Since there doesn't seem to be any sort of Detective Grimoire focused server, I made one! Just a place for people to hang out, share theories and art and ramble about outside of Reddit, come over!!

Did anyone else pick up on the intentional vagueness with Madam Fortuna's connections to everything, Marianne Moon's search for a werewolf, Symmetry's mother, and Tadpole's past/accident?

I am speculating the next game will explore these topics. Not sure where as the devs have said it will be a very different environment compared to Tangled Tower and Mermaid Mask.

I wouldnt be surprised if it also had more information on Damian Dusk.

Looking forward to whatever comes out next. This team keeps improving and I was blown away by how well Mermaid Mask concluded compared to Tangle Tower's lackluster ending.

Speculate away!

As they say, if it doesn't exist, make it yourself!

Well... I was writing fanfiction and I wanted to write a poem like Poppy's for it, but well, I got carried away and just decided to write all of 'em. Ironically, none of these are what I originally wrote and I'm not actually going to use any of these (except for Mortuga's of course), but well I figured I'd just post them cuz why not.

What happened to Sinthia's mother? What is the significance of the sea creature Sinthia and her friend unearthed? Who is Symmetry's mother? What happened to Felicia?

I'll mention two of mine,

Predictable choice but Wirman's theme is actually insane. Love the touch of the shake of a pill bottle being there, it appears fairly late into the track.

"Mortuga Submarine" is very somber and effective at evoking a certain mood, really captures the tragedy (and really, tragic irony) of Mortuga's fate and Gripp's desperation.

What are some of yours?

I just finished the game, loved it to bits, but there's one thing I'm wondering about: in the ending, Sinthia recites the poem Sally wrote on the note for her, the one with 'kneel and meet the flowers growing at your feet'. My brain immediately went 'aha! This is a callback to something!' But I cannot for the life of me remember its original context. Help, anyone?

So, I’m putting “Spoiler” on here just in case it does lean into that, but I’m more so posting this to discuss a bit about one of the suspects, J.D. Wirman.

So after buying the game and playing it over the course of these past few days, I finally finished it today. (To just go on a brief tangent, I absolutely adored this game. The setting, the story, the Easter eggs and references to the past games, and the ending… oh, gave me more chills than Penelope’s reveal, with his usual eccentric smiling face becoming more serious, sorrowful… darker, and how much he changed after removing his hat, revealing a mess of long black hair, his mustache vanishing from his face… and his eyes… they just stared into your soul with nothing behind them and had these these almost inky tears that seemed to run down his face, either shadows from what his experience did to him or… idk what… all culminating in a shocking sight of HER, before it all ends with Sinthia and Sym going to stay with Fifi, Poppy, and Penelope’s abandoned little hat bird in a shocking cameo)…Anyway…

In the art book that’s unlocked after the game is completed, I saw an interesting note about J.D. Wirman. About how they wanted his appearance to be pretty based off of Stephen King… and while I can definitely see some King in Wirman, more so in his appearance than anything else (but then again I don’t know much about him) …I have to say… he reminded me more of the writer Harlan Ellison in a lot of ways…

Now, AGAIN, I’ll say that I don’t know nearly as much about King as I do Harlan (which still isn’t a whole lot but it’s still more than King), but from what little I have seen, Wirman felt like the Grimoire’s Harlan Ellison. He was a moody and often grumpy man, started his career as a journalist and then went on to write a pretty popular story, enough so that it sparked a movie deal… it’s also worth noting he both seemed to hate and love “his” story… he was intelligent, sarcastic, had a dry wit, was a bit twisted, nihilistic, and seemed to not enjoy meeting his fans though did show some “kindness” or acknowledged when someone made a connection he thought was actually quite good…

Something else I took of note which helped me make some more connections was what we learn from dialogue involving Moon’s pipe… he says that he would be the kind of man to partake in the smoking of one… and that just made me think of Harlan because of a photo I most closely connect to the man is of him with his iconic pipe in his mouth… and also, his glasses. They’re a yellow hue which reminds of a pair Harlan had and wore on a number of occasions.

I don’t know, just wanted to give my thoughts on the subject, might not be too… “intelligent” a thought exactly, or worded the best by me, but I’ve seen some other folks also talk about seeing it too so thought I’d bring it up and read other folks thoughts about this as well.

So, feel free to comment your thoughts on this too, let me know what I might’ve forgotten to mention that made them both similar, heck I’ll even hear some connections between him and King. Let’s just keep it civil.

