Mahjongg Investigations: Under Suspicion

Absolutely excellent semi-casual game, gives a very good investigation feel and has decent variety. Each case contains: *) Multiple locations to check out, each of which corresponds to a separate mahjong solitaire puzzle. Solve slightly-easier mahjong to get clues. Generally, more puzzles are available than you'll need, and you can try to solve the case at any point. *) Use clues to identify suspects as perpetrators -- there's different kinds. You can discover new suspects or find alibis that rule out old ones, you might learn facts about the suspects, or the perpetrator, and perpetrator facts are solid enough but vague enough that you actually have to think about it. What is "average height"? Obviously the 4'11" girl can go, but what about the 5'9" one? It strikes a delicate balance. *) Interrogate suspects for more clues -- which is a Memory minigame with yet more tiles. Turn over tiles two at a time, trying to find matches. The better you do, the more facts you get about that suspect -- or, they might even confess under pressure. *) You have a phone, which occasionally gets anonymous tips or clues from the lab -- which tends to go off when you're busy doing something else, making it mildly (but not terribly) more difficult to concentrate on the puzzles. *) Smooth and easy to use interface makes the logic puzzle segment a breeze to interact with, while the multiple suspects and the nature of the clues ("at least one suspect has bloodtype AB+" : if there's two suspects, you can't rule out other bloodtypes, but when one suspect has several suspicious traits...) keep things novel and interesting. It fits a lot of genres I like together into one thing. Casual puzzles, tacked together with just enough narrative to make each one have meaning and context, and enough variety and inter-relatedness to keep it interesting. A+! My only critique is that it could possibly use more suspect portraits, or be more careful about which one gets assigned where (double-chin lady probably shouldn't be described as having a light build, for example), but that's minor.

Bought within a sale collection, I found "Mahjongg Investigations" interesting from the screenshots, but haven't tried it until now. Glad I did it now, revealing a true casual gaming gem with some nice twists. It's Mahjongg with different stones (glasses, knives, pistols, cars), but some tiles are really special: they give clues to a case which is completely randomly generated when starting a round. These clues help you identify suspects that are presented on a seperate screen, all with random abilities like height, hobbies, hair-color, and so on. The more clues you get, the easier it becomes to identify the right person. That's hell of fun, especially because you can decide to interrogate suspects for more clues, even pushing them to commit to the crime. When doing so, the game changes to a matching/memory kind of game, giving a damn good selection of different gameplays during one thrilling detective Mahjongg case.

the melding of genre and theme here are done well and feel entirely natural. you are uncovering evidence by playing Mahjongg, very much in the way a crime scene investigator or detective would by carefully cataloging and removing various items that fit the setting. you will find alibis which reduce the amount of potential suspects, evidence which helps establish a profile of the suspect and some tips or clues regarding what other locations you should search for more evidence. once you clear a screen you get to choose another location until you feel confident enough to issue a warrant for whoever. this reminded me of midnight rescue or maybe clue. a sequel of this idea that breaks out of the standard Mahjongg formula with some weird ideas like dusting for prints on a tile or taking photos of parts of the board or single tiles and do X with it I dunno. pretty cool idea as it stands though

I like mahjongg, then there was some pointless other stuff.

This is a weird game. Weird, but fun