Wolf Peak: The Case of Ruth Choi

Pretty darn fun! I expect it'll be one of those less than 5 hours sorts of games, but its cheap enough even full price and the mystery is a delight so if you're a fan of the genre it's a great choice.

Very detailed game with no hand holding which I enjoyed. The mystery was engaging and the caseboard, whilst not without its flaws, is a simple and decently executed idea. More detail regarding the lab processes would have been nice so perhaps one could have made better decisions with the 3 available, some other quality of life features would have been welcome too. I do personally wish the solution was as complicated as the journey.. on a personal note I felt it was a little easy work out the perp, but I admit I'm probably the minority on that judging by some comments I've seen so take with a pinch of salt. All in all, recommended for those that enjoy in depth investigation games and don't mind or actively enjoying reading alot of text (which thankfully I do). Would look forward to any future instalments.

This game is very cleverly done because it could have been any one of the suspects, this is no clear-cut answer as to who done it detective story. This makes it a joy to go hunting for the clues and piece together just what happened in the case. It is so easy to spend hours playing this game without realising how much time has gone by and more the fun for that. The gameplay is straight forward, simple to understand but still giving you the freedom to go whatever direction you wish to go in examining the evidence. If you want to go straight to examining the physical evidence rather than the documents, then you are free to do so. The detective style is entirely the player's choice. This is a well-crafted game that makes you think while you unravel the threads and follow them to wherever they will end up.

I would play through as many games as you guys put out! Stellar experience

I initially wrote a pretty harsh review because I thought the ending left a lot to be desired, but I’ve grown as a person in the past hour and I’m changing my review to recommend. Dear Devs, I see that at least one of you is in the UK and you’ve used UK spelling (somewhat) in the game, but the game is set in Montana 😭. You did an incredible job writing the Montana detectives being sleazy incompetent small town united states detectives (how????). Really, all the characters were well-written. I genuinely felt like I was playing through a season of Serial (before it got terrible). I think you guys did so much work obfuscating who the “true” killer is you actually created multiple serious criminals and accomplices, which would’ve been really fun if not for the narrow focus on who pulled the trigger. The game would’ve been much better served with an ending where you actually got to choose who you feel is culpable and to what degree, without the [spoiler] serial killer [/spoiler] copout, because that just makes it seem like you boxed yourself in and needed a cheap escape. It was genuinely the worst written and least well thought out part of the game. It sounds like this wasn’t a commercial success, but I hope you guys try again. You’re very talented writers (up until your setup of the true killer 😂) and that overcomes a lot of jank mechanics in my book.

