The Case of the Serialized Killer

🔮 Plongez dans un monde diaboliquement envoûtant de mysticisme et de mystère en incarnant Harold Ludicael, démonologiste déchu. Après la mort prématurée d’un célèbre illustrateur ✒️, c’est à vous de résoudre son meurtre dans ce visual novel en point-and-click.

The Case of the Serialized Killer is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. This is your usual high school anime club dropout fan-fiction about the authors imaginary anime girlfriend/waifu, but this time there's a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure backdrop with a murder mystery theme. Largely, choices in this CYOA don't matter, and the writing is the usual cringey mess you expect from Ren'Py fan-fictions. This was slapped together with the godawful Ren'Py visual novel construction kit... enabling terrible authors to publish books as if they were games when otherwise we might have been spared the pollution. So, just like no professional writing took place here, no professional software development took place, either. Visual novels/e-books are tedious at best... imagine the best novel you ever read, be that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Twilight (if you have terrible taste in literature), but then translate that to a format where the words dribble out and you have to click your mouse every time you wanted to read the next sentence, instead of just turning the pages. You'd think it was garbage. Now imagine that experience, but with much worse writing (because if these guys could write professionally, they'd be published authors and this would be on shelves in bookstores, and they wouldn't have to pay Valve $100 to self-publish this on Steam), and you have your average Steam e-book. One of the chief problems with failed authors polluting Steam with non-game E-books is that E-books can easily just be presented in a web browser... there's no justification for charging money on Steam for what might as well be a webpage. We don't spend thousands on buying a gaming rig to spend money on Steam for something Chrome or Firefox could do. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the e-book peaked at only 4 concurrent readers... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. The funny thing is, if you wanted to print this book, you'd only need to print 4 copies to satisfy the entire world's demand for it. While this E-book has no up-front cost, you can get better quality, professionally written books and comics for free online (from places like Project Gutenberg) or from public libraries. Steam isn't a comic book store, neither is it Netflix, it's for games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.

Gay detectives. Cool characters. Awesome story. LOVE IT!!!!

Very fond of the art and backgrounds, looking through the extra's menu was a real treat. The music was also fantastically done, I really enjoyed some of the pieces they certainly set the mood. I'm not normally into visual novels, but I do like murder mysteries and this was a good 2 hours spent.

Such a good game, I love the little mystery and the ARTWORK is insane! Now I want to see more of Harry and Hawley (and Maggie)

Adorable as ♥♥♥♥ and the fact it's drawn so well. Please play it.

I absolutely loved it!

my friends and i loved voicing this game together. the lines are witty, some characters are loving, some characters not (novak was either lovingly referred to as no-♥♥♥♥ or not at all; all of us refused to voice him) and i enjoyed the variety! the conversations with characters were fun, the art is pretty, and i love the development between harold and faraday!!! all of the characters are unique. would absolutely play again, and have!!

Игра "The Case of the Serialized Killer" затянула меня с первых минут. Атмосфера мрачного детектива, захватывающий сюжет, полные загадок локации – всё это создает невероятное погружение. Нелинейность повествования и необходимость делать сложные моральные выборы заставляют по-настоящему прочувствовать роль детектива, преследующего опасного маньяка. Головоломки сложные, но логичные, а найденные улики постепенно складываются в общую картину, подкидывая новые вопросы. Отдельно стоит отметить хорошо прописанных персонажей, каждый со своей историей и мотивами. Хотелось бы более плавную анимацию в некоторых сценах, но это мелочь по сравнению с общим впечатлением. Если вы любите детективные квесты с глубоким сюжетом и непростыми моральными дилеммами, "The Case of the Serialized Killer" – отличный выбор. Рекомендую!