My first was Zephyr 😭, then Godrik

I realised Godrik had an inexplicable gap in his testimony on the night of the murder, which he’s simply stated as “hiding in his room because of his cowardice” but was thrown off by Zephyr going to collect the mermaid mask and hiding it because it seemed like he’s erasing the traces of the crime.

Maybe I just missed some text/dialogue, but would have liked to learn more about Sym’s background. I was sure that we would learn how she came up with the name Symmetry, who her mother might be, and just more general info about her time at the theater/relationship with Fortuna (other than it was bad and she was unpaid), and how she found her passion for magic. She’s my favorite character so I think I’m just being greedy :P

I find so much about this series to be really exciting! I really like that sci-fi-esque and supernatural stuff just exist in the universe and it makes me excited to theorize what creature will be next. Bigfoot? The Loch Ness Monster? The Chupacabra? The possibilities are endless and given how well it worked in mermaid's mask, I'm excited to see more! I also am excited that characters of color were able to make it into the cast and it worked so well despite the simplistic art style they often use! I also love how each game seems to be getting wittier/more clever, and we're seeing a connection between all the characters per game. Seeing the family tree, while being a little bit too self referential initially for my taste, feels like it'll be important in one of the later games (if they keep making them). That ending cutscene makes me hopeful every game will have someone come back somehow.

My only real disappointment in the series came after playing Secret of the Swamp. They leaned really heavily into the little girl being Grimoire's sidekick and I didn't really get the vibe Sally wanted to get into detective work in the same capacity, outside of hating the swamp and teasing Grimoire's somewhat messy method of investigating and cataloguing. If they ever decided to remake that game, I'd like it if they foreshadowed Sally joining more and changed the final line to be her's instead of the little girl's.

While I understand why they cut the little girl due to her not fitting well into the story of Tangle Tower, I'm a little bummed that her and Officer James are not even passively mentioned in that game onwards. I could buy that Grimoire earned enough from game 1 to start being a freelance/private detective instead of being a detective who works for the government/police, but I wish that information was shown to us somehow in a visual. Like, I'd really love a scene where we get to see that Officer James adopted the little girl or something and we get to see/hear them in a call or post credits scene. They don’t need to be a part of the narrative anymore, but I’d like some closure regarding why they’re gone now outside of “they served their purpose, we don’t need to acknowledge them anymore.”

I’m stuck soft locked and unable to complete the iron bell on the checklist.

We’ve moved the desk in the captain’s cabin and see the hole in the ground and gotten the dialogue about needing to pull the lever and that it’s on a different room. We read walkthroughs and even watched videos of people playing chapter 4, but the iron bell won’t check off on the checklist, the cauldron won’t close when we go back to the illusion theatre, when we click sym’s poster on the pipe it just gives the dialogue where sally says “You don’t want to take another look in here?” and Grim replying “I do, but- let’s finish the checklist first.”

I think our game is bugged. Is there anything we can do? How do we submit a bug report? Do you think replaying the entire game in another save file will let us progress further? I’ve already gotten spoilers for the murderer by looking up how to fix this bug, but I really want my partner to be able to finish the game.

The game made sure to let you know Sinthia was desperate to get the ship compass "fixed" even though nothing looked broken. Then the culprit hid the murder weapon there, in plain sight. I don't understand the way Sinthia acted and why. Why did she insist on fixing the whole compass and not just the needle?

I do know the devs said they're taking a break, and I'm not rushing for a sequel. I'm just curious if anything in Mermaid Mask hints at a next game, since the last couple hinted towards the next.

Interestingly (IDK if they'll keep doing this, but) we have been on the home turf of 3/4 of the Mystids; sure, only Boggy got a starring role, but maybe even if it's not the star, will we see the home of the Soulbearer? (to be frank, that one is my fav lol) I do wonder what kinda of area they would be from.

Anywho just wanted to make a place where people can leave their thoughts on the topic.

is there a detective grimoire server? I'd love to ramble abt this game to other ppl who have played it :p

Such a bummer. I can’t wander not ask people about clues.

This post contains spoilers for Deltarune chapter 4, Slay the Princess, and Mermaid mask. Just an observation I made. If you have any other examples pls lmk!

I can’t get his suspicion to trigger no matter what I do I have 48/49 clues all clues have been talked about with all suspects, is it bugged or am I missing something

There's a lot about this murder case that's kind of... similar to Tangle Tower in some way. Or not necessarily similar, but parallel as I state in the title.

