To Each of Their Hearts
Read More: Best Detective Dark Humor Games.
Noir Punk
Full play through here if you get stuck or just want to see the game played:
Review:
Great game I love the noir genre so the aesthetic of this game is already a win for me it’s done pretty well and has some nice humor in it. My two main complaints is one I couldn’t find a way to make it full screen or any options for that matter and the sound puzzle this is a personal one for me because I HATE SOUND PUZZLES, unless they’re blatantly obvious I’m insanely garbage at them so full disclosure I had to cheat the one in this game which I show how to do in the video. Overall though this is a great free to play with a really nice story I loved the break in puzzles with the action scenes as well that was a super nice touch.
– Real player with 3.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Detective Side Scroller Games.
A fun half-an-hour experience
Loved the style and attention to details
Action sequences are a bit tough to control but there’s no tight platforming or heated situations to make it a problem
The programming is a bit rough but for a jam game it is a cool experience!
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
The Secret of Retropolis
Disclaimer: I was given a copy for free as I was involved in the beta testing for the Steam version.
The game was successfully enjoyed with an Oculus Quest 2 headset and Airlink.
The Secret of Retropolis is a classic point & click adventure game in VR that puts you in the pants of a robot detective that is hired by a famous movie star to retrieve a stolen necklace. The story will evolve in unpredicted ways in the classic style of a film noir.
Let’s get the elephant out of the room, it’s a short experience and it will not require more than 1h30 for a first playthrough.
– Real player with 4.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Detective Mystery Games.
Don’t call it outdated – it’s retro! Point and click adventures are back in the charming, tongue-in-cheek film noir “The Secret of Retropolis.”
The Good:
1. Art/Style – Put simply, Retropolis is a bundle of cel-shaded panache that feels like someone took all the best parts of the artistic styles of Metropolis, Futurama, and the classic LucasArts SCUMM engine point and clicks, brought to life in VR. The “film within a film” cutscenes are a particular standout in terms of presentation.
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game
Detective Hank and the Golden Sneeze
A VN mystery solving game with four routes in the main game and 3 in the bonus. I liked the artwork mainly for its simplicity and minimal nature. This is easily a game to play when you want to play a quick game but don’t want to invest too much time in it.
My playthrough is longer since I had to take breaks in between my office work. The story is very simple and looking for clues amidst the conversation becomes easier on your second play through. However, by the time I was on route 3, it did start to become a little too repetitive - thankfully, they have the option to skip the dialogues until the next choice. Be warned though, you may potentially miss out on any different dialogues.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
This is a wonderfull visual detective novel suitable for younger gamers. The mysteries involve simple things from finding out who stole a cookie to who stole the Golden Sneeze from the museum.
Light hearted and funny mysteries that can be played through in a single evening.
I had a lot of fun playing this with my nephew and watching him solve the mysteries. Made babysitting the kid really enjoyable.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Bohemian Killing
During my playthrough I think this game is quite promising and is unfair in dumbing the product down based on some rough edges. I reminisce on Depths of Fear :: Knossos and how a really good indie game got really, really harsh criticism just for trying to be different and proposing something new. The game had quite a few updates, but still needs polish IMHO.
This is just one of those games like Facade from 2005 or like The Path that proposes something very different and questions traditional approach to gameplay and mechanics. It offers a different theme to crime and detective stories inversing things making the trial at court the ultimate battle, not just a sidekick.
– Real player with 12.6 hrs in game
Brief
This game is amazing. I loved all of it. I would recommend this game at it’s price or on sale definitely as a must-get if you enjoy these styles of games. Even 100%ed the achievements so I could see every ending and know all the details. There are some issues with this game though that I have. Though the bugs I did run into were mostly minor even though they could easily be game breaking. I will keep information about very specific instances minimal due to spoilers.
Pros
– Real player with 9.2 hrs in game
Dark Hope: A Puzzle Adventure
This is a solid first-person adventure game where the highlight is the puzzles.
The puzzles are relatively hard in that the clues to solve the puzzles require careful observation and note taking. For the most part, I thought the clues, whether presented in explicit notes, or from your own theories of how things work based on experimentation, were quite adequate. Sometimes the clues may be slightly incomplete (I believe by intention, unless I missed a clue) requiring a very small amount, like maybe 5 or 6 attempts of trial and error to get the final solution. Overall I was very satisfied by the puzzles in this game.
– Real player with 19.1 hrs in game
Ive got 14 hours invested in this puzzle game. The vast majority of that has been spent wondering around scratching my head trying to figure out some kind of logic to progress. It’s REALLY REALLY tough so do not expect quick progress. Having had to revert to clues from this steam discussion page and on Discord where the dev has to help people progress with hints, for me I need a few more in-game prompts to allow me to progress without feeling I am unable to continue without external assistance. I dont have a brain the size of a planet. If you are looking for a game that enables progressively harder quick puzzles that start off easy and get tougher but that you kindof learn the concepts, then this game is not for you. If you want a game that allows you to just sit there pondering life feeling your brain twist in your scull and have plenty of time on your hands with little to show for it, then give it a go. Its obvious the dev is a very clever egg head and thought deeply about the puzzle concepts to be not simply spoon fed. Its a deep thinkers game and one that I wish I was up to completing with a sense of satisfaction to be able to recommend it, but I have given up part way through with completing it as I feel I am needing too much external forum help to be able to make it seem like it was ME that completed it.
– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game
Riddlord: The Consequence
Yes, it’s interesting, but also exasperating in many ways. Bunch of woo-woo puzzles based on mystic concepts like I-ching trigrams, but no logic to them whatsoever. Somehow the mysticism of the puzzles relates to the deeds of the four fictional-real serial murderers whose lives and careers this game tries to connect in a fictional plot. Premise possibly of interest, but what the actual puzzles and clunky execution of same have to do with the premise is hardly convincing. Some puzzles were relatively straightforward; others like the I-ching trigrams were totally arbitrary as far as this player could tell. I would recommend with reservations.
– Real player with 28.4 hrs in game
if you like the room series, pick this up, it’s very similar, but longer and a lot more difficult, and unlike the room games, it’s priced fairly in euros and isn’t insanely overpriced like certain clones ported lazily from mobile. it was a bit buggy on release, nothing that going back to the main menu couldn’t fix, but now you can take screenshots without it messing up the inventory.
– Real player with 10.9 hrs in game
The Agency: Chapter 1
A lovely visual novel, kinetic - in the sense that you won’t be required to make fundamental decisions in the story, but rather you’ll be dragged into a strange and particular kind of romance.
The whole setting is steampunk, and I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with steampunk in general. But here, well, everything works greatly. And the soundtrack is simple, piano-driven (with many strings parts), but really awesome and soothing.
You’ll have at your disposal many setting options for what concerns graphics, sound effects, text speed and so on.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
“The Agency: Chapter 1” is the first installment in what probably will be an episodic game series (like how TellTale games do it e.g. Game of Thrones by TellTale Games, The Walking Dead by TellTale Games etc.) Unlike TellTale Games your decisions don’t bear any weight towards the ending and storyline. The decisions are more “aesthetic” than anything else and are more a means to get more information and immerse oneself better in the world of this game. This is what they call a “kinetic novel” where the story is linear. There is gameplay though, in the form of an image puzzle game. The story revolves around a young man named Jack Beckwith, who joins a detective agency in the capital of the fictional nation he lives in.
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
I love the AA Franchise, and this port is well done and nice to be played on chill moments. Would have liked more languages (like Italian), but the English localization is very well done and immersive. Wish there will be other ports, and am looking for some new games! Please Capcom 3
– Real player with 160.8 hrs in game
Couldn’t recommend this more if I tried, I went through these two games more quickly than Barok van Zieks could slam his leg on the table.
Great setting, very memorable characters and soundtrack, and a lot of new gameplay elements that were so much fun to go through.
The two games feel very well connected and bring up very interesting points about the judicial system in its setting, as well as cultural aspects.
I’d also like to praise the writing and the pacing of the story and character development (and there is a lot of development, trust me), the story combines a good mixture of comic relief and more serious and intense moments, much like what we were already used to in previous Ace Attorney games.
– Real player with 111.5 hrs in game
Adventures of Bertram Fiddle 2: A Bleaker Predicklement
Oh dear. An incomplete, buggy mess.
I enjoyed the first episode. It was a glorious dig at Victorian Explorer cliches, complete with comically large moustaches, photomographs, stuffed animals and endless pomposity.
This one though….well, the story is as enjoyable, but it has major MAJOR problems. There are several sections in the game where if you don’t perform a sequence of events in the exact correct order, an item can vanish from the game leading to an unwinnable situation. Pathfinding is broken, with characters walking through each other yet unable to cross an empty space. Animation is glitchy and buggy, with characters miming actions and the end result taking place some seconds later (like tea drinking), sometimes they’ll jump around the screen or vanish entirely (the lady with the dog did this to me). Sound is glitchy, with the volume very unbalanced and lines of dialogue often being clipped before the end. Sometimes there are subtitles but no voice acting. Sometimes there is voice acting but no subtitles. Quite often the character will speak but the animation doesn’t play of them speaking, making it look like a voiceover. Large chunks of the game have no animation at all, appearing like a very cheap flash animation from 20 years ago, with characters snapping from “start” to “end” with nothing in between.
– Real player with 50.3 hrs in game
–On a repeated playthrough with the most recent patch, there are lots of ways for the game to crash or have progress halting bugs. It was working better before the patch to correct Steam achievements. I would recommend delaying playing until these issues are worked out with a patch. Overall, I still loved where the game was going, just the bugs are serious at the moment.—
Bertram and his Peruvian cyclops manservant, Gavin, are back to catch the nefarious Geoff the Murderer in the second installment of the Bertram Fiddle Adventuring series. The game is made with lots of love and it shows. It’s full of British comedy, wacky characters, and puns, oh the puns!
– Real player with 29.3 hrs in game