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Looks good, @Will11 . But I need to finish juggling these chainsaws (because the kids will watch anything) before I have that kind of block of time. It sounds like a quality addition to the site, which is sorely needed these days. Thanks for writing that for the site!

Thank you and no worries :) I think I overestimated my own cleverness because everyone who's read it so far seems to have solved it :P

Been waiting all day for a chance to write a review of this. Going through it a second time now.

It's been very educational so far seeing how often British people of the time period would just cheerfully ignore women very close by screaming about being murdered.

Oh and:

The next morning I went out at 5.30am for a drink, I saw no one and went back to bed until 11 when I got woken up by all the policemen outside Mary’s room.

Damn, woman. I think Mrs. Prater might've had a serious problem...

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention in my review is that I appreciated those friendly little suggestions to save the game or take a break at a couple of places, it was a nice way to let the reader know there was still a ways to go and give them an idea of what to expect from the next segment. And they were natural pausing places with the investigation moving into a different phase after each one.

also lmao x2 at James Kelly just wandering off

Oh and if you ever feel like doing another story on investigating unsolved killings like this may I suggest Elizabeth Short--the Black Dahlia? That's at least one of those rare cases where the victim is the one people remember. 

Haha their love of gin shops is crazy. There's some witness testimony I read about an ten year old blind boy talking quite happily about drinking gin with one of the later victims and Kelly managed to stay on the loose for about forty years before wandering back to the gates of Broadmoor and begging to be let back in so he could take advantage of the free health care :D I think I'm all murdered out for now but the black dahlia is an interesting case. Australia's Taman Shud man is also an interesting murder case, if I do another whodunnit I think it'll be an entirely fictional whodunnit in the more classic agatha christie style :)

Gin? Wow...I know kids drinking alcohol back then probably wasn't even considered an issue but I always thought it was milder stuff like beer or wine, gin's a little much. (Do Germans still let their kids drink beer with breakfast btw, I've heard fun stories from relatives about that) 

Ooh..and classic whodunnit?

Poirot approves.

Haha I think they liked it cause it was cheap, in China you can buy bottles of rice wine (which is about 45%) for 60-80p (or $1) which people  drink all the time but I think it tastes like diesel. When I was about thirteen or fourteen my Dad would buy me red wine to drink whenever we went out to pubs or restaurants but I think the UK has a history of heavy drinking, it wouldn't surprise me if kids drank beer in Germany. :)

I have not yet read this story, but it certainly seems like it should be featured. Does the community agree? If so, which storygame do you think it should replace? My thought is The Object.

I agree completely. Would've recommended it myself if not for a misunderstanding.

If Will didn't mind switching it to Edutainment (it's just as much a historical story as a mystery one) you guys could easily boot out Julius Caesar. I read that one the other day and it wasn't that great tbh.

Ah. Yeah ... I am inclined to agree that it feels more "Edutainment" than "Puzzle," but it IS a mystery, so ... I dunno.

We're discussing it in another thread as well.  Per Will:

I'm glad you guys like the Ripper story, reading over it I personally think it is more Puzzle than Edutainment because while it's based on real life events but my intention in writing the story is for the reader to "solve" the mystery rather than learn about it, I want to branch out into murder mysteries and puzzles a bit more and it's easier to start off by using a real-life case where the killer was never caught. Your definition of puzzle in the article you wrote on story game genres in the Help and Info section is "Stories with a strong puzzle-solving element, or an overall plot of solving a mystery" which I think sums up the Ripper story quite well :)

Noted, I won't argue with that.

A solid game to be sure. Well done!

q.v. my above post. Will himself thinks it is a mystery, since his stated purpose is not to

educate, rather to create a solvable mystery.

Mystery works best I think. It might be historically accurate, but its about as educational as it is a fan fiction, so yeah.

It educates about that area of history, and does a great job of it too.

It's equally a mystery though so if that's where he wants it, that's where it should go. I just wouldn't have any suggestions about which story to replace without having read all of them. 

Mainly I was pushing for the Edutainment category because there just aren't that many good stories there.

Kind of sad this has been up all weekend and only has three reviews...

Haha, I think that is because the Ripper story takes more than 5 minutes to read and the reader actually has to think rather than just click links. A lot of the site's users are pre-teens who'd prefer to read about happier stuff like cats and wolves :D If I spent an hour writing a WC fan fic and published that I'd get tons of reviews, mostly hostile :P I don't want that though, I prefer to take my time, write something decent and get to read intelligent reviews like yours, Seth's and Kiel's :)

This game was really fun and immersive, and it made me feel like a genius, so there's that. Nice job, Will.

Can I just say I love the fact that someone's first guess was Abberline? XD 

If it were a fictional story, that's actually a damn good guess.

C'mon now people, he stuck the most obvious clue possible right in your face there near the end. Maybe they were just picking it just to see what happened when you guessed wrong.

Yeah, I didn't intend him as a suspect but unintentionally I made him very visibly suspicious :) He always seems to know everything there is to know about the crimes and he's definitely monitoring the investigation, getting increasingly stressed before finally retiring (deciding he's in the clear). Maybe in a later rewrite I'll have him telling the player about Stride's murder so he is with the player at the time the Ripper kills Eddowes or something to put him in the clear. I'm sure someone somewhere has claimed the London Police were involved in a cover-up, probably at the behest of the government, the royal family (our shape-shifting lizard overlords) or possibly the salvation army :)

I never suspected Abberline, though like Seth said that sounds like the kind of twist ending they'd put in if this were a movie.

I meant the real killer though, you stuck such an obvious clue in (or three of them, actually...) it was kind of hard to miss. 

some people say Charles warren was part of a coverup.

Yeah I read about that. Personally I think he was just inept (for example he recruited trained blood hounds to try and follow the killer's trail but managed to forget to bring them to Mary Kelly's crime scene). And yeah, the clues are definitely there but they are hidden amidst maybe 100 other clues, witness testimony, theories, letters etc.

I've looked into it and I think you're right, in a few places I don't fully give the reader all his points. Of course in your case it didn't matter but I'll try to fix it, haha maybe I just wanted to emphasize how chilling that letter really was? I'll try to pick out the typos, I got all the spelling ones but now it's the occasional grammar one that is slipping through...

Yeah, I just mentioned there were a few pages near the beginning where the reputation didn't go up like it should, but I ended with a rep of 14, so I guess I was doing well.

I named the guy who always seems to be the likely suspect, but within the story terms I mainly based it on the clue you find concerning one of the victims and then later when you go talk to him. (During that scene, I thought "Well that's the guy right there and he's almost bragging about what he's done.")

Plus, I've always personally believed Jack had to be a doctor of some sort. (Or at least have medical knowledge)

You should read some interviews he gave to journalists where he claimed all London Police were stupid because they ate too much beef and picked on him solely because he wasn't British :) A lot of the suspects were misogynist but he was the only one I know of with a documented fascination with women's organs to the point of keeping them stored in jars of alcohol around his house... he also wrote an autobiography actually titled "Sketch of the Life of the Gifted, Eccentric and World Famed Physician". He was a weird mix of bizarreness, arrogance and determination.