Little Problems: A Cozy Detective Game

I played the demo of this one a few years a go and remember it being promising, with a cute story and simple but satisfying gameplay mechanic. You hunt around to collect all the words that you can then use to fill in the questions posed. It's great that you can jump back and forth at anytime to do so and everything you need is in the scene - though it does mean that you have to find the names of characters you've already named in previous scenes over and over. I really enjoyed the story that linked each scene as it went along and I found that I wanted to 100% each scene before I moved onto the next (and collecting the hidden cupcake collectible). I literally couldn't stop playing because I was enjoying it so much. But then I hit the final scene, a 'murder mystery' party where through a combination of having had so much fun up to that point, hitting a sudden wall with complexity at 3AM in the morning, and out of the blue references to NFT's and cryptocurrency like as if the dev's look up to it as somehow aspirational/desirable just slammed a stop sign right into my face and left a dirty taste in my mouth. I think it will literally prevent me from completing the game. It felt that tacky that it then made me start to question the artwork throughout the game, character designs tend to shift and jump and change and don't seem to have a singular definitive look which I originally put down to perhaps having multiple artists over a period of time but after the last scene it made me start thinking that it might be AI. I mean, dev's who look at crypto and nft's as a 'fun gameplay theme' might not have the best scruples around these sorts of things. It soured my opinion of the game to the point where I don't even want to push through with a guide to 'finish' it.

I picked this game because the hand-drawn art caught my attention, and I'm so glad I decided to give it a chance. The developers clearly put a lot of care and passion into making this little cozy game. You play as Mary during her first year at university, solving all kinds of everyday mysteries by exploring each scene, paying attention to the smallest details and connecting clues through logic. The puzzles revolve around filling in missing names, dates, and other details by carefully observing each scene, reading the information you're given, and connecting everything through deduction. Some chapters introduce little twists to keep things fresh, like matching people's names to their photos. Nothing ever felt like random guessing, every answer could be worked out through logic, which made solving each puzzle really rewarding. Some chapters were definitely more challenging than I expected, but the hint system is great if you ever get stuck. It points out mistakes without giving away the answer, giving you just enough help without taking away the fun. The soundtrack is honestly lovely and fits the atmosphere perfectly. The art is charming and adorable, and I really enjoyed following Mary's journey throughout the game. If you enjoy detective games, solving mysteries and giving your brain a fun little workout, I'd definitely recommend giving this one a try. And if you do, don't forget to look everywhere... there might be a cupcake sticker waiting for you! 🧁 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3755346267

故事纯日常流水账，美术略显AI（看了评论初版是有的），玩法就是找词填空，没啥难度，后期更是重复人名，不需要推就能填完，游戏体量不大，价格略贵，整体比较一般，一定要入手的话只推荐低价KEY。

26.6.5全成就通关，是一款物美价廉的推理游戏。比较生活化的解谜，可以沉浸式体验大学生活。这类游戏一旦开始玩，就尽快玩完比较好，如果隔一段时间再玩，就会忘记这些人名，要重新去记。 难度：轻微烧脑，不看攻略的话，自己多花点时间思考也可以解谜成功，实在不行就用穷举大法一个个试。猜萨拉的电脑密码和万圣节剧本杀保险箱密码需要多找找线索。 线索：如果不关掉设置，就会在线索处有问号指引，很好找。忘记前面的直接右上角点击，选择之前解完的关卡去看就行了。没有具体存档界面，返回主界面的时候会问你要不要保存。宠物医院猜动物说的话是稍微有点无头绪，演唱会线索有点细致，需要点进头像看这个人发的帖子。 画风：非常萌，很治愈，猫咪露娜和金毛狗狗本都特别可爱，族谱那关最后会介绍也是本的生日，以及怎么捡到他的。 配乐：挺恰当的，温馨治愈风格。 剧情：有很多细节和彩蛋，但是感觉关卡太少没用上，比如二维码扫了是游戏官网，我在游戏里记了一些人的生平喜好甚至信用卡号，动物们的年龄，园艺俱乐部的成员，雪松谷高中一起毕业的玛丽·格林斯诺、迈克尔·里德、萨拉·荣格、帕特里克·H，族谱那关有写奶奶也叫玛丽（看美剧经常有把尊敬的人名字用在孩子上的事情）都没怎么用到解谜中。感觉这个安德烈·霍夫曼肯定是喜欢玛丽，剧情选项我也选了让他们约会。 缺点：因为原版是英语，翻译过来有些线索就感觉有点怪，随便举个例子，比如“早上好”，可能“早上”和“好”各是一个线索；鼠标右键上下移动很不方便，如果能用滚轮就好了；在推理页面敲“空格”键即可返回调查，可能还有类似的贴心设置但是没有看到指引；推理页面的“提示一个错误答案”提示的很让人恼火，似乎有自己的提示优先级，比如右面的格子也有错的，但我先检查左侧格子，提示就会提示右侧格子；剧情似乎有不同线路和选择，但是只能体验一种，如果能重选选项来看其他剧情就好了。

