Lucifer Within Us
Normally I operate a £1/hr to determine if a game is worth playing, and I’ll admit that I was worried about “Lucifer Within Us” when many were seeing short play times in the demo. However, I had enjoyed the demo so much that I gave it a chance knowing that it was very doubtful the game would be very long.
Having completely finished the game with all achievements, I feel the game was worth it.
The story is very well written and pulls you in with the voice acting adding that touch of atmosphere to convey the character emotions perfectly, particularly during confessions. My personal favourite was the second investigation where, despite having worked out what was going on, I was still shocked by the outcome and confession. The little touches with the voice acting delivery and graphic choices were key to creating that atmosphere. Well done!
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Detective Investigation Games.
I’ll start with the good things. This game has an interesting style and setting. The color pallet doesn’t hurt the eye and the graphics are passable if you don’t scroll too close. A strange mix of high-tech and theology would make an interesting setting for a bigger game. The mysteries themselves are pretty good and may take some time to solve on the first playthrough.
But the problem is, you will only play it once. Now, to the bad stuff.
1. The game doesn’t allow you to lose. You can’t accuse the wrong person, you can’t frustrate the suspects to the point of angry unresponsiveness. In fact, you are encouraged to do so, based on achievements. The absence of failure allows you to just play dumb and spam every possible combination of clues and statements until it clicks, making the whole detective part meaningless. Even when performing the exorcism, you are safe. Wrong daemon name? Well, just try another one!
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Harmless Demons
1 creature, bug where the mushroom house doesn’t go away when deconstructed (giving infinite research). I thought there would be more to it.
– Real player with 7.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Detective Puzzle Games.
Really cool!! These creatures are super interesting and they make you play with curiosity.
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Lost and Hound
Epic Games MegaGrant recipient and lauded for its innovation in gameplay and blind accessibility, Lost and Hound is a game like no other that follows the extraordinary Corgi, Biscuit. In Lost and Hound, your empowered canine senses make you a superhero. Heightened hearing and sense of smell will guide your paws as you work towards your goals, saving lives and averting tragedies.
As Biscuit your hearing will allow you to access information that’s inaccessible to humans. You will be able to hear through walls and use the information your audio senses gather to help track people and match up items such as those left at a crime scene with their owners.
Using your superior sense of smell you’ll be able to scent track your way to becoming a dog mercenary. Scent in Lost and Hound is represented by a low, pleasant humming sound. Similar to making your way through a maze where the way out would be invisible under normal circumstances, subtle sound or scent cues will guide you to your query.
As Biscuit you’ll travel around the world taking on many of the roles of real-world working dogs. From working in a hospital to assist with seizure detection and detecting cancer to herding sheep in the rough, Australian outback. Your work as a K9 tracker will take you to Japan, the Swiss Alps, the American wilderness, and many other locales. In between each mission, you’ll have the option to complete mini levels to earn extra money and travel to more exotic locations.
Features:
-
Travel around the world working as the strong-willed Corgi Biscuit.
-
Solve crimes, track down missing people, and assist those in need.
-
Use your superior hearing to listen for accelerated heartbeats, hear through walls, and more to piece together clues.
-
Follow subtle scent clues with your heightened sense of smell represented by sound queues to track leads.
-
Take on the roles of real-world working dogs; assist with seizure detection, be an emotional support for zoo animals, and more.
-
Complete mini levels to earn extra money to fund your K9 travels.
-
Meet new animal friends throughout your travels.
-
Fully blind-accessible.
Read More: Best Detective Indie Games.
The USB Stick Found in the Grass
Really immersive game. I love it so far. I played it for several hours this evening and mostly just read the diary, which was a great story. Most games that have a diary, the diary is pretty bland but this was intriguing and I spent the whole time enjoying the story while also trying to anticipate what might be a clue or not.
I’m stuck at a part, but still working at it. The discord channel is very helpful https://discord.gg/TnWCnkEK
– Real player with 23.8 hrs in game
Cześć Gucio. Pisze na czacie ale nie widzisz :( nick afkret. A gra bardzo przyjemna chociaż po otwarciu wszystkich 3 plików nie czuje żeby przeszedł grę.
– Real player with 18.5 hrs in game
Alt-Frequencies
I’d give it 10 of 10 - but it deals with some difficult topics, people disappear, are shot without any remorse by police - pretty tough on the youngest generation of players. Excellent spelling and voice quality.
Your’re forced to think. The conspiracy theories by goverment officials denying everything? Young adults can understand the game with some adult guidance.
The game is like an audiobook; with 6 chapters. It’s made in a similar way to visual novels; permitting one of two paths, with pretty good voice actors and music. The achievements 23 vary in difficulty, and yes, can be pretty frustrating at times, simply because you’re forced to actually think a little.
