A Letter To Ed by zoglu

Following your grandmother's death, you find yourself in her house. Before passing away, she asked you to send some final words to her best friend Ed, whom neither you nor other acquaintances ever heard about. Search for clues among the correspondence between Annabel and Ed, read postcards, old bills and poems, and gather enough information so you can send this farewell letter.

Controls : click/tap papers to read them. You can also drag them to tidy things up.
Works on computers, tablets and phones !
Stuck ? After some time, a light bulb icon will appear. Click it to reveal some tips (and spoilers).

We decided to interpret the theme as "keeping the memories alive". Most graphics are pictures taken in the house we made the game in or in the neighborhood. There are also some drawings and collages, and some made-up documents like bills or letters.

The game was programmed with Construct 3 (source available), the graphics were made and the photos adjusted with Photoshop, the music was composed in FL Studio, and most importantly the letters were written with a pen, a big notebook, and a lot of time and dedication. :smile:
We hope you enjoy this little investigation game as much as we enjoyed working on it ! Play A Letter To Ed

Ratings
| Overall | 31th | 4.306⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 538th | 3.672⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 235th | 3.871⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1147th | 3.697⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 102th | 4.5⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 20th | 4.387⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1343th | 2.74⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 28th | 4.439⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
Actually while making the game, we thought that submitting a visual novel for Ludum Dare could be risky as fellow jammers may like more action-oriented entries, but we went for it anyway :)
The only thing that I would change is the hint icon felt like it started flashing too soon. I thought I was making good progress towards completing it, so having it start flashing made me a little sad. I'm not sure what your logic is to trigger that, but I'd maybe suggest resetting the timer on that hint flashing every time the player fills in a field correctly?
Thanks for the game! Good job :)
Actually it flashes after 3 minutes or so, to kind of reassure the player. Anyway, you can just click it and close the menu and you won't get spoiled. We put enough warning messages so only players who really need tips can have them :)
I could find everything without using the hints but was a little bit frustrated by not knowing where I was wrong.
The handwritting is beautiful but as a non-native English reader I had some difficulties to read sometimes, a transcript of the text next to it could be a nice aid to reading.
For the jam it's already a wonderful game, so thanks and well done! :)
Seriously. You combined my love for investigation, my love for text-based games, and an actual challenging mystery! The atmosphere was wonderful, the controls were great, and the handwritten letters were amazing. I didn't use the hint system at all, either. :) I'm truly so impressed and I'd love to play more games like this from y'all. This is easily my favorite game that I've played this LD. Thank you for making it.