Murder by Numbers

The Picross side of it was kind of enjoyable for the most part, the visual novel side of it wasn't.

I really want to like this game but I have so many little issues that it adds up. This may be jsut the experience of my steam deck game, PC players may have a better experience. First there is an issue with the save system. If you save during a puzzle as to save your progress, since there is no undo button, if you complete the puzzle it will frequently not count your solution as a solve until you mark and unmark the boxes in the disputed row/coulmns. Several times this happened and before I recognized this I kept restarting puzzles. Next, several times inputs did not work such as when opening the map not being able to select locations, pressing the left-right hint toggle buttons does nothing in my puzzles, and when speaking to people show evidence does nothing appear unless I stop using my controller and use a mouse. Steam mouse inputs also sometimes fail to register, so I had to use the touch screen to present evidence, until I realized pressing Y let me do this, but at the bottom of the screen that shows what buttons do what it does not identify this as an option! Finally the puzzles and evidence are as puzzling as the game. When you solve a puzzle in a game like this usually the result is discernible but each puzzle is a pixelated mess that doesn’t look like what it presents. I had several times where I would look at it and think “this looks like a QR CODE” , they should have transition other pixel art to an actual render key art so when I look at the evidence I know what they are or at least make the images easier to read. There are also no difficulty curve to the puzzles in my experience, some are much harder than others followed by a 10x10 that is simple paint by numbers, but perhaps this is just because thr puzzles are sorted by story relevance and not difficulty. It’s a hard problem to balance for in a game like this but it definitely affected my experience. Overall the game and story is great, art is stellar and vibes are great. This is a death by 1000 cuts, and after spending time playing and coming back I’m bleeding out. Still, this game can reallly draw you in, I put this down for months and was drawn back to play it. Hopefully my mood and review will chance once I’m done with it. devs if you read this, please do a patch to resolve some of these issues, there is gold here but it needs some love to shine.