As someone who has adored both Golden Idol games, The Roottrees Are Dead, and Confidential Killings, I knew I would enjoy another game with the "deduction fill-in-the-blank" mechanic. What I was not expecting was how adorable and happy this game is! It has none of the darkness of Confidential Killings, the sordid nature of Roottrees, or the insanity of Golden Idol - instead of solving murders and exposing affairs, we get to help Mary through her first year of college. Between the characters, art style, and extremely relatable story (my chat and I were reminiscing on our own college days), Little Problems puts ordinary mysteries at the forefront of its puzzles. I cannot recommend it enough! I finished the game in about 4 hours while on stream, which means it can likely be finished in a bit less time.

Overall, it gives me a cozy and heart-warming vibe. And the puzzles is presented in a clever way too. Problem is the puzzles per se are meaningless. The game will simply ask you WHO does What, and it goes on and on. It's about note-taking skills or rather the game wants to test your memory. To be fair, the dev makes it obvious about the game design from the get-go. Rather, it's a me problem. Not the type of puzzles im looking for.

Mary is dressed as a detective in the cover image of this game, which is extremely misleading. Any "solving" is done by you and you alone, a third-person omniscient outsider who is looking at a scene with information deliberately and meaninglessly obscured for no other reason than to mildly confuse any higher-dimensional being watching. And I put solving in quotes because it's really more just "describe what is happening in this scene". There's even an example in the first two preview images; if this was an actual mystery game, you'd expect to have to go and solve the mystery of "who/what broke the USB stick" or "why was Mary late and what for". But... well, the cat is chewing on the USB stick right in front of you. And in image 2, you can see the mystery was apparently "what are the names of Mary's presentation partners?" and "what day will they have a follow up meeting about this group presentation?". Man, I think "low-stakes mystery" can definitely be done but that is bringing the term down to an entirely different level... Comparisons have already been made to Golden Idol and Obra Dinn but I think the shortcomings would be applicable to any mystery game, no matter the mechanics. The most annoying forced-info-obfuscation was that a character's full name is never put in a single place, you ALWAYS have to hunt for the first and second seperately. This includes when people are literally holding identification or credit cards. There was no logic to when or why people used [First Initial]. Lastname vs Firstname [Last Initial]. or just initials alone. And you have to do this repeatedly even for characters you've known since the first chapter. One of the last chapters has Mary, for whatever reason, refer to all of her family members by their normal human names except for Silvia, who she writes down as "S" for the first time in the entire game. ?????????????????? This added no mystery, just busywork as we have to go and pixel hunt for wherever Silvia's name is actually written. I don't think that this sort of game inherently needs a densely-woven story, but even this extremely light plot had missed opportunities to entwine itself with the mechanics/genre. Maybe I'm biased because it's pride month, but here's an example; we're supposed to assume that Silvia and Alex are getting engaged because they both have silver rings, but it's not explicitly confirmed in the chapter. Alex shows up once again later at the vet, wearing the same silver ring. He's sat next to a very trendy-looking Kevin who is there because his dog swallowed... a ring. How satisfying would it have been to discover that it was actually Alex and Kevin getting married, perhaps having proposed with the breakout design from fashion-industry-newbie Silvia? A red herring, a twist, and being able to piece it all together yourself from subtle hints- well, no, Alex and Silvia do get engaged. It's fine, it's just no mystery. All that said, I enjoyed it decently enough. The character designs are very cute and I hope they come back for the developer's future games. Fair warning - I don't regret supporting indie devs but it's too expensive for what it is, even on the sale I bought it for.

It is okay. Basically, a slightly lower quality game that resembles Duck Detective. If you're itching for more DD, you should get it. My biggest criticism is that with the exception of the last case it is more a "piece together what happened" than "piece together a mystery", however, I am not sure what it would take for a 10-case game with mystery after mystery. Played on Linux without issues.

This game is fun, cozy, and at times can also be taxing, and confusing. That said, The graphics, the music, the cats and dogs, The UI and the environments are all intuitive, warm and inviting. The entire game is played with a mouse. 100%'d the game in 5 hours. I recommend this game because it is not violent, and it strengthens the player's cognitive intuitions and mental faculties.

——记录：捆绑包“Safe In Our World Charity Bundle” ，26/02/08入。 ——儿童向、重记名、轻解密小游戏。26/06/10