Who Did It?

[b]red flags galore, avoid both the game and the developer.[/b] it's always suspicious when a game has its own eula, especially from a random unknown dev. even more so if they claim not to have much time (which is fine), then spend it on wording a unique contract instead of working on the game. there's a demo, starts with an in-game pop-up to accept the eula, but the link is dead, so you either accept blindly or can't play. this should be fixed now but it's not. [b]the full game has you accept the eula before starting installation (that's fine), then again when the game starts (that's not fine), but the link to the eula is still broken[/b]. fresh install of the full game on july 9, days after the supposed fix. the game is very basic, a flash game sold for $8 and [b]it should be in early access[/b]. came out in march 2024 as a full release, no early access period, yet [b]more than a year later it's still missing a lot of things[/b], including basic functionality, and has a roadmap for the entirety of 2025. no mention of a timer toggle in the future, it keeps ticking on the top, doesn't do anything but distract and it can't be paused by bringing up a menu. and the worst part: [b]the game promises 'save anytime' in the accessibility section on the store page, but that feature is only part of the roadmap for q3 2025[/b]. valve once again did the absolute minimum to fulfill some mandatory guidelines (that section should have a lot more options and info) and scummy devs couldn't have jumped faster to abuse what could be an extremely important and useful store feature. I had a brief discussion on the forum with the dev about all this and [b]I asked them to remove the false information, but it's still there, advertising a feature that doesn't exist, and they removed the forum thread instead[/b]. but not before taking me for a fool and saying I don't know what 'save anytime' means, then explaining the game 'autosaves everything' but takes away progress if you don't finish a case. excellent stuff. here's a screenshot of the thread for proof and posterity. saw all the locked topics in a discussion forum meant for discussion and knew what was coming (and have an idea what's next, we'll see): https://imgur.com/a/jMJgJyx and as a bonus, they're selling the manual/walkthrough as dlc. classy. oh, and skipping the tutorial grants the 'solve your first case' achievement. great stuff. obviously refunded, just wanted to warn people to steer clear.

--This is a very simple set of logic puzzles, not actually a mystery or a whodunnit. All of the cases are 100% in the format of "Suspect #1 is not in room 2. Suspect #2 is not in room 3. Suspects 1 and 2 are in the same room. Which room are they in?") If you're into very simple ordering problems, this is not terrible. But, for a vastly better execution of this with vastly more intricate writing, I'd recommend checking out Unheard first. It looks and plays a lot better than this in every way, and the problem-solving is cosmically better. --The English version uses way too many very similar names. In one of the cases, the suspects include Darren, Derrick, Dorris, and David. Another uses Oliver and Olivia. [b]This is a bad idea[/b]. --The suspect select dropdown is kind of rough. I'd strongly recommend listing the suspects alphabetically, and using a different font color or a strikethrough on suspects who have already been used. --Update: the most recent version of the game makes it much easier to determine which suspects are male and female. (Men are highlighted blue in the suspect list, women are red). Before this change, it had been very clunky working around clues in the form of "The killer is male" because many suspects have gender-ambiguous names and names were all we had. --There are typos everywhere (English version). --The game designers believe that there is a "storyline connecting the Levels together". This is more like a machine-generated series of sudoku puzzles with villainous taunts between puzzles. I like puzzles myself, and I even like random villainous taunts, but don't get your hopes up for a storyline here, there isn't one.

So I'll be honest. I think there is a story. I didn't really pay attention to it. Cut scenes are interesting. I absolutely love the core game play. Simple in theory since it's a logic puzzle. You get six rooms, all but one room holds 2 people. The last room someone was murdered in so you have to solve which of the 'guests' did it based on the clues given. Each of the 30 cases you can put in different 'modes' which is basically difficulty. How many mistakes you can make or hints you can use. I pretty much just kept it in 'detective' mode, which means you got one chance before you restart. There are also some additional options like only getting one chance to place a person in a room. Overall I think the game is great. My only real complaint is that the answers to the puzzles don't change. So I don't feel motivated to replay cases really since I've already solved them.

Great game and great puzzles and very fun to play!

I don't like to give negative reviews to indie developers, so normally I lean positive when I'm lukewarm on a game, but this one is an exception. The gameplay itself is good, but charging this much for only thirty cases is highway robbery. The game tries to pad itself with a so-called story, which just consists of dialogue on a screen with no visuals and minimal context, filled with typos to boot. There are all sorts of different gameplay modes, but the cases are static, so the answers are always the same, and there's no random generation feature. For some reason, the dev seemed to focus far more on embellishments, including a short live-action movie at the end, than the actual content of the game. And then there's just the pretentiousness of it all. Charging this high a price, charging some 35% of that price for a handbook for only thirty cases, forcing the player through drawn-out animated splash screens of your logo on every launch... that's a lot of ego for a game with four total reviews after two years. The game seems to think it's way more than it is. And it also thinks you're stupid, given that you need to sit through a video tutorial of extremely basic gameplay. If you want to play a logic game without all the BS and with unlimited random generation play, check out Logic Town instead.