full disclosure, i first convicted the supposed killer using my entire own information (my hand hurts from writing). After I found out i was wrong, I looked over my evidence again for an hour and convicted another person. That was also wrong. Then I used a walkthrough to get me to the actual culprit. **TL;DR game good, buy it for a fantastic detective experience.** If you want to read why I think the actual solution is not a great one, read on. The solution makes sense if you can get over that mental stretch, but I have significant problems with said stretch. Otherwise, you should buy the game and play it, because it's quite lovely. I too liked the game, but I think the actual solution kinda takes a leap in logic. **NO SPOILERS** i convicted someone who i completely thought to be the actual killer, and once i realized i was wrong, i went through other people's explanations of why. And I actually completely understand why as well, because there were some inconsistencies that popped up once I was on the warpath to convict this one person. So fair enough. But no matter how I thought about it, the actual killer is very off to me. Without spoiling who, it's not super likely that they were able to do what they did without accomplice(s), because (imo) them getting away with the kill entirely hinges on one or more people, (all of) who (once again, imo) have been established to not like Ruth but not to the point of "i want her to die and her killer to get away". As those person(s) were seeing what the killer was doing, it would be BLATANTLY OBVIOUS to them that the killer was guilty. I didn't like that part at all, because I could've sworn this was a Scream-style situation. This is not spoilers: you cannot convict more than one person. And the accomplice(s) set up AND turned a blind eye to the kill well enough to the point that you would be well within your rights to throw the book at them. Also, considering the accomplice(s) and the killer, their testimonies would be so untrustworthy that it makes everything they say go up in the air, including where they were and what their status was like and so on and so forth. (MOSTLY OPINION) You are also expected to use the profile created for the solution. I did not like that. Profiling has been LONG established to be bunk because it creates a "likely" psychological profile of whoever the kill is based on pretty much whatever the profiler feels like. Likely, as in 51% correct. Even recently, the FBI's profiling method has only worked 56% of the time (2019). (Actual prosecutors wouldn't dare to rely on profiles in court btw, the defense just has to bring up an expert witness psychologist of their own who testifies the entire practice is bunk and that line of argument gets thrown out the window) Considering the game's recent release, I completely disregarded the profile because I assumed the devs would be full cognizant of that, but all indications point to them having the player rely on it to confirm your answer. :/ (MOSTLY OPINION) I'm also not a huge fan of the logic surrounding the guns and bullets. That piece of the puzzle relies on you realizing that "hey something is wrong with a piece of evidence in front of me", but a descriptor of that piece of evidence makes it entirely possible that it's just as likely because of when YOU (the investigator) examine the case. You are not investigating this case immediately or even soon after the case: you are examining it YEARS after. Those are my major problems with the solution. The rest are nitpicks that just kinda snowballed, as follows below: How was John/Jane Doe's fingerprints on the wallet? more specifically, why? John/Jane Doe's testimony describes the killer in a certain way and according to the top walkthrough on Steam you are supposed to rely on that as more evidence. I can call my sister a homicidal maniac who likes eating chicken raw and that would be as reliable as what John/Jane Doe called the killer here. All of the suspects are familiar with guns and the woods, so those were kinda pointless. TBH, I just completely threw out all of what the detectives said about the suspects' motives because look, the murderer was motivated because he/she/they wanted to be a clown when they wanted to grow up but Ruth called them an idiot. I too as an unqualified professional can speculate based on circumstantial evidence about the motives of criminals. I am entirely unsure if the devs wanted me to rely on those or not. **ONCE AGAIN**: I like this game. I recommend with a hearty thumbs up. Just wanted to note some problems I had with the actual solution, but I can see why it's the solution if your mind works differently. Buy this game, fully recommend.

I always want to like a hardcore detective game but this has a few different issues that stop it from being a thumbs up from me. First off: If you're going to have this much text in your game, you really, really need to check for typos. Finding several in the first few minutes put a damper on everything to come. More irritatingly, the game also arbitrarily locks you out of some clues with a system that stops you from fully investigating all pieces of physical evidence. Tied with the fact that it automatically saves, and you only have one save file, and there's a needless impediment to getting a full picture of the mystery, just because you couldn't guess that there was, say, gun-based evidence on an object you weren't expecting. This single choice is the biggest reason the game left me with a negative impression. Beyond this, the mystery itself is fine, although there's at least one point of its solution that actively annoyed me by having no real explanation to support it. The game has absolutely no way to confirm any guesses outside of sitting through a success/failure screen and then the unskippable credits, which compounded the irritation. A very frustrating game, at least in part because I really wanted to like it.

Honestly, if you love "the casual criminalist","crying over coffee","forensic files" ALL the true crime stuff! You will love this game! You are given a incredibly detailed cold case to solve. Im 4 hours in and cant pull myself away from it.

A heads up to maybe skip this one if you don't like reading. I saw this game recommended on a message board looking for games similar to Obra Dinn and The Roottrees, and it did scratch that itch for me. One of the things that stood out to me was when they said it isn't easy and there is no hand holding. This is very true, there is limited to no hand holding other than basic instructions. I enjoyed the challenge of actually working it out for myself, and I love that they don't tell you who the killer is until you get it right. Even if I did (not to brag) get it on my first try (and yes, I 100% know I got it right, iykyk) to do that actually feels like a real personal achievement with this game, because I had to work for it. Highly recommend if you enjoy a real deep dive into information, facts and evidence with nothing to 'lead' you directly to the answers. 10/10 for real detective feel.

Took me a whileee to get the right person but I loveee this game!!! Need more games like this as soon as possible :P