Tessa Blackwood's Crime Time
"Unravel the secret of Bell Farm and discover the truth behind the baffling deaths of Betty and Lisa Bell!"
July 1964. Twin sisters Betty and Lisa Bell died peacefully in their sleep in their family home of Bell Farm. They were both young and in good health and there was no obvious motive for their demise. The mystery was never solved.
Six decades later, you are to help your sister Tessa compile a new chapter for her award-winning podcast. Dive deep into Silverlake County, piece together fragmented memories, and reveal the chilling truth that lies buried beneath the shadows of Bell Farm.
Most of your searches should consist of 2-3 keywords. For instance, if you want to investigate the death of John Doe, you may want to try: "John Doe death". "John death" or "Doe death" would be too unspecific for the search engine.
There are 30 pieces of evidence for your evidence pinboard.
The 'Who is who?' pinboard is optional, but it is advisable to complete it because it will help you piece everything together before you try to compile the podcast script.
Walkthrough here!
Follow me on X for updates and new projects!
@thistlestudios
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Bug reports. Please feel free to report bugs either by email or in the comments below. The game was made to be downloadable, although the html version seems to work ok. If you find any issues while playing in your internet browser you may want to download the .rar file.
AI disclosure. I used AI for the base character portraits and some other art.
Download
Install instructions
Play on browser or download zip file and run the executable.
Most recent version: March 14, 2025.
Development log
- Official walkthrough31 days ago
- Added browser play!42 days ago
- Tessa Blackwood's Crime Time v1.0 is out!45 days ago
Comments
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Fun game! I did kinda spoil the story for myself by logically filling in the blanks in the podcast mentally, but I still needed to gather the evidence that would give the right keywords to complete the podcast.
Thanks very much for playing!
It won't proceed past this initial screen for me. Is there something I'm missing?
Thanks for your comment.I just checked and there seems to be no problem. Both the browser and downloadable versions work fine on two different computers. Which version are you using? If it's the browser version, maybe the game is opened on a different window?
This is happening to me as well. It's the browser version, I've checked all my windows as well and nothing is open. Figured I would reply letting you know it's not just one person (:
Thanks very much for posting. I cannot replicate the problem, but it's good to know it only happemns in the browser version. Do you have any pop up blockers enabled? Which browser do you use? For me it seems to work ok on Firefox and Chrome.
I don't have any ad blockers and I'm using Chrome for it. I play on here at work so I use incognito mode but besides that nothing seems off. Of course, no problem for posting just wanting to make sure its known (:
Thanks very much for giving me some more feedback. I'm trying to reproduce the problem in order to fix it. IDK, maybe it has to do with the incognito mode. For the time being, the downloadable version should work fine. :)
I just finished the game and all I have to say is that it was incredible. The story is captivating, it keeps us on our toes.
Some pieces of evidence are harder to find but you just have to go back to your successful searches.
L.H and A.S contacts kept disappearing everytime I opened the game. But I just closed it, opened it again and they reappeared.
Thank you so much for this experience!
Thanks very much to you for playing! Seeing that people enjoy this really encourages me to make more games.
Thanks also for pointing out that bug. I'll look into it. Thankfully it seems there is an easy workaround. :)
1 podcast word missing..
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(and im pretty sure its supposed to be ricin, in the "[x], derivative of castor oil" spot. alas. i do not know what to google for it to show up. i thought the book would have been enough. also, sid carvers name just appeared in my podcast notes and i have no idea how it got there) cool game tho, very "roottrees"-core
Yes, you're right. I can't remember off the top of my head, but maybe you get it from
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the conversation with Dr. Parker, from the Botanical Garden, once you've read the book.
Sid Carver's name shows up when you get Hargrove's file from the police. You can actually look him up on the newspaper. :)
Thanks very much for playing!
This game is great, also stuck quite a long way in. I have:
- 20 evidence pieces
- 6 contacts
- all podcast word options except 3
- 7 puzzle portraits, 9 names, and 4 motivation pics
Just can't figure out a way to get the final contact or access to the few specific docs I need!
Wow! That's pretty good already! It's hard to tell what kind of hints you need because the game is designed for you to discover them in a non-linear way. I can only help based on what I think is harder to find out. Spoilers ahoy:
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- You already have all six telephone contacts. The 'Who is who' is optional. In theory you can complete the podcast while missing one or two names/portraits. But you should end up collecting them all anyway.
- Did you get the post office document? It seems Hargrove goes by other names. Maybe this can help you get his police file?
- Avery knows a fair bit about Hargrove's relation with Evelyn.
Feel free to ask if you need specific advice!
Thanks for playing!
Thank you for the response - it helped and I got it! :)
Useful to know about the phone contacts - thought I was missing one so had been spending ages trying to get it XD
The police files were definitely the sticking point - I thought I needed a full name for D and had tried asking full names without luck. Turns out I needed to put 'file' at the end *doh*
All in all a wonderful game with just enough twists and subplots to really get my teeth into without it feeling super unfair :D
I'm really glad you enjoyed it! It's the first game of this kind I make, and I would like to make more, so feedback is more than welcome. Thanks very much for trusting the game enough to play it all the way!
It's hard for me to gauge whether the game is responsive enough to player searches (i.e. whether there are sufficient answers to searches or not), but the fact that you finished it leads me to think it's not too far off the mark. :)
I find this game really challenging and interesting! I love the mechanics and the story so far. To be honest, I am waiting for some clues or someone uploading the full game cuz im stuck ahahah
So far I have 12 evidence pieces on the board and more than 20 successful searches and I still feel like I made little to no progress ahaha
I'm still willing to read trough everything again and again to make sure I get this right tho ahaha
Good game :) thank you for putting it out!
If you found 12 evidence pieces you're doing well for yourself! :) :) :)
A couple of hints (scroll down for spoilers -- please tell me if you know how to use a spoiler tag in this chat):
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Are you calling people on the phone? The priest at St. Michael's is worth talking to. You can find his number by looking for "St. Michael's parish" in the Herald's search engine.
Some of the people who took part in the case are still alive.
There are 30 pieces of evidence, but you do not need them all to solve the case.
Feel free to ask for more if you already knew these. :)
Okay update : YAY! I just finished the game and WOW!
First of all, thank you for answering so quick! It definately helped.
The who's who section was a bit tricky but since it was not mendatory, I don't have anything else to say about it ahaha. I've had maybe one or two instances where one or two contacts appeared/disappeared but it was a minor issue since you can quiclky get them back.
Thanks again for the game, amazing story and cool plot twists!
I'm really glad you liked it. :)
I have to look into those 1-2 contacts that disappear -- not sure why it happens. Fortunately nobody seems to be having trouble with that.
Thanks for playing!
The fill-in section is kind of indecipherable, since several of the boxes cover up the rest of the sentences.
Thanks for pointing it out! It seems this only happens on the browser version.
I think I got it fixed (sort of). Now it should be playable.
vou passar reto disso. que coisa horrível.
Did you finish the game in the end? :)
Was it fun?