Well, it's been a while since this poll closed, but better late than never!

Here are the results:

At the time I ran the poll, Ashdown's arc had not yet started, so this only contains mysteries one through ten.

Looks like "Pooled Resources" came in first place!

Pooled Resources was adapted pretty faithfully from the original novel. The biggest changes I made were making it more clear that the killer worked at the hotel by putting her in an outfit. Also, as I'd originally written it, in this mystery 77-whatever gave the dummies his own terrible names ("Blaney", "Wayney", "Shaney", etc.)

However, this was not included in the visual novel version because the casefile already gave them silly names. The casefile, with the names of the people of interest and an insightful summary of the crime, did not appear in the original novel. When I was turning the mysteries into interactive gameplay sections, I realized that a casefile would be a good way to make them more accessible.

One of the major flaws in the original novel was that the mysteries would speed by without much focus, often making it unclear how the detectives actually solved them. I'm glad people liked the mystery!

In second place is "Severance Pay".

Severance Pay was always a gruesome mystery — even when it was called "The Pair of Dimes Shift".

During revisions, I added the "locked room within a locked room" concept that I think makes it my personal favorite. Besides being much more elaborate than the other mysteries, it has the best presentation, in my opinion, with the diagrams presenting the hypotheses, and the details on the props. Since the first three mysteries of stage two take place in the main hotel room, setting it in the bathroom also made it stand out.

Finally, in third place is "The Invisible Weapon".

I'm glad The Invisible Weapon is up there, because it's my second-favorite. It's a simple but memorable set-up with a nice twist, and again, I think the presentation makes it stand out. It seems like the more effort I put into the presentation, the better the mysteries turn out.

It's interesting how much the final results mirror my own personal list!

My top three are:

1. Severance Pay
2. The Invisible Weapon
3. The Singular Key

I'm actually not too fond of "Pooled Resources" — it's in fifth place for me, behind "A Crazy, Messy Death". I will conduct version two of this poll sometime in the future — since there are five new mysteries to rank, after all.

But before that... I have a new idea of something to rank — you'll see what I mean sometime next week!

— LockedOn.