A short, intriguing little game, perhaps a little more suited to the Art Show than to the IFcomp. I'm not sure that it quite realises its potential, though. Agatha Christie once wrote that the murder is really the culmination of the murder story, not the beginning: there is perhaps greater interest in the steps that lead up to the murder than there is in the mere unravelling of the mystery. Here we have an opportunity to play with those pre-murder steps. We know that we can't change the fact of the murder, but it would be interesting to see how tweaking the events prior to it might have changed things. Perhaps, by painting the protagonist a certain way through his actions, we may arrive at different motives for or different circumstances surrounding the final/initial action of the story.
In particular, I would have liked to have seen the possibility for the two "help" encounters -- the old man and the little girl -- to play out another way. Since it's never quite clear which of the two super-imposed images is the "before" image and which the "after", it should be possible to choose either one to be the "before" and the other to be the "after". A player who has not caught on to the trick would be surprised to find out that, for example, rather than helping the old man with his cane, he is in fact responsible for the old man's predicament. As the encounters currently stand, I get the impression that they may have been placed there simply for the player to have something to do -- or undo, as the case may be.
In any case, the coding was competent (the sort of gameplay trickery we see here is a little beyond me and therefore worth an extra point as far as I'm concerned) and the writing not bad. I just think that more could have been done with the idea.
Milk to start. Then muesli, with roasted almonds. Dark toast.