This is the sort of game I wish I had a sideways thumb for, because it’s certainly not terrible, but after some thought, I don’t think I’d really recommend it, especially since it isn’t free.
I was worried about how complex the game’s mystery would be when it mentioned that taking notes was recommended (there was a time where I considered buying La-Mulana but after reading several reviews about ridiculously extensive notes people had had to take while playing, it kind of didn’t seem like the game for me), but by the end I really didn’t have to take any notes, and I ended up getting the correct culprit all four times first try. However, I was kind of shocked that it turned out that way, considering a significant number of the choices have absolutely no bearing on what clue you might find, which can mean that even if you know who the culprit is, you can get a bad ending solely because you didn’t collect enough evidence. How should I know that [spoiler] trying to distract Mr. Abrams to see if his clothes are ripped would instead cause Paul to reveal a hole in his clothing? [/spoiler] How was I supposed to anticipate that [spoiler] asking Mr. Abrams to show me around the museum is the thing I had to do to actually reveal a tear in his clothes? [/spoiler] How am I supposed to choose from three very similar topic choices to correctly interrogate Mr. Abrams and somehow correctly get the information I need? Sometimes it’s obvious what choices will make people talk, like flattering Saphira or not treating Tomoe like a child, but with Mr. Abrams, as well as Paul, it’s incredibly unintuitive and you feel like you’re guessing totally at random.
On top of this, my other major criticism of Detective Hank and the Golden Sneeze is that Ren’py limits its ease of replayability. The scenarios with different culprits are a novel and fun idea in theory, but given that Ren’py interprets each route as having unique dialogue despite most of the dialogue between scenarios being shared, it means it becomes incredibly difficult to discover what’s new, and impossible to skip through the dialogue you’ve already read. (Oddly, it doesn’t even look like it lets you skip read dialogue if you’ve already completed the case, which was especially annoying and also bizarre because I don’t think I’ve ever played a Ren’py VN that didn’t let me do that.) I don’t know if this was on purpose, in order for it not to be obvious by landing on text you’d never seen before and making it clear that they were clues, but it makes going through the choiceless cutscenes that don’t change from scenario to scenario a real pain to get through. There’s an (easily missable) option in the pause menu to skip to the next choice, but then you end up missing out on things that you really DO need to solve the crime, so it seems like a bit of a no-win situation.
This last bit is very subjective, so take this with a grain of salt, but all the characters felt kinda two-dimensional. I get that this game is short, so there’s only so much you can do, but it made some of the scenes that didn’t involve investigating feel a bit long-winded at times, and I wasn’t always terribly interested. It felt like it was supposed to be funny, and there were a few lines I did get a genuine chuckle out of, but other than that some of it seemed to fall flat. I also find myself wishing there was more context and exposition for the curious steampunk world we’re thrust into, ESPECIALLY after knowing Tomoe’s whole story. What on Earth is the history of this world, and why don't we get to learn about it? How is the fact that [spoiler] magic used to exist in this steampunk universe but everyone forgot about it [/spoiler] not significant? (On that note, why did [spoiler] Tomoe just completely get off scot-free? The game used the excuse that Mr. Abrams was trying to keep it quiet, but considering the museum already had a significant number of customers and Mr. Abrams himself even said that he was all over the news, I don’t think that really makes much sense. Even though the Golden Sneeze turned out to be rightfully hers, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s basically a terrorist, especially when Paul did far less crime than her in the scenario where he was the culprit and went to prison for several years. [/spoiler] I do have another minor nitpick: I don’t quite see the reasoning behind Paul’s white lie. Why would he lie about visiting the museum if he actually didn’t? That’s sort of a bizarre thing to make up since it doesn’t actually benefit anyone (and in reality ends up making him look suspicious). It seems like a bit of a forced red herring.
I will say, though, that I’m very glad about how casually the game portrayed Mary’s two dads, in that they existed in the storyline as people that just happened to be two married guys, instead of deliberately drawing attention to their being queer (which was not always the case with other diverse bits of the game, such as a conversation between Saphira and Hank that very awkwardly has them accusing each other of misogyny and racism in a way that was probably supposed to be overblown and silly, but came off as kind of shoehorned and uncomfortable). But ultimately, I found myself more interested in solving the mystery successfully of all the scenarios than I actually was in getting to know the story and characters, which is usually the complete opposite of my experience in mystery games. I’m also not sure if that was more out of my motivation to collect all the achievements in any given Steam game, even if I don’t like it that much, than it was a motivation to actually solve the mysteries, just for the sake of knowing a reasonable amount about all possible story events before giving a review.
Edit: In the first version of the review, I mentioned that I had yet to try the prequel, and was thus withholding some judgement in case it had more in the way of story, character, world building, etc. Unfortunately, this was not really true, and instead was a very short prologue entirely based on how to determine which one of your relatives stole a cookie. And one thing that bothered me, especially when discussing the good point of the game that I mentioned in the paragraph before this one - Hank thinks it's weird that Paul fed Peter his cookie? And then calls Paul a "great friend" for doing so?? My dude, they are *married*. That wouldn't be strange. Does Hank not know in this prologue?? Why else would he think his wife was bringing both her dads over??