– Real player with 7.0 hrs in game
2021 Update: I just wanted to say that after gaining a job in retail and being forced to listen to a radio I think about this game almost every day, which is no small feat for a tiny french indie game. I didn’t understand not only how realistic this game is, but just how bone chilling listening to the radio can be in the world of today. The VA do a brilliant job at capturing the voices on every station. If you’re a nightshift worker or someone who has to listen to the radio a lot. Give this game a shot. It’s got fantasy elements and it’s made me more introspective about my own time spent listening to the radio at work.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Cat’s Menace
This game was a lot of fun to play in front of my stream audience, however playing it by myself without friends would have been a rather miserable experience, I’m afraid. The game has no save or checkpoint system, so when you have a Game Over, you have to start the entire game over from the beginning. The game operates by having you assign a cat to a task and making choices to decide whether the cats succeed or fail in the mission. The choices have no logic behind them, so it’s a coin flip in deciding if you lose the cat you assigned or not. Also, it doesn’t seem to matter which cats you assign to the mission. They’re essentially just very cute life counters.
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
So, I’m going to be honest and say, I LOVE CATS…
Now, when I then looked at the “Similar to games you’ve played: The Witcher 3 and Portal 2” I was ready for this game to BLOW. MY. MIND.
Spoiler alert: It did not…
The other reviews are spot on:
-
English translation is bad, even to the point where some things doesn’t make sense
-
It’s game over pretty easily and you have no idea what would be the right answer to the events you’re prompted with
-
When you get a game over, you start over from the beginning - so it becomes a pattern of blindly guessing what’s right and having to remember every right answer to get further in the game. Which gets boring and annoying very fast.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
Her Story
My rating: 8+/10
Based on: one thorough 100% investigation
TL;DR: An interactive police procedural movie with purposely outdated mechanics, brilliantly written and well-acted, a slow burn and a time sink that offers an engaging story to be discovered bit by bit, an immersive, nostalgic experience of the times gone by, truly worthy of the awards it’s received.
Pros:
(+) a slow-paced, but enthralling open-ended story as told by Hannah Smith whose husband went missing, served up in a series of interviews with this unreliable narrator conducted by police detectives
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
Her Story is a little bit of an oddity. It’s a FMV game where the player has access to a police database and needs to find out what happened.
It’s actually rather good. The whole game is limited to an old-style interface where you’re able to type in words and search for records. I’ve seen a few games that try to emulate old OSes and they lack a feeling of being a working interface. Her Story feels like a proper old computer you’re viewing. Though I immediately turned off the glare filter, it has a great old charm to the aesthetics with it on..
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game
SIMULACRA 2
Ease into your chair and prepare yourself for this continuation of the SIMULACRA universe. In this iteration, you will have new advanced tools and a mosaic of widely branching narratives spread across 2 characters that are continually altered by your choices. You will have the choice of playing as a junior detective or a reporter who is recruited by a special department at police headquarters. With only one piece of evidence, you must find the truth of how a young woman & interweb influencer ends up dead on a case that is already closed. Lives and livelihoods are on the line, there is no room for mistakes.
– Real player with 11.0 hrs in game
Let me be clear, I really liked the first game. I think it did most things right and while I wasn’t a fan of the jumpscares and it definitely looked like an indie game production wise.
This game is a perfect example of how sometimes, less is more.
Let me start with my biggest pet peeve of this game, and that’s the extreme slowness of it all. The entire plot is not that long, I actually think it might be around the same length as the first game, but it is padded out by how extremely slow it all is. Be it conversations or the extreme amount of stuff you need to click through and scan gets annoying on the second playthrough, if not first.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
Detective March Forward - The Missing Will
The game is a bit glitchy and if you get stuck you are pretty much screwed because there are no hints and no one really responds to the discussion board. With that being said it is very challenging and worth giving a chance.
– Real player with 20.5 hrs in game
Fun point and click game. I am not deriding the length of the game when I state I wish it would have lasted a bit longer. Recommended.
– Real player with 7.6 hrs in game
Unmemory
Unusual game - reminiscent of the old text-based games we used to play. A little frustrating at times, trying to work out how to move forward. Worthwhile if you like adventure games and fancy something with a different interface.
– Real player with 10.2 hrs in game
Fun puzzle game with a nice multisensory story telling emphasis. I have to say though that the process of garnering the “materials” for the puzzle can be somewhat frustrating; for example the KLF puzzle requires something that is fairly obscure to find just to get started. The puzzles themselves, once you have all the materials needed, are alright at straightforward difficulty (hints are really optional), although I am particularly impressed by the last puzzle, the Dancers Numbers, the solution of which (the only I looked up online) really blew my mind for the cleverness. (as aside, I was too taken up with the thought that the dancers might be instructing a sequence about how the button ought to be pressed; which is quite tempting, but this is not nearly as clever as the official solution). Overall it is a great game
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game