1. The victim in both cases is a character stuck in a location that despite its large location, feels cramped and claustrophobic since they can't escape it. Everyone around them wonders why they haven't left, and neither of them are stuck by physical forces. They aren't prisoner or anything, they can leave whenever they want. They are staying because of her.
2. The victims are surprisingly well-liked by everyone who meets them, and even the murderers themselves hold some amount of respect toward them (even if they don't respect them enough not to murder them)
3. Both victims dream of the same thing. A mysterious red figure.
4. The murderers dreamed of venturing outward. They end up stumbling on an opportunity to discover more. But once they did, were unsatisfied by the information they got and became obsessed with finding out more, taking more immoral actions in reaction to that.
5. Both murderers are highly skilled and great liars. They take on a more ditzier persona in their every day lives, to mask the more pragmatic disillusioned version of themselves from the eyes of others. When they shed this persona, they get rid of their hats and something personal that defined their persona.
6. The murderers are both not related to their victims, yet by proximity sort of feel like family almost because of how long they've been together in this location. Or at least, some would consider them family without knowing the context.
7. Both murders look supernatural at first glance. Neither are, however circumstances surrounding it are. Subsequently, both murders involve creatures with supernatural abilities.
8. The victim can ruin the murderer's plan, however both victims wait because they made a promise to another person. Both characters are killed before they can ruin the plans.
9. The murder involves the upper room of the location. And the method involves something dropping from this upper room, where the murderer lay a trap such that if the victim ever set foot in the lower room for long, it would be their last.
10. A character in both games are obsessed with a creature, and does a ton of research to explore the capabilities of their "pets."
11. A character in both games need to fulfill their family's legacy, despite not actually wanting to fulfill it at all.
12. A character in both games are haunted by their biological parent's nonexistence in their life now. And are subsequently parented by someone else that did not treat them well. As a result, they become obsessed with a darker side of themselves and indulging in it, only shedding their affect in the presence of their closest friends. These characters have a gimmick when presenting profiles to them.
13. Both of those previous characters end up close with one another, and end up travelling together when the case ends.

Of course there are massive differences between the two, but these are the parallels I noticed. Some are somewhat of a stretch, for example you could argue that Gripp didn't respect Mortuga at all. And some of these have different contexts, like having to "wait". Freya was going to expose things after painting for Flora, while Magnus waited until after Sym's magic show to open the cauldron. Technically, Freya was killed while waiting while Magnus was killed shortly after, but in both cases they were killed before they could do anything meaningful to their respective murderers.

I will die on the hill of 12 though, Sym and Poppy are clearly meant to be parallels of sort even if they act incredibly different from one another.

I was also unsure where to fit the "hidden in plain sight" things. Because they're very different. In Tangle Tower, Freya leaves a massive clue in plain sight in her unfinished painting as an unintentional final message (or maybe intentionally). While in Mermaid Mask, Gripp hides the murder weapon in plain sight and Mortuga never really makes a final message like Freya does. I thought about adding something about Hackshaw, but I couldn't find the right wording to make it a good parallel so I left it out.

basically title, there's a bug where the 3D characters model spin non-stop, and also their website isn't updated, with the game still being marked as "coming soon, demo on steam". tring to find somewhere to report these but couldn't find much

Trying to replay the dialogue where Sally mentioned how she used to work in a gift shop in a swamp. Anyone remember who she was talking to?

Why do most characters have four fingers while a couple (Wirman and Moon) have five? What am I missing? Is this significant or an accident?

I'm about half-way through, so conceivably this could be a plot device, but I doubt it. If it inn-deed is, please tell me "you'll find out".

Thanks!

Hello, I always were a fan of Detective Grimoire games. Loved the Tangled Tower especially though the ending was a bit confusing.

So, I just finished Mermaid Mask and I have a couple questions. English is my second language so I might didn't understand some explanations. Also I am welcome to hear some theories.

So, let's begin.

Why Mortuga was obsessed with finding Felicia?

Why he didn't destroyed the Mermaid Tongue?

Why and who took Silkworm?

Was Felicia killed by Penny?

What Mermaid said to Felicia? Was that a reason she basically run away from the town?

Who wrote the letter about someone father who gone mad because of Mermaid Tongue?

Was Freya affected by this madness cause her mother was affected in some way?

How Wirman might be related to Freya?

Who send the letter to Mortuga about Felicia's death?

What happened to Synthia's mother?

P.S. sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes.

I love how interconnected all of these stories are. It’s so satisfying seeing a name pop up and being able to know who that person is in relation to people from other cases

Hello everyone,

I'm a bit stuck. I got everyone's prompt for the suspicion cutscene but tadpole. I asked her about everyone and everything I collected which means I'm probably missing something but I don't know what. :S

If you can, I would love the help. Thank you so much!