The List

I was surprised at how well crafted this game is! The UI is nice, the acting is great, the mystery aspect works nicely, the ambiance is well done. Looking through the files is hard enough to make you feel smart when you discover new information, but also simple enough to naviguate pleasantly. I do not know much of America's history so unfortunately I did not see as many clues as I should have, and I had to look up the guide. I do not think this makes it a bad game though. Your knowledge of american history contributes greatly to the big "ahah!" moment, so this narrative would not work as well without it (or the reveal would lose some of its punch). Doing this while also taking into account non americans is tough. I think the dev struck a decent balance. Overall a very nice experience, im looking forward to this dev's future works!

No spoilers review to follow, but a tip: you will need to do outside Google searches to solve the mystery in this game. It's not self contained. If you find a hint that makes you say "what the eff?", Google it. That's it, no spoilers to follow other than my opinions on the game. So, I played Her Story, enjoyed it a quite a bit as a date night game! This one, both similar and different. I'm recommending because the story is neat and I really liked Her Story, but you need a couple important caveats. Similar gameplay style. Difficulty is unreasonable though, and there's no real mechanic to resolve the difficulty (like, other similar games have a Hint button, nothing like that here). Had to look up the solution in an FAQ, then try to reverse engineer how to get there. It's functionally impossible to solve, our two-person investigation team could have played for one million years and never uncovered the mystery, and most of the content in the game is a red herring when you do solve it. Like I said, the story is neat, the game is worth a play, but I don't know how they didn't discover this stuff in play-testing. Don't feel like you're cheating if you use an FAQ when you inevitably get stuck.

Great game. Loved getting to know Grady and trying to find connections between the unordered clips. The final puzzle you need to solve took me a while since I wasn't familiar with the context, but after some research it was easy enough. Definitely recommend it for anyone who enjoys solving mysteries and especially to those who enjoyed Her Story and are looking for something similar, such as myself. Edit: By coincidence I played the game and wrote this review on Grady's birthday, July 26th. Pretty neat :)

I got stuck on this for a long time and then randomly booted it up because I wanted to delete it from my library. It plays very much like Her Story and kind of like Telling Lies, both of which I enjoyed. I took a major leap of logic and randomly got the ending which I found to be kind of anti-climactic; I concur with others re: the american history knowledge being helpful with this game. Despite these limitations, I still enjoy this style of game and would recommend it to others who do as well.

Overall I enjoyed this game, I liked the concept, but I got near the end, and got completely stuck on needing 7 or 8 more clips, including the one that breaks things open and lets you resolve the game. I ended up having to go online and looking up a guide to figure it out. And that guide, while trying to point me in the right direction, even filled with spoilers, wasn't enough. I had to dig deep into the "spoiler talk" forum discussion to figure out what I was supposed to do. In the end, I guess it made sense, but I felt like to arrive at that on my own would require a really extreme leap of logic that I feel like more people wouldn't arrive to. Listening to the dev explain it, it makes sense in hindsight, but it absolutely was not on my mind playing the game, at all. It was cheap, I appreciate a short game, I enjoyed it for what it is, but just be forewarned that unless you really think outside the box or know the twist going in, I think you'll struggle to figure out how to wrap this one up.

I give this a weak recommendation because it's a "meh" detective game in the end. I would prefer a straightforward murder mystery instead of one with supernatural aspects. But this game has some good features, including a good interface, well produced video, good acting and an interesting storyline. Trouble is, I stumbled on the ending right away before I'd seen all the videos. Having a single clip unravel the whole game is disappointing, to say the least. However, as FMV games go, this one is pretty good, not great.

I play a lot of FMV games. I am not usually keen on these "found footage" types, but this was an exception. It was just long enough to keep my interest, but didn't go on long enough for me to find it tedious. There is also a function that allows a person to eventually find all the clips they missed (once they have finished the game the first time). The only negative I found was that there was no rewind function. Sure, the clips are short, so it's not really necessary, it would be nice if it had been an option, just in case a player felt they needed it. Oh, and there was some type of audio glitch when I was playing that kept replaying the same "rewind/tape" sounds and "My name is Jordan.." over and over again. I had to go and turn off the ambient sound and the music to make that stop. Restarting helped, too. The acting was really good which I feel should be mentioned because so many FMV's have terrible acting. I would highly recommend this game for people who enjoy FMV's, especially for people who liked games like, "Her Story" or "Telling Lies." If you enjoyed those, you would likely enjoy this one.

I was really won over by The List. It's been on my steam wishlist forever-- its looks like and is priced like a pretty low-rent Her Story, and that of course is kind of true. It is the exact same gameplay, and you are again rooting through clips of a police interrogation. The inspiration is obvious. But I love Her Story, and I figured I could definitely have fun with more of the same. So you're poking around in clips, writing down keywords in a notebook to throw at the database, and slowly learning about the sole character of the game. He's so-so as an actor, but he's doing his best with the difficult task of having an exclusively one sided conversation, and like most other low budget FMV games, I find it very charming. There's a couple of big, capital letter Reveals that I won't spoil, except to say that I loved them. A game like this kind of lives or dies on how satisfying the turn is, and it's such a wild swing that even though I had been on guard looking for "what's really going on here" from the beginning I was really unprepared for it. A few discoveries happened as a result of some curious googling in another window which was also very fun. It did a lot to make me feel like I was a proper detective doing the big work. I finished in about 4 hours. It doesn't have the production value of some Sam Barlow games, but for only six bucks on steam, it punches above its weight and had me grinning at the end.