I will always, always, always go to bat for Parade Killer. I think half my comments on Lemmy have been shilling for it. I desperately want more mystery games like it. Not just for the reasons you described, but because it so, so, SO completely nails the relationship between its aesthetic and its plot question about what it means to have institutional power in a institution that's downright malicious. The player character is explicitly a tool of the evil Syndicate. Is she even interested in effecting change? Could she if she was? Is Paradise worth saving?
I've played a little. It's okay. The one I was playing didn't do anything approximating the Mind Palace and was very, very linear-- which I think is better than the Sherlock Holmes style games. It was the everything else about it that annoyed me into turning it off!
Love: When mystery games actively draw attention to the idea that you need to draw your own conclusions about what you find in the game, and make your own truth, instead of just following a track
Hate: when the above is expressed as a formalized "Mind Palace" mechanic à la the more recent Sherlock Holmes games. That's just covering the track with a tarp instead of letting you build your own theories. Either let people accuse who they want with the evidence they have (once again I plug Paradise Killer) or acknowledge that there's only one acceptable answer
That's why I got Nebula. It's not everyone I watch on YouTube, but it's a lot of the best people, and they get a much, much larger amount of revenue from me specifically than they do from even YouTube Premium at a better price since you're not also paying for YouTube Music on top of it. I was a devoted Google Play Music All Access listener, but true to form Google forgot about it and then replaced it with a worse service that costs more money. Spotify and Nebula as separate subs is as close as I'm going to get to the old school GPMAA/YouTube Red bundle and I don't have to give a penny to Google for it
I think the special feature about the Das keyboard is probably the media controls, so finding a replacement/similar build should be easy :)
Ah, that's just it: mine doesn't have those! Back when I got this, just having mechanical keyswitches was the special feature. I've watched in absolute awe as the scene has exploded, but I'm very much behind on what the state of the art is. The biggest tech-y enhancement this one has over the switches is a two-port USB hub that I plug my mouse, and occasionally a thumb drive or other USB controller into.
I'll look into those switch recommendations but honestly the pre-built boards are going to end up being where I go. Given how long I've used the Das, do you know if there's a standout for solid build quality in the sub-200 range? That's where the Das would be anyway
The West Wing deserves better than this tbh