Wolf Peak: The Case of Ruth Choi

I really wished I liked this game more because it definitely has potential. Unfortunately this game has many frustrating mechanics that turn what would've been an interesting mystery into a constant game of trial and error, only you don't get a second chance. First, the descriptions of two of the tests are very vague and it wasn't until I looked at a guide that I realized how to use them. I was surprised by how much I missed my first time because the game couldn't be bothered to tell me how to use one of the main features of the game. Even after getting it wrong multiple times, I thought the CSI girl would correct me, but instead she just talks about pointless things. Also, I really wish you could connect evidence to each other, like in Shadow of a Doubt. You can only move the string of yarn from a suspect to a piece of evidence, which is harder than you'd think because you have to click the string at exactly the right place and connect it to something on the opposite side of the board while your mouse sensitivity is through the roof. There are no options to move evidence around so you end up having a dozen strings stretching across the board, potentially blocking your view of something important. Once again, it makes it extremely hard to connect evidence when you have half a dozen strings going across a piece of paper. Overall, I liked the game, but I highly recommend you look at the guide on here to teach you about the mechanics of the game. It also does a good job of helping you narrow down the suspect without spoiling anything. I got the killer wrong twice and I probably wouldn't have figured it out without the guide talking me through it since there's no quick and easy way to sort through evidence and clues.

I can recommend this game... but barely. I likely wouldn't if there were more games in the investigation genre. The game's got an interesting mystery, and understanding what our six suspects did on the fateful day is fun. This is enough for me to recommend it. However, the game has three downsides. Aside from reading documents, the main mechanic is analyzing physical proofs. It's cool, but each proof can be analyzed in many ways, and you're only allowed three ways per proof, with some slightly out there decisions. This means you can just miss the incriminating proof, rendering your whole investigation somewhat pointless. There is an evidence board. It seems fun, until you realise you can't organize it, and the game organizes it randomly (just fills a random slot with each proof). This makes it very hard to understand. To the point I got a "bad" end the first time I played the game because I didn't realize documents placed under other larger documents were not linked to the main suspect. In general, it's also pretty clunky as a mechanic. I found the (true) end pretty unsatisfying.

Piecing together evidence and figuring out how to link it all to the suspects was a nice little exercise. There was a noticeable amount of typos littered throughout the dialogue. Also, some of how to analyze the testing was not very intuitive. Otherwise, it was an enjoyable experience.

Didn't really find it very satisfying to play tbh, neither way the ending. Have definitely played way better detective games Wasn't *truly* awful or anything, just.. sorta ehhh. So if it's cheap enough and you feel like it, it's a maybe

I did like this game a lot but I almost selected "no" on recommending it. Firstly I do love how the facts are presented to you, no hand-holding, just evidence and interviews. That's great! I also love the crazy wall (although I think you should be able to link evidence together and change string colours for your own thought process). My main problems are with the restrictions on evidence testing, I do think that it offers an interesting problem and makes you pay attention to the account of events in good detail. But after you convict the first person, you should be able to test infinitely imo. It's just a hassle to restart the whole game again if you want to see all the evidence you may have missed. For the most part this is intuitive but there are certainly weird moments were I was surprised that a random test worked and the others didn't. Finally, without spoilers, I think the correct conclusion is really weak in this game. Maybe I missed something that made it more obvious but there was no logical reason to assume it was one person over at least 2 others that it could have also easily been. Sure you can rule them out with assumptions, but you can do the same with the correct person too. There is no smoking gun or moment where it all unravels after you put the work in. It just feels cheap imo. I would definitely play another game like this, I would just hope the writing was better, there was less of the game hiding details from you until the very end and less typos (there are many and they don't affect clues, it just kinda breaks your brain reading them sometimes) Also why can I crouch?

Neat little well-made detective game!

A very open-ended investigation where you get what you give

A thoroughly engaging indie detective mystery. I'm not exactly a detective game connoisseur but I feel like the prevailing wisdom in this genre is to ease the player into the mystery by doling out information bit by bit until they have built a stable of clues they then need to use to finally solve the case or what have you. So it takes a lot of gumption to design your core gameplay loop around "Here is a mountain of evidence, documents, and interviews for a cold case collected over the course of 30 years. Figure it out. Good luck." It just feels like a 'real' ass detective experience from how little direction you're given at every turn. I'd wager that this isn't for everybody (especially with how much dry procedural reading there is) but I really enjoyed my time with it and wish the devs the best on their next project.

Hidden gem

A very strong detective game that lets you do the same sort of investigating as other great entries in the genre, like The Roottrees Are Dead. You are the investigator on the case of Ruth Choi's murder. You're popped into a room with all the collected evidence, suspect interviews, case notes, warrants, and anything else relevant to the case. You've got a strong list of suspects, now you just have to sift through all the evidence and figure out who killed Ruth Choi! There were a few things that bugged me about the game, like the lack of more specific audio settings. While you can turn off the clock sounds, I couldn't find a place to change the overall volume mixing, which was a bit annoying, but since the audio wasn't super essential for the gameplay, I didn't find it to be an insurmountable obstacle. [spoiler] Though, the voice acting that was just repetitions of short sounds or words got to be quite annoying; I do wish there was a choice to turn those off as well. [/spoiler] I also wish there was some sort of in-game option for taking notes. The ability to write stuff down or take notes about inconsistencies would've helped a lot with making sense of what was going on, and let the Corkboard feel a lot more authentic. I absolutely did love how in-depth the game felt, and how much it felt like almost an escape room mystery. And with so much evidence to sift through, you quickly started finding inconsistencies that you had to also untangle and make sense of. I loved how the game felt to play! I was completely intrigued, and as I started actually sitting down after reading the last of the evidence, I brought in someone else to listen as I explained the case and tried to make sense of the evidence. This was such a great mystery, and I really enjoyed my time with it. I'd definitely recommend it if you're looking for a similar vibe to other detective mystery-solving games!