Scrutinized is a game like no other I have played. In it, you play as a woman named Luna, who after her cousin’s death decides to start a neighborhood watch, which quickly turns into something larger. Using her skills as an investigator for the DA, she searches through bundles of information to find out about any crime that may have happened. While also having to defend herself against criminals that want to infiltrate her house.
This article will journey my time in the game!
When I first started the game, I started in the bedroom. We are instructed that it is time to get to work, so I explore the house until I find the computer in the living room. When we go to get on it, we are told that we should check out the Email about the lights and the B.O.L.O’s. The email about the lights just explains pretty much how the camera lights outside work. From what I seen of FNAF, the camera section is similar to it. Now the B.O.L.O’s are what interested me. There were two of them. The first one I read was about a man who got caught creeping around people’s yards, and apparently he was wanted for murder!
The second was a bald man who is believed to be involved in a sex trafficking ring. He works alone and goes after women specifically. And hey, it just has it that the buildings around our neighborhood have a defect with their window locking mechanisms, and that’s exactly how he was entering these buildings!
With that information out of the way, I doubled checked the house to make sure all the windows were shut, and they were. I sat back at the computer and started my night.
The first report I got was of a woman who was sneaking out of her house at around 2am every night. She was a new mother and her husband was out on a business trip. So I got down to it. Throughout my investigations, I found out that she was having an affair with her best friend. I thought nothing of it and wrote the report off as a false report. Now that I think of it, I probably could have used the texts I found as evidence of child endangerment.
The next report, and admittedly my last, was a bit more tricky. In order to use the different apps we have available to help us with our investigation, we need certain information. For instance, in order to see if someone has a police record, to check their social media, or their debit purchases, we need their name. In order to search their phone we need an IMEI number. So when the next report came across my desk, I knew that without a name, it would be a bit trickier.
A man made a report about his neighbor. Apparently, it sounded like she was doing a bunch of renovations to the house she just bought. The man found it suspicious considering she just moved in and there was no one else going in or out of the house. However, this neighbor wasn’t really neighborly and didn’t get her name. But using the identifying information he gave us, we put it into an app called D.M.V DB and was able to get her driver’s licence!
The woman was named Aletheia Rose. The first thing I did with her name was run a police check, and nothing came up. I thought to myself, that maybe we just had a case of a nosey neighbor. But I continued with my checks. I then ran her debit information and saw that she made three purchases at a place called Loki’s Hardware. So far, it was looking like my initial gut instinct was right. But when I looked through her phone records, it all changed.Before I could look in her phone, the router shut off. I got up from my computer, went to the router in the back room and reset it.
The first thing on her phone I looked under was history. From her search history, I surmised that she was an archeologist. But something stuck out to me, in particular two searches. One of which was “is it okay doing whatever it takes no matter what the cost is?” and “laws surrounding withholding evidence about a murder”. I knew right then that I caught her doing something she wasn’t supposed to.
I dived into her texts and saw that I was right. She was an archeologist. There was a long chain of text messages between her and someone named Lethe talking about archeology stuff. I didn’t really feel like reading every single message, so I skimmed through it. And stopped at a certain text. Alethia had done some radiocarbon testing on the remains of a person. The only problem was they had only been dead for 2 - 5 years and had evidence that the victims struggled before their death. From what I could tell, Lethe had been giving her these remains and passing them off as something else. She then accused Lethe of killing innocent people. And Lethe more or less admitted to it, but reminded Aletheia that her hands were just as dirty. And that right there was all the evidence I needed!
Before I could begin my next report. The router shut off on me again. I grumbled and made my way back to where the modem was. But as I got up from the chair, I saw that the living room light had shut off, along with the kitchen one. I turned the living room light back on, went to the router, reset it, and made my way back to the computer. My mistake? Well, that was forgetting about the kidnapper. While I was busy, he had snuck into the house, and as I entered the living room, I became his next victim. I only hope Liam Neeson will come to rescue me.
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