EVIDENCE PIECING

Assembling collected clues into conclusions through an explicit interface — combining two facts to deduce a third, pinning evidence to a board, presenting the right testimony contradiction.

• SOLO-DEV COST MEDIUM
• TIMING REAL-TIME / TURN
• COMMON IN DETECTIVE · ADVENTURE · NARRATIVE · PUZZLE

Ace Attorney's court presentations are the classic form, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments has a literal deduction board where linked clues form conclusion chains (including wrong ones the game lets you act on), and Disco Elysium's Thought Cabinet internalizes evidence into character-changing ideas. Designers add a piecing interface because raw clue collection is passive — the interesting cognitive work is synthesis, and an explicit combination system makes the player perform the reasoning rather than watch the detective do it. Allowing wrong conclusions that the story honors (Crimes and Punishments lets you convict the wrong person) raises the stakes from puzzle to judgment. Key decisions: whether combinations are validated instantly (safe but brute-forceable), only at accusation time (tense but frustrating if evidence was missed), or never (pure consequence), and how the interface prevents pixel-hunt pairing of every clue with every clue. Pitfall: designer-logic — deductions that require the writer's exact leap ('present the fish knife at the parrot') make players feel stupid for reasoning correctly but differently; good systems accept adjacent evidence or telegraph the expected connection type.

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