The Red Ribbon Killer by Avon

Has the red ribbon killer struck again? The police department is fed up with all the murders, the more they get, the worse the media attention gets. You control two detectives attempting to solve the most recent case. Can you find the right clues and solve the case?
Left click to inspect objects and advance dialogue.
If you get stuck on the first room, see tips in comment below.
Music:
"Walking Along" & "I Knew a Guy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
| Windows | https://avon.itch.io/the-red-ribbon-killer |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/the-red-ribbon-killer |
Ratings
| Overall | 802th | 3.19⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 698th | 3.167⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 766th | 2.952⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1069th | 2.571⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 870th | 2.929⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 148th | 3.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 274th | 3.643⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 20🗨️ |
I'd like to play more, how does one continue?
Feedback remains the same, perhaps highlighting objects you can interact with when you hover over them, and perhaps a way the player can choose who to arrest at the end? But yes, a really well pulled of narrative. Good job!
Liked the humor in it. :-)
Thanks to everyone for playing my game and leaving feedback!
Changing the cursor when over interactable objects was on my to do-list, but in the end when I knew the game wouldn't have any proper puzzles I decided not to implement it as I was worried it would make it too easy. It did worry me the body in the first room would be too hard though, I hoped people would notice the ribbon in the sleeve and then guess they could click other places on the body, but people might have thought the ribbon was just blood. What I probably should have done was make many more parts of the body interactable so the player understood they had to search the body thoroughly, or at least give more hints through dialogue.
I was hoping to have at least one puzzle near the end, but I decided not to add an inventory system to save time, and that made it difficult to do puzzles. I was planning to add more items in the last room(and other rooms) to make the killer reveal more gradual at least, but in the end I was barely able to finish the story in time. I liked the idea of you having to guess the killer in the end, that could have been fun.
I was hoping someone would catch the references to The Wire, the idea of a serial killer tying red ribbons to the victim and biting them was stolen directly from it. Of course the serial killer does not exist, one detective made it all up to get the funding to solve another case. It's a really good show, you should all go watch it!
@bificommander My main goal for implementing the theme was to give every character a line that referenced the theme, but I think in the end I only had 4 lines.
The choices when talking to the media doesn't affect much, but if you make the right choices(give a lot of details and ask audience for tips) you get an anonymous tip that opens an alternative at the end, though its a very slight difference. I wish I'd made it easier to get the tip though, so more people got to experience it.
I can't believe I didn't notice the reference to The Wire ... so ashamed. I second Avon's recommendation. Everyone who knows English should watch that show. That's all of you reading this comment.