Howdy, and welcome to the first ever Suspects: Mystery Mansion Developer Q&A!

Community Manager Turnip here, along with Senior Game Designer Alexander, Ricardo from our Art Team and Senior Game Developer Renato  — we’ll be answering your most pressing Suspects: Mystery Mansion questions.

We were incredibly excited to see how many questions you submitted (there were literally hundreds of them!) and though we’d love to answer them all, we’ve selected the most popular and interesting ones to go over today. Don’t worry if we didn’t pick yours this time, as there will be plenty more chances to get your questions answered.

So… Lets get into Q&A #1!

 

Will You Ever Hold a Contest to Decide the Next Character or Skin?

 

Turnip: We certainly have! We love how creative our community is, and have already spoken about hosting a competition where players can design cosmetics — so that’s definitely on the cards in the coming weeks. We’re always looking at and sharing fan-made designs on our #fan-art channel in Discord so it would be great to give those players an opportunity to make their mark in-game.

 

Have You Been Thinking About Adding a Special Ability For Every Character?

 

Alexander: Yes! We love the idea of allowing players to choose abilities to help them in the game. Either by giving them more information to deduce who the killer is, or by making their sabotages stronger. We also really like the idea of having animal specific abilities, for example if Finn (the Shark) was able to smell the blood of someone that was killed — like sharks do in real life!

 

When Are You Going to Fix All the Movement and “Going Through Walls” Bugs?

 

Renato: I think we let this one go for too long and it really bothered me as well. We made numerous tentative fixes since it appeared, but some players were quick to find new spots to exploit. Not only that, but innocent players were getting trapped by mistake. Since patching wouldn’t work, we reworked how collisions work in the game to (hopefully) solve the issue once and for all. Along with that we got some other nice improvements. Movement inside the elevator should be a lot smoother now and so should sliding against objects and walls.

 

What About the Lore of Each Character. Where Did They Come From and Why Did They Go to the Mansion?

 

Alexander: Well. From the clues we’ve been able to collect…

It was a cold and rainy night, Mr. Goat had invited many friends, coworkers and acquaintances for a dinner at his mansion. He had some kind of big announcement, and wanted to make sure they were all present.

Once all the animals were sat at the table, eating and drinking, Mr. Goat got up from his seat and prepared to speak.

“Dear friends, my life so far has been a mystery. Whoever uncovers the mystery of my life shall be as fortunate as I am!”

Suddenly a lightning bolt hit the mansion and all lights went off. After a moment of apprehension, the lights returned. Everyone was shocked… And Mr. Goat was missing! His chair was laid on the floor and there were apparent signs of struggle.

Nobody has seen him since, and he’s presumed dead. At least, that’s the story so far…. We hear there’s some more clues out there, so let us know if you find any. 

 

So Are Mr. and Mrs. Goat Alive?

 

Alexander: That is a great question! And that is why we’ve given you, the greatest detectives in the world, the chance to look for clues and try to figure it out exactly what happened with Mr. and Mrs. Goat on that fateful night…

 

How Can We Avoid Toxic Players?

 

Renato: I think about this all the time!

I really want Suspects to have a positive community and for players to find fun people to play with. One way you can help us is by muting, reporting and giving thumbs down to toxic players. We frequently use this information to find these players and ban them from the game. We also plan to improve the friend feature so that you can more easily play with friends you meet in game!

Alternatively you can invite your friends to play in private matches, or join one of the many groups with engaged players in Facebook, Whatsapp and Discord where you can look for like minded players to play private matches with. 

 

When will Suspects be on Steam?

 

Renato: Although I can’t give you an exact day, we are working on it! We will start a Closed Beta soon, first inviting our Partner Content Creators, and maybe giving them some keys to give their viewers so they can also try out the game on their PC. We will do this first so that we can find and fix bugs, make sure the experience on the PC is great with the feedback of our community. Hopefully it won’t take long before everyone can play Suspects on Steam.

 

How are IQ Points Awarded?

 

Alexander: The IQ points are a measurement of a player’s skill. We currently have a system that is very similar to the ELO system in Chess. Basically, at the end of a match, the winners take some points from the losers, and after playing a few matches you should be playing with people that are just as good as you!

I won’t explain how exactly they are awarded right now because we are likely to be changing it in the near future. We have listened to your complaints with the system and I am designing a new way to give IQ points that will take into consideration how each individual player contributed to winning or losing a match. Did you kill all the guests while your killer partner didn’t do anything? You will get more points than them! Did you get killed first and didn’t even have a chance to figure out who the killers are? Your IQ level will not change too much!

 

Are There Going to Be Any Zooba Crossover Skins?

 

Ricardo: We were actually talking about this very recently! The whole team loves Zooba and we are definitely looking for opportunities to bring all the amazing content we have on that game to Suspects. I don’t want to spoil the fun and tell you what it’ll be, but you can expect some crossover content in the coming months.

 

Can We Have Pets?

 

Ricardo: For now you can equip accessories, but hey! That isn’t as cool as a real pet, right?

I’m glad to say that we are currently working on our first pets. So stay tuned for more news in future.

 

Will You Add More Zooba Characters in Suspects?

 

Ricardo: Sure! Zooba characters are really cool and we want to bring as many as we can in the game. A funny thing is that some of the Zooba character designs are very hard to draw in the style of Suspects, so sometimes it takes us a little longer than what we’d like to until we have them looking as good as they do in Zooba. 

 

 

So, that’s it for our first Q&A… We hope you found a lot of valuable information!

Make sure to head over to our Social Media and Discord server if you have any more questions, want to find games or just keep up to date with all the latest Suspects: Mystery Mansion news.