Casebook 1899 - The Leipzig Murders

Schönes Spiel, für das ich viel zu lange gebraucht habe es wirklich durchzuspielen. Ich habe an ein paar Fälle vermutlich viel länger gesessen, als Anfangs gedacht, sodass ich das Spiel auch mal zwischenzeitlich gar nicht erst weiter versucht habe. Irgendwie schon fast nostalgisch, weil ich es unbedingt durchspielen, aber nicht nach einer Lösung online suchen wollte. Grafik ist klassisch pixelig mit einer sehr minimalistischen Note, wodurch man an dem Ganzen schon einen gewissen künstlerischen Touch erkennt, der sich aufs wesentliche konzentriert. Vor allem der historische Hintergrund erdet das Spiel. Die Geschichten sind durchweg schön geschrieben und die Gespräche auch nicht unnötig lang oder aufgeblasen. Insgesamt ein schönes Spiel für "immer mal wieder ein wenig weiterkommen, bis man die Rätsel dann auch endlich mal geklackt hat".

Overall I give this a neutral review, leaning toward not recommending. Pros and Cons: + The setting is interesting (- but completely irrelevant to the story or cases). + Graphics are very nice for the style it goes for (- but make it difficult to pick out areas of interest when pixel hunting) + The voice acting is good and the sound effects are nice. I especially liked the little chuckle the detective does which occasionally humorously matches with whatever you're examining. + The deductions system is pretty cool (- but seriously underbaked and occasionally just plain confusing) - The puzzles aren't explained well and have very little contextual relevance to the cases at hand. - Solving cases with multiple solutions requires a lot of faffing about in the notebook - The story is rather bizarre and unsatisfying. I had to resort to a guide because there was what I would call instances of moon-logic. I played the demo when it came out and I enjoyed the first case so much I purchased the game, but if you liked the demo, maybe you can save yourself some money and stop there.

Sí pero con descuento. Me ha defraudo el final y puzzles del final, que he tenido que emplear una guia totalmente perdido. La estética, los tres primeros casos y la primera parte del último maravillos, música y planteamiento, la resolución de unión de argumentos tipo Sherlock me encantó pero el momento final ufaaaa .... frustración.

A nice homage to classic adventure / detective games, with all their pros and cons. Pros: cool story, jokes and humor, interesting mechanics, when it flows you feel like a genius Cons: illogical combinations that you get no hint to figure out, complex dependency chains of information (have to ask one specific person A about something person B told you then tell that to person C, who otherwise say nothing about each other), wild difficulty scale of puzzles and minigames (one feels like a breeze, another will stop you dead in your tracks). Overall pretty fun though, cool soundtrack, I like the train level

I enjoyed playing this indie game, and some parts I loved. The dialogue was great and I liked the deduction system, and the graphics. The characters were good too. I found some puzzles to be very obscure and found this to be frustrating.

Unfortunately the game's thumbs down for me. It's well presented, I like the art style, voice acting, and the overall feel and mood of the game. But gameplay wise is way too streamlined, lacking in player agency, deductions are too railroaded and easy, the clues too explicit. Now, if a narrative driven experience is the core of the game, then yes, it probably delivers. If not (and I thought it emphasized the player's agency, actually), then I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend it.

Wir haben das Spiel in mehreren Etappen zu dritt gespielt. Es gab viele spannende kleine Rätsel die uns sehr heraus gefordert haben. In der ersten Hälfte des Spiels, gab es 1-2 Rätsel, bei denen wir ohne Hilfe des Forums nicht weiter gekommen wären. Mit der Lösung waren diese jedoch auch alle logisch und wir hatten nur kleine Details übersehen. Auch wenn der vierte Fall von vielen, als der schwerste beschrieben wird, konnten wir, nachdem wir die grundlegende Rätsellogik verstanden hatten, diesen ohne größere Probleme lösen. An jedem gefühlten "dead end" kamen wir schließlich dann doch mit vereinten Köpfen weiter. Insgesamt hat es uns rießig Spaß gemacht und lange gepackt.

I would have liked this game if it wasn't for an unsolvable bug in the last chapter that basically made it imposible to play and so I never got to end the game and see the story unravel.

Casebook 1899 - The Leipzig Murders is an excellent murder mystery point and click adventure game. It's got very good voice acting, beautiful graphics and clever puzzles. The voice acting is only available in German, but there are subtitles available in English and Italian, if you are not fluent in German.

The game starts off decently enough, but gradually becomes weaker, and is very weak by the last chapter. The puzzles in the last chapter are very contrived: You're in an office and you can't reach a paper, despite various furniture around that you could move and climb up onto; you're asking questions from a couple of children but they don't believe you're a police officer ("that badge might be fake") unless you can solve a math riddle (also you [spoiler]steal their dog[/spoiler] and they don't care/notice???); [spoiler]the "random" contents of every actor's locker at a local theater was perfectly preserved, because these contents are referenced in a published book which then acts like a map to find a specific location in Germany[/spoiler]. It feels like the author just ran out of ideas and just placed puzzles to give the player something to do, rather than because it would have made sense narratively. Otherwise, the first few cases are solid, but not outstanding. The puzzles made sense, the characters were believable, etc. Some of the dialog text was split up in a way that led to something akin Garden-path sentence, where you'd think the sentence ends earlier than it actually does, e.g. "No, I only know that years ago he regularly wrote reviews..." (end of sentence? nope!) "... for the theater, but suddenly stopped!" But these are minor complaints. A lot of reviewers also mentioned that they hated the plot twist at the end that made it feel like [spoiler]"nothing mattered"[/spoiler]. Honestly, I was fine with it, though I did sort of see it coming by the end of the first chapter. Perhaps because I saw it coming, I was more prone to "appreciate" what the author was attempting to do. It didn't bother me as much as the twist ending in, say, [spoiler]Danganronpa V3[/spoiler] or [spoiler]Thimbleweed Park[/spoiler], two other murder mystery games with famous [spoiler]"nothing matters"[/spoiler] endings. Ultimately, I went with "not recommended" because I think the current asking price of $17.99 is too high. I would recommend this game at $5. You get to enjoy the first few cases, and if you're a completionist, you can muddle through to the end of the game, or else you can just stop there and enjoy the early parts of the game where it is strongest. If you like this type of game, I think Gemini Rue might be a stronger contender.