Database Detective: Minor Crimes Division

GOATED

Been such a pleasure playing this game. I love the art and whole experience. I never used sql before so its nice to learn. Good game to put your brain in work!

Playing this game feels exactly as challenging and rewarding as my real-life freelance programming job except that I don't make any money. As someone who actually uses SQL for work I can confirm it's quite realistic. The main difference is that there were several points where normally I would have gone "doing this with pure SQL is stupid, let me switch to R/shell scripting for a bit" but because I only had SQL in this box I had to figure it out. Occasionally frustrating but overall quite enjoyable. I'm a little iffy about the dictator being named "Zoran" since I am 100% pro-Mamdani but I appreciate the game's critique of the criminal justice system.

First few levels are very easy (I think probably too easy). I'm probably not the best to ever play this game, but I'm an almost an Actuary (P&C, not that stupid life and health ♥♥♥♥) (slap that like button boys) . I think there should be a mode where you have to return the singular record containing the suspect's first and last name, instead of just entering their name on the warrant. This forces the detective to consolidate all the clues into one SQL query.

nice introduction to sql

This game is an incredible experience even through case 5- It's very charming, the assistant is adorable and insults you if you ask about personal problems. Like you can say "I'm ugly" and it'll say "have you thought about spending more time at work so less people have to see your ugly face?" That's the kind of humor rampant throughout this game- it really is an effective learning tool, whether you know about SQL or not- I tried to take it from the approach of someone who's ONLY following the in-game guide, like I don't know any SQL (application full stack developer so my knowledge is pretty high-level) and even failing repeatedly, making mistakes I know I made in my learning SQL days and it works wonderfully. It's not full SQL support- this is a tailor-made for in-game experience, so some advanced stuff isn't supported and I have to retrain my brain to the basic ways of doing things(not all of those failures are me doing it on purpose, even at my level!) but as someone who edits hundreds of tables a day against my will, this is a wonderful, charming experience, and the kind of experience you can only get on PC (although, I could easily see this being so charming as a phone application as well) also, you really do feel like a true detective- everything from the noir detective music to way you wake up the sleeping officer on the login screen oozes charm.

Puzzle games aren't my usual fare but I loved this one. The level of difficulty felt just right. Later cases are somewhat challenging but I tended to make steady progress without getting stuck or backtracking much. Even if you do get stuck the little moleman assistant in the corner appears to be surprisingly good at giving just the right hints depending on what you're working on when asked. Just be aware that while SQL plays an important role, much of your time (depending on your SQL skills quite possibly most of it) will be spent scrounging funky 90s style websites for clues. That's mostly fun, too, though a few usability improvements (alt-tabbing, more keyboard shortcuts, browser favorites, ...) would have been nice.