them on something they didn't mention, which makes it a lot harder to predict what I'm looking for. And maybe I went a little overboard with the amount of presenting you have to do... Which lead to the gloves being reused like five times in one trial, and the diagram way more than any diagram should be used in an AA case.

Spoiler : :

The number of diagram presents felt right to me, as each time it was presented it was a different diagram in the same evidence.

Spoiler : :

[...]having to mildly save scum the thought route (A third of the penalty bar for the thought route seems just a tad steep.)

Spoiler : :

Aw, I really liked my thought route segment... But that's fair. I don't like arbitrarily increased punishments either.

Spoiler : :

The writing of the thought route was pretty good, I am/was just horribly scared my full health bar disintegrated when I started poking it xD

Spoiler : All parts :

The custom art used for the characters and evidence is great, and all of the clearly programmer art works wonderfully for the case (though the video showing the room was filled with fog could be made much clearer). The character writing is superb, with each feeling unique and like a genuine personality. The canon portrayal is mostly accurate, if a tad exaggerated on some points (someone get Franziska a chill pill), and the overall mystery, twists, and turns feel like an AA case that could feature in the games. The presentation is rough in places, with word wrapping and timestamps not being centered, however CodingAnt is a master at timed frames, with each time she uses them looking amazing. Writing wise this case does not shy away from some funny interactions, and a few references to other AA games (Proving how that indeed doesn't make sense), and everytime I mispresented the humorous dialogue helped to lessen the sting of getting it wrong (which helped a lot in part 3).

This is a case worth playing, and far better than other first cases I have seen. With a bit of cleanup, hopefully Enth's long pending QA review can find this case worthy of featuring.

Spoiler : :

Again, thank you! I read your DM, and plan on fixing all the issues you found, easing up on what's expected of you for Trial 3, as well as getting the presentation up to a Sidelined Turnabout standard of quality... After I actually finish The Sidelined Turnabout. I don't have the time to work on two cases at once! There's a deadline to worry about!

Speaking of The Sidelined Turnabout, look forward to that when it comes out. Its presentation quality should be much higher, and it's by necessity a little shorter, so you shouldn't want to claw your eyes out from evidence present after evidence present. So... I don't know how to end this post. Uh,

Spoiler : :

Honestly I wish you luck, sorry if I was a little harsh on the 3rd part section of the dms ( "O_T ). I'm glad this feedback has been helpful and I can't wait to see what The Sidelined Turnabout will be once it is complete.

Spoiler : Some slightly less constructive review and more nitpicky presentation notes :

• Arguably the most time consuming one to do: Word wrap your lines. Instead of a line of dialogue looking like this:

  Code: Select all

  So! The murders took place in a locked room that only the victims and defendant had access to.

  The text should look like this:

  Code: Select all

  So! The murders took place in a 
  locked room that only the victims 
  and defendant had access to.

  This makes text display a lot better while playing since a word that is too long will not attempt to display on a line that doesn't have space for it, and avoid a really jarring teleporting effect. The downside is it looks awful in the editor in anything that has pauses or colour info.
• Cross-examinations should pause on the red text title of the cross examination, but also thank you for using the rarely used second CE soundeffect.
• Trucy Wright should probably be depicted on the First Class room diagram, even though her position is mostly not needed thoughout the trial, as her exact position in the room was hard to pinpoint until much later in the case.
• During the investigation, areas should fade out and fade into others. This is admittedly annoying to do without a few hidden frames and frame redirects but can generally by done by having some part of an intro cutscene with a "fade out from unchanged background" and a "fade in to new background" with suitable timers, and setting the introduction convo to be shown again, and using an (initially hidden) frame redirect frame to skip to this transition, or past the opening dialogue.
• Evidence presents should generally have what the player is expected to present as part of the greentext question. Ideally "what evidence supports me theory here?" should be "What evidence shows that the killer used the window?"
• The diagrams should ideally depict the walls of the rooms in first class, not just the windows. It was a tad confusing looking at the larger diagram and thinking "Do the passengers have to go though eachother's rooms to get though each car?" before the brain catches up and remembers what the inside of the train looked like during the investigation.
• Combining the Autopsy reports is a cool idea, but realistically with how the case progresses into 2 separate cases it may be worth separating them into a report for each death, especially as they're always presented/treated individually. The diagrams being combined was a really nice QoL to avoid cluttering up the Court Record (and avoiding the dreaded "Which specific part of the same thing do I need to present?" issue) and makes logical sense though.
  
