Exceptional game. Fascinating story, with rich cast of characters and high quality voice acting thorough. A murder mystery with a fantastical twist - you have machine that lets you hear voices from the past - that pairs up the narrative and the game mechanics perfectly.
It starts of quite confusing - deliberately so - but very quickly things start to click in place, over and over again. There were so many moments when a small piece of information suddenly made me go "hang on, that's what it meant". And each time, it makes you feel clever for spotting it. It makes you want to go back and revisit your previous assumptions. It very rarely spells things out for you, before giving you a few chances to make your guesses. And while I have made hundreds of wrong guesses, at no point did I feel completely stuck. There was always one other idea I could follow. It's a very clever, very precise design all the way through.
And it's helped by a phenomenal UI. A good mystery puzzler will make you want to make copious notes. It will make you want to file certain mysteries away for later. It will spin up a few new threads to follow from a single piece of information. The game has all that - but everything you need, you can do through the game. Characters can be named & re-named as you get more details. You can guess at how they look. You can bookmark any line of dialogue you want, or open a blank page in notepad and scribble it down yourself. You can decide whether the conversation pauses or not, while you do it. You can replay previous scenes from any point you wish. It's a masterful implementation; one I'll be measuring all future mystery games against.
I loved "The Roottrees Are Dead" to bits. I think this one's better. The folks at Evil Trout clearly know what they're doing.
