Damon L. Wakes. 35th place, IFComp 2022.

What’s working for me:

• Theme, mood, setting, characters. Everything’s a fairly quick sketch, but taken as a whole the hard-boiled candy detective thing emerges as more than a running joke into a consistency of imagination. I could picture this setting expanding to encompass different types of stories.
• On a similar note, there’s an economy to the writing that builds a lot of atmosphere without too many words.
• Implementation seems quite solid, I didn’t run into any issues.
• The mystery is deducible, even if it has an “I see what you did there” quality to it.

What’s not working - as much - for me:

• The solution to the puzzle does break the consistent imagination just a tiny bit. It’s funny that some characters hew very close to their candy-forms and are therefore armless, but for some reason the donut has arms and is dexterous. But then, we have some other characters than have arms when their reference candy wouldn’t, so I guess that makes in-world sense? I kind of want to know what the donut’s arms are made of. Are they just penciled in? In any case, there are strong clues there in the text (especially if showing the gun). So it’s fine.
• There were some investigative actions that sort of bounced off the world. It was satisfying to figure out that the cut was from smashing the sink but I didn’t find anything else that gave me a “follow the clues” sense. I’m also deeply puzzled about the motive for the crime, which is usually an important part of this trope.

Overall I like what’s presented and I kind of want a more convoluted Bubble Gumshoe case.