  Think that is about it really, hopefully this helps!

[Enthalpy]

Okay, finished playing the case! Next is writing the review.

[Enthalpy]

QA Review: A Turnabout on Rails


Hopefully not anybody on this forum, or else I should go hide.

This is CodingAnt's first trial, and it clocks in at 5861 frames. I've remarked before that first cases are often wild cards. So how did this trial go? Answers below.

_____________________________________________________

As I find myself doing more and more lately, I'm avoiding my usual check mark system.

Spoiler : Check #1: Here Be Spoilers! :

Unfortunately, this case did not pass the QA inspection. The case does an excellent job at recreating the "looks" of an Ace Attorney case, but it's missing some of the internal structure that's needed to deliver the concept of the case.

Not all cases are the same, and it's only fair to judge a case on what it's trying to be. The impression I got was that this case emphasized high-adrenaline twists and turns and a sentimental style of story-telling. In short, it's most like Dual Destinies or Spirit of Justice.

While the trial logic does have a lot of twists, trials this twisty can lose the player if you're not being very careful. That happened here. Many of the arguments may make sense from your perspective as a way to get the player "to the next step," but confused me as somebody who doesn't know the next step!
1. Very often, testimonies feel like a list of facts in chronological order, rather than a story, which makes them difficult to parse and makes "but the witness should have mentioned this!"-contradictions ineffective. There were a lot of things they should have mentioned!
2. Sometimes the logic seemed hasty. For example, the court accepts that Raine was killed elsewhere, on the basis of the missing blood. This is a problem that the court needs to address, good! But I'm not convinced on the resolution. Couldn't his blood pool have overlapped with Claudeston's? Shouldn't we explore how his body might have made it into the locked room before accepting this? That seems just as impossible as the blood disappearing.
3. Even in hindsight, I don't know why the fog machine was turned on, and I don't know why Phoenix saw so little, if he had been outside the crime scene for 15 minutes once the struggle started.

The case also goes for several emotional notes, but tends to convey this mainly through explicit dialogue, rather than more subtle cues. This is the meaning of the writer's maxim "show, don't tell". This causes what should be dramatic moments to falter and seems like an effort to get from A to B efficiently, rather than letting the character feel "alive." This is evident in scenes ranging from Athena asking to be Phoenix's defense attorney, to Franziska admitting that she's out of ideas and is relying on Athena. Other things that should be explored, like Phoenix withholding testimony, aren't. By contrast, look at the handling of the forged ace from 4-1. It builds up from the initial suspicious appearance of Trucy to seeing the change of Phoenix to the dramatic confrontation with Kristoph before telling us the card was forged. This is much more implicit than explicit and is much more impactful that way. (There's a lot of fascinating neuroscience behind-the-scenes about why "implicit" helps make characters feel "alive," but I'll spare you that.)

Improving this case to QA level would be a possible but formidable task. A lot of scenes would need to be rewritten, letting the characters take them where they will and shifting some of the burden from dialogue to more subtle cues. My hunch is also that the case logic needs dramatic restructuring to achieve clarity, both straightening out the timeline of what happened and reorganizing the player's path to unveil the truth. And again, you don't need to get everything perfect! I'd love it if just one of those two "halves" could shine, and I've featured cases in that situation before.

Spoiler : Check #2 :

Not performed.

Spoiler : VERDICT :

☆ The QA inspection is complete. This case is not good enough to be featured. Sorry!

I'm truly looking forward to whatever is next from you. There's definitely potential here, but it needs some more time to develop.

[CodingAnt]

QA Review: A Turnabout on Rails


Hopefully not anybody on this forum, or else I should go hide.

This is CodingAnt's first trial, and it clocks in at 5861 frames. I've remarked before that first cases are often wild cards. So how did this trial go? Answers below.

_____________________________________________________

As I find myself doing more and more lately, I'm avoiding my usual check mark system.

Spoiler : Check #1: Here Be Spoilers! :

Unfortunately, this case did not pass the QA inspection. The case does an excellent job at recreating the "looks" of an Ace Attorney case, but it's missing some of the internal structure that's needed to deliver the concept of the case.

Not all cases are the same, and it's only fair to judge a case on what it's trying to be. The impression I got was that this case emphasized high-adrenaline twists and turns and a sentimental style of story-telling. In short, it's most like Dual Destinies or Spirit of Justice.

