Mr Investigator

Recommended with some caveats. I found this to be a clever, tricky, Obra Dinn-like detective puzzler. The game doesn't hold your hand much, and there is one main mechanic that had me stuck until I discovered it myself - but that was a satisfying moment when I did! What I liked - You need to do more then just gather set clues until things become obvious. You'll need to extrapolate from what you know, put together various information yourself etc. Again, harder and more fraught with roadblocks, but more satisfying in the end. There are some gripes - some clues had me a bit too stuck, and there were some AI assets that threw me off with the look of them. The loading type screen you have to see when switching areas got annoying quickly. Length - completed this in a days worth of play, with a final roadblock at the end. I would consider this an early access game as the creator is still adding fixes and final polish. Considering this is solo dev game I was impressed, especially with the crafting of the puzzles and the logic required to get there. Dev has been extremely responsive too which was nice. Overall I enjoyed this experience and will follow the creator, who is obviously a big fan of a genre I love.

[b]REVIEW UPDATED TO RECOMMEND.[/b] It's not revolutionary, but it's a solid first entry from a new developer, and it will help scratch your puzzle itch. If you're looking for your next [i]Obra Dinn[/i] fix and want a short, simple investigative puzzle that fits nicely into an hour or two of gaming at a low price point, [i]Mr. Investigator[/i] might be for you. There are some fun deductions, and the use of the time travel mechanic as a two-purpose mechanic is novel for the genre and well executed, if slightly underutilized. The story isn't especially twisting or surprising, and there are potentially some lingering questions upon completion, but it's serviceable and no pieces are missing in the narrative elements needed to solve the various puzzles. Overall the speed of the patches and the small but notable improvements they have brought to the play experience (and the clues provided) has crossed the threshold into something I'd lean towards recommending for fans of the genre, as entries in this genre are rare and it's priced reasonably for 1-3 hours of light puzzle solving. I also suspect that either the game will continue to get better OR the dev's second entry into this genre will be considerably improved, as he is responsive to the community, clearly invested in the game and the genre, and open to feedback.

I’m going to say a lot but you should know from the start that Mr. Investigator, despite its awful name and lackluster steam store page, is a hard Very Much Recommend with a rare 17/10 rating. Also, I played this on a steam deck despite it not being at all appropriate to play on a steam deck, and I had a great time for the most part. I just made one of the back buttons a keyboard toggle and another one a magnifier toggle and I was good to go. I used the touch pad and there a little bit of input lag when you are in menu screens but it’s not at all noticeable in game. Besides, you’ll spend most of your time staring unblinking at objects willing them to become a clue and watching them not become a clue. With one exception, this developer has an incredible talent for investigation puzzle design. I have not seen this much variety and clever use of limited mechanics in many solo dev games (including solo dev games that I love!). Woowee, I can’t say a lot without spoiling it, but this game has a lot of fun shenanigans. It’s crazy to me that one person put this all together. Mr. Investigator also very much delivers on the promise of “no hand-holding.” You can turn off hints and there is literally no guidance after the tutorial at all about any of the mechanics or what the boundaries of this world are. It’s fantastic. The game is almost entirely knowledge-gated, you could finish it in 30 minutes if you’re not stupid like me. Unfortunately, I have many criticisms that I have lobbed at the developer in the discussions forum. I don’t recommend you read them because there are spoilers but they boil down to (1) This should’ve been launched as an early access game. I know it came from a game developed on itch so it had some playtesting there, I assume, and there was a demo (that I didn’t play) which generated some feedback. But Mr. Investigator needs a lot of love and polish. I didn’t ding it in my rating because it is from a solo developer and because my man patched all the AI images out of the game and used real people for the voice acting, which is a lot more than I can say for many projects lately. (2) There is one exception to the puzzle making genius in Mr. Investigator and it is also the biggest mistake this developer made. There is a math puzzle. At the risk of awakening my middle school math teacher’s corpse and having it come after me, I want to make it clear that math is dumb and has no place in detective games. I’ll spend all day staring at squiggles in a game like Epigraph but if you try to make me do math the thunder of my vengeance will echo through these corridors like the gust of a thousand winds. Not only is it math, but it’s also just an awful puzzle. I don’t think it’s fixable at all and I’d just look up a solution if I were you. It’s not worth your time to even try it. (3) Really needs some proofreading and a bit more love with character models. I think they wear the same baggy sweats the entire game and it broke immersion a lot 😂. In conclusion, if you’d like to be reminded how dumb you are and want to have a good time, big thumbs up for Mr. Investigator. I got a lot more than $7 of fun out of it.

I haven't come close to beating it, but so far it seems like a Fill in the Blank mystery game, like the Golden Idol games. It definitley doesnt seem too easy. It is also technologically stable, everything works well.

What a wonderful and unique take on the "Obra Dinn/Golden Idol" deduction type game. This game has you going through several different vignettes to figure out what happened. I can tell you that most of the puzzles are unique and interesting. With the kinds of solutions that you feel like you should have gotten all along. All wrapped in a very heartfelt story. I'm looking forward to anything else coming from this dev as they definitely have the right mindset for the kind of deductive puzzle creation.

I've been following Mr Investigator since its initial release online (under its different name!) I appreciate the creator's hard work in making and improving this game, and love the premise and deduction mechanic. This game deserves a try!

If you like Obra Dinn, this is a great way to satiate that thirst of investigation. I havent finished it yet but it seems like a short game. There are some glitches when you fill the clues that need to be adressed but everything else work really well

A key mechanic in this game is viewing this house at different times and different days. [spoiler]Realising that some doors are open on some days and not on others, and jumping between them to access rooms not otherwise accessible is a key thing to realise. However, with this mechanic, *where* you end up seems to lag behind you and you can end up either in a door or on the opposite side of a door you want to be on - even after walking all the way into the opposite side of a room from the door, and so you need to transport back and forth to somehow make this janky mechanic work for you. This is made worse by the same audio clip playing whenever you open the investigation opens on a day you've transported to, regardless of how many times you've visited it, which you then need to skip past in order to transport back and try again.[/spoiler] I eventually got so frustrated with this and, on top of me not clicking with the puzzles and finding them obtuse, that I rage quit the game. I appreciate what the developer was trying to do here and I think there's some merit to it, but either this game, or future games, need a lot more polish to smooth out the game experience.

Good if you like games, scene investigator. Its a bit rough around the edges, i did encouter quite a few bugs, some of which also interferred with gameplay. And one puzzle was really unsatisfying to solve. But the overall presentation and vibes were really well made. With a few touchups and technical polish a great entry in the deduction game genre.

最初に拾ったオブジェクトの挙動がおかしいため、出題を信用できない。 (空中に透明状態で浮いていて、クリックすると現れる) 出題を信用できなければ推理とデバッグが混ざり合ってしまう。 それは私が謎解きに求める体験ではない。様子見推奨。 The behavior of the object I picked up first is strange, so I can't trust the puzzle. (A transparent object is floating and appears when clicked.) If I can't trust the puzzle, solving and debugging get mixed up. That wasn't the experience I was looking for. Currently not recommended.