Finished it too. I found the scissors easily, but really had a hard time thinking how use them (both times: I couldn't see why I should cut a part of the apron when there should have been far easier ways to get a piece of string somewhere in the house; and then I wanted to use the machete, but didn't think I needed to actually cut the thing to retrieve it: the game should have told me that the knot was too tight or something similar).
I found the end sequence easy, as I was expecting to have to do something with the teddy bear (why would it have been left in the inventory otherwise?), and I had been trying to find a use for the rifle from day 1.
The connection with the idol is still rather mysterious for me. It should have been explained better. Hell, it should have been explained, period.
And I also wondered who had buried the body. If he died in the bathroom, and his body was found some time after his death, why not give him a proper burial? This doesn't make sense.
The thing with 'is Trilby dead' in the end was, I felt, quite an awful cliché. It's just too predictable and cheapens the ending (which was still nice, though).
At the end of the day, it wasn't a bad game, certainly had its moments, but wasn't great either. A frequent risk when making games is to focus only on what you're interested in (the puzzles, some aspects of the story), and be very careless about the rest, both in terms of realism (or, rather, internal consistency) and player's enjoyment. Between the lack of food, the idol, the mysteriously buried body, the car suddenly appearing for no reason, the characters disappearing and those two puzzles consisting in having to look at / use again something you'd already tried, it's obviously a pitfall that this game hasn't avoided --- but, then again, neither have many commercial games.
Well, thanks to all those who participated in this thread.
It made it all much funnier and more interesting (I'm not sure I'd have gone beyond Day 2 if I had been playing the game on my own). I hope there'll be another such thread, though I don't know if I'll have time to take part in it (I have a very tight schedule at the moment, and I wouldn't want to miss the GK1 playthrough, which should start soon).
