Murder On Space Station 52

Recommended only if you're a dedicated fan of point-and-click adventures and like the game's graphics and space noir style enough to overlook the many issues the game has. The game starts out nicely and tries to have convincing characters with distinct personalities and motivations. But it doesn't really evolve: each character only has a few lines of dialog, we only learn a few random things about the characters, the investigation part is very superficial, and the few facts that we find out are not enough to definitely point to the killer. The motivations for the killer's action aren't convincing at all, and the story of the main character is completely out there. All that is made worse by unconvincing voice acting. In the dialog between the protagonist's parents, the contrast between the subject matter and poor voice acting is almost comical. Same with the puzzles, the puzzle with the excavator bot in the first chapter is probably the best one in the whole game. The puzzles aren't difficult, but arbitrary and contrived mechanisms accompanied by equally illogical coded notes are not that much fun. Some of the inventory puzzles are nonsensical even by adventure game standards. The logic puzzles are also hit-and-miss. The game isn't very consistent with its interface and feedback, sometimes not giving any response at all when an action makes sense but requires a preliminary step. One hint may be shown as an automatic popup, while another hint for the same puzzle may not have a popup at all, even though it would be more logical to have the Look button show a popup for both hints. Many hotspots are tiny or indistinguishable from their surroundings. The game does have hotspot highlighting though. All that is made worse by various glitches. In the chest puzzle, if the first shape is correct and I reopen the puzzle and get the other four shapes right, nothing happens until I click the first button again. If I disassemble a certain item in the inventory, the new item doesn't appear until I close and reopen the inventory. The most annoying bug I encountered is that using the correct item on the fruit while standing on the other side of the lighthouse does nothing. I have to move closer to the fruit first and then use the item. At which point I just wanted to remove the game from my library altogether. The bug still hasn't been fixed.

Очень ламповый нуарный квест, который хотел быть чем-то большим, чем оказался на самом деле. Много тут всяких умных цитат и классических детективных зарисовок, классный визуал, озвучка (для семейного проекта - так вообще крутейшая!) и густейшая атмосфера угасающей космической станции на задворках мира. Приятные головоломки! К сожалению, самая слабая часть "Убийства на станции 52" - сюжет, в котором нас очень поверхностно знакомят со всеми действующими лицами, мало что по ходу дела объясняют и выдают скомканный конец. И я скорей могу рекомендовать эту игру как интерактивный артобъект - порешать головоломки в авторском мире создателя игры, чем как детективное приключение. А мир этот точно стоит посещения, если вы любитель старых добрых поинт-н-кликов

Murder on Space Station 52 is not a very good murder mystery, but it is a fun game. A sci-fi noir set on the rotted out, mostly abandoned titular space station, you play a mechanical engineer investigating a murder no one else seems particularly interested in seeing solved. I'll start with the weaker elements: - The mystery itself is mechanically backgrounded to an intense degree. You spend a lot of time tackling your classic adventure game style puzzles to get people to disclose information, but the design allocatates the dedication of your attention is largely to the puzzle at hand, rather than the mystery at large. I don't mind that too much, but when the murder mystery came back up, the reason for doing all this, I often went "oh yeah, that." - the animations for characters are... unimpressive, for the strength of the general art design. - While I guessed the killer correctly on the first try, it was pretty vibes based on my part. The suspects are broadly introduced and not really explored in any notable depth. There's a number of seemingly viable candidates, but the actual list of motives seemed to actually only really end up at one common one for the most part. But don't let that discourage you too much, there are some strong positives as well - The moment to moment gameplay, largely, was very enjoyable. While I stalled on a couple sections, being uncertain on how to proceed with the puzzles for a bit, the puzzles largely had a nice balance of requiring you to think creatively and using some adventure game silliness. - the voice acting is amateurish, but I honestly enjoyed that. A lot of the aliens are the main designer and dev doing funny voices modified by a computer, and that hooked me much more than a disorganized cast would've. The noir elements of the writing including the main character's monologues give me a similar warm fuzzy feeling, a cute reaction to earnestness by a small project. - the puzzles are contained to each chapter, giving good bite sized sections of gameplay and avoiding the classic adventure game trap of holding onto objects for ages with no clue what they do or why you have them until hours later. - the art is the biggest selling point. The hand-drawn style is consistent through out, with strange tentacled aliens and our diving suited protagonist. Just look at the pictures on the store page, you'll see it for yourself. If that hooks you, and you like adventure games, you'll probably enjoy the game.