While the trial logic does have a lot of twists, trials this twisty can lose the player if you're not being very careful. That happened here. Many of the arguments may make sense from your perspective as a way to get the player "to the next step," but confused me as somebody who doesn't know the next step!
1. Very often, testimonies feel like a list of facts in chronological order, rather than a story, which makes them difficult to parse and makes "but the witness should have mentioned this!"-contradictions ineffective. There were a lot of things they should have mentioned!
2. Sometimes the logic seemed hasty. For example, the court accepts that Raine was killed elsewhere, on the basis of the missing blood. This is a problem that the court needs to address, good! But I'm not convinced on the resolution. Couldn't his blood pool have overlapped with Claudeston's? Shouldn't we explore how his body might have made it into the locked room before accepting this? That seems just as impossible as the blood disappearing.
3. Even in hindsight, I don't know why the fog machine was turned on, and I don't know why Phoenix saw so little, if he had been outside the crime scene for 15 minutes once the struggle started.

The case also goes for several emotional notes, but tends to convey this mainly through explicit dialogue, rather than more subtle cues. This is the meaning of the writer's maxim "show, don't tell". This causes what should be dramatic moments to falter and seems like an effort to get from A to B efficiently, rather than letting the character feel "alive." This is evident in scenes ranging from Athena asking to be Phoenix's defense attorney, to Franziska admitting that she's out of ideas and is relying on Athena. Other things that should be explored, like Phoenix withholding testimony, aren't. By contrast, look at the handling of the forged ace from 4-1. It builds up from the initial suspicious appearance of Trucy to seeing the change of Phoenix to the dramatic confrontation with Kristoph before telling us the card was forged. This is much more implicit than explicit and is much more impactful that way. (There's a lot of fascinating neuroscience behind-the-scenes about why "implicit" helps make characters feel "alive," but I'll spare you that.)

Improving this case to QA level would be a possible but formidable task. A lot of scenes would need to be rewritten, letting the characters take them where they will and shifting some of the burden from dialogue to more subtle cues. My hunch is also that the case logic needs dramatic restructuring to achieve clarity, both straightening out the timeline of what happened and reorganizing the player's path to unveil the truth. And again, you don't need to get everything perfect! I'd love it if just one of those two "halves" could shine, and I've featured cases in that situation before.

Spoiler : Check #2 :

Not performed.

Spoiler : VERDICT :

☆ The QA inspection is complete. This case is not good enough to be featured. Sorry!

I'm truly looking forward to whatever is next from you. There's definitely potential here, but it needs some more time to develop.

Thank you for taking the time to write this! I feel like I learned a lot about my own writing shortcomings, and hopefully I can improve upon them in my next cases as well as when editing this one.

Spoiler : Response (I got a little excited so it's kinda long) :

This case was made on and off over a period of a year and a bit, and I think it's an excellent time capsule for how my writing style evolved over that time period. Unfortunately, one constant for all of that was that I didn't plan very far ahead. Going into each trial segment, I knew a general idea of how that trial segment would go and not much more (aside from a couple constants that got me to write the case in the first place), and I often wrote as I go. This, I think, led to some of the issues with this case.

As an example, both you and DBA mentioned that some of the logic didn't flow very well. And of course it didn't! If I was just focused on how to get to the next part in the story, the contradiction would be something tangentially related to that, which led to a lot of "the witness didn't mention this" contradictions. Additionally, while each individual part's logic is usually fine, zooming out and viewing the larger whole can cause some problems. Since this was made over such a long period of time, I usually didn't have that entire whole in mind.

It's also true that I went very fast from one plot point to another. Much of the time I didn't entertain or even mention possible-but-wrong answers. I noticed this problem in Trial 1, but "fixed" it in 2 and 3 not with an actual solution but by padding the case with evidence presents.

Your point about "tell, don't show" was probably the most helpful for me. That's a writing rule I always think I'm following but end up not in hindsight. In some cases, like Lavender's backstory, I do think I successfully foreshadowed it well enough for the direct approach to work later on, but in others I may need to work on it a bit more.

(Oh, and the fog machine was turned on by Claudeston to provide cover, so no one would witness him threatening Raine with the knife, if I remember correctly. I think that was explained? I don't remember.)

Since I started this case, I think I've grown a lot as a writer, and thus I want to go back to this and edit it at some point. I don't know how thoroughly I'll be able to do so; rewriting entire scenes might be a bit above my pay grade, but at the very least I'll ensure the logic works better and fix any bugs or presentation issues. Either way, this QA review was very helpful, and I appreciate you getting it out in spite some personal issues.