Sci-fi games usually aren’t my cup of tea, but Murder on Space Station 52 is a mystery game first and science fiction game second, so it doesn’t bombard you with loads of alien lore or technical/scientific stuff. As such, it succeeded in not only holding my interest, but actually making it a lot of fun. Despite its extraterrestrial setting, it’s a pretty straightforward, well-acted detective-style point-and-click investigation combining fetch quests and problem solving and information gathering through examination of hotspots and talking to possible suspects. Most of the puzzles are quite easy, and the logic needed to be applied is pretty much common sense, albeit with a couple of blatant exceptions. It’s too bad there isn’t more actual detective work involved in ultimately pinpointing the murderer in the bunch, but it nevertheless succeeded in making a non-sci-fi gamer like me boldly go where I never really liked to go before. https://adventuregamehotspot.com/review/2695/murder-on-space-station-52

Super gemachtes Point'n'Click Mystery Advenure. Setting, Musik und Rätsel m.E. top gemacht. Die Story spielt auf einer abgeritten Raumstation. Die Hauptfigur kommt als Techniker (repairman) auf die Station und wird zunehmend in die Geheimnisse der Rest-Crew auf der Station hinein gezogen. Mehrere eigenartige Morde passieren. Im Verlauf von deren Aufklärung trifft die Hauptfigur interessante bis bizarre Charaktere und löst (meistens logisch nachvollziehbere) Rätsel. Ebenso wie ein Vor-Rezensent mochte auch ich die Noir-Atmosphäre. Ich habe das Spiel in mehr oder weniger zwei Tagen durch gespielt und fand es sehr fesselnd. Empfehlung!

Good game made by a clearly passionate guy. Puzzles are sometimes a bit nonsensical, but all in all still fun.

Good P&C with interesting story/characters and original puzzles and graphics.

Unravel your predecessor’s murder, confront haunting visions, and investigate the six crew members whose secrets may be connected to your own. You play Ed, a newly arrived mechanical engineer sent to replace the previous one who mysteriously went missing on a remote space station. But as soon as you reach your post, you make a horrifying discovery: the old repairman’s body, with a key lodged in his head and thrown into one of the machines. All evidence points to murder, yet everyone else aboard insists it was an accident. To make matters worse, you’ve started having strange visions. Determined to uncover the truth, you decide to take matters into your own hands and find the real killer. Explaining the controls of a point-and-click adventure game is almost unnecessary, since they’re so intuitive. Your main tool is the mouse cursor, which you move around the screen to search for points of interest, or “hotspots.” When you hover over one, its name appears next to the cursor, along with one or two possible interactions, one for each mouse button. The right mouse button always performs the “examine” action, available on most hotspots. The left mouse button, however, changes depending on what you’re interacting with. For example, clicking a character starts a conversation; clicking an item lets you pick it up if it’s useful later; and clicking certain objects allows you to inspect them more closely. All characters are fully voiced, though they rarely offer branching dialogue choices. Most of the time, they’ll simply deliver their lines, moving the story forward. A unique feature is that each character’s dialogue appears in its own distinct font and color in the subtitles. You can disable subtitles if you prefer, but then you won’t be able to understand the rare alien species that don’t speak English. As is standard for modern adventure games, there’s a button that highlights all hotspots on the screen. This game goes a step further by marking puzzle-related hotspots with a special icon, distinguishing them from background objects that exist mainly to enrich the world’s lore. You can also double-click on exits to fast-travel between locations, and you have the option to skip dialogue or text if you read faster than the voice acting. Unlike most games that treat the “examine” command as an afterthought, this one rewards curiosity. Examining non-essential hotspots grants you one of two in-game currencies, which can later be used to decorate your personal apartment, accessible from the save menu. Another screen you can visit is the “murder board,” where clues and suspects related to the case automatically appear as you progress through the story. However, much like in classic adventure games, many of these rewards are easily missable because of the game’s linear structure. If you want to experience everything, the best approach is to use the hotspot-reveal function and right-click on every object you can. Hotspots that still hold a reward will show an icon when you hover over them; once you’ve collected the reward, the icon disappears. There are also secret hotspots that remain hidden even with the reveal function, as well as achievements that are easy to overlook, but frequent saving can help you catch what you miss. Item management is smooth and straightforward, mainly because the game avoids overloading you with useless junk. You open your inventory using the mouse wheel, and once you make an item active, you can use it directly on hotspots or combine it with other inventory items. The other half of puzzle-solving involves logical mini-puzzles, such as operating switches, pressing buttons, arranging symbols, and observing the results. The main character often provides hints about what needs to be done, but it’s still up to you to figure out the correct sequence of actions. Overall, the experience isn’t particularly difficult. Although the story unfolds across nine chapters, each one confines you to just a few locations, items, and puzzles at a time. This structure ensures you’re never overwhelmed by too many possibilities and can stay focused on the mystery.

Classic point and click adventure with extraordinary setting and characters. I enjoyed it very much.

bella e originale avventura punta e clicca vecchio stile. consigliatissima agli amanti del genere