Lost Lies
Lost Lies is a true detective feature-length thriller movie game. Walk into the shoes of detective picking up a case of a missing officer:
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Discover a mystery of her disappearing and find the path to solve a case of series suicides.
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Immerse yourself into the thrilling story where your choices can lead to different endings.
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Analyze documents, find clues and interrogate suspects in your way to solve the case.
But be prepared, not everything is as it seems…
Read More: Best Investigation Mystery Games.
The Signifier Director’s Cut
I was in love with this game at the start, but it went downhill for me as I played. I’m just BARELY not recommending it, but if you find yourself intrigued by the premise and gameplay, it might still be worth playing.
In The Signifier, you play as Frederick Russell, a scientist who is using AI technology to recreate memories (objective and subjective) from people’s minds, as well as dreams they’ve had. You’re tasked with helping to solve a murder (or was it a suicide?) by researching the victim’s last memories.
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game
Full review (including score): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5IkAlvGVw4
Summarized review below!
The rundown:
Pros:
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First half of the story
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Really cool visual direction
Cons:
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Latter half of the story
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Game-breaking bugs.
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Numerous technical issues
We get quite a few of these psychological thriller walking sims each year. A lot of them bank on their visuals while slacking on the story. Rarely though, do we get a game like The Signifier, which seems to have both of those aspects on lock. At least, that was my initial impression.
– Real player with 9.6 hrs in game
Alfred Hitchcock - Vertigo
Ed Miller, a writer, came out unscathed from his car crash down into Brody Canyon, California.
Even though no one was found inside the car wreckage, Ed insists that he was traveling with his wife and daughter. Traumatized by the event, he begins to suffer from severe vertigo. As he starts therapy, he will try to uncover what really happened on that tragic day.
Prepare yourself for a most disturbing investigation inside the human mind: truth is sometimes worse than madness.
Features:
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An original story about obsession, manipulation and madness, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo.
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Live a powerful narrative experience paying tribute to the visual and storytelling techniques of the thriller genre.
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Investigate through the vision of three characters: everyone has a different story to tell.
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Explore several timelines to cross-check the events and separate reality from deceptive memories.
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Developed by the award-winning adventure game studio Pendulo Studios.
Read More: Best Investigation Cinematic Games.
Deluded
GENRE
An experimental fusion of narrative FMV (Full Motion Video), point and click investigation and quick time event (QTE) based interactive games.
DELUDED
The latest live action crime thriller game by New IDEA Games.
THE STORY
A “classic” hit ‘n run case or at least it seems like. Play the detective’s role and try to solve the case with your assistant, Susan. Pay attention to the details during your investigation, find the clues and evidence, complete the puzzle and be sure you are ready to face your demons and answer all the questions, since your life depends on it…
The Devil’s Luck
In what could have been another relaxing evening, Wesley faces a strange crisis that changes him forever. Experience horror like never before, in this nerve-wracking story, filled with unexpected turns.
Key features:
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Can be finished in one sitting of about 30 minutes.
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Contains jumpscares.
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Relaxing atmosphere.
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Decent graphics.
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Horror mechanics.
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Interesting puzzles.
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Uncover mysteries.
Nothing To Remember
First off, don’t look at the hours on record, I may have left the game open between streams. Overall a decent visual novelish game. The main story events were good, the relationships were mediocre and made me wish I could ban Dick’s number so I could skip that part of the story. There is a critical choice later in the game that isn’t worded correctly and should be fixed, they either meant to add “don’t” at the beginning of the sentence or were was meant to be “weren’t” which I assumed and made that my choice.
– Real player with 96.8 hrs in game
Plot is very well written and character development is exquisite. More of a visual novel with major choices. It took me about 20 hours for an ending.
– Real player with 40.1 hrs in game
Welcome To Lakewood
I broke your games boundaries simply by walking up the hill behind the bar. Perhaps put a fence there or rock to prevent people from doing so. Other than that I like this. It does scratch the detective itch.
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Worth 99 cents if you can handle walking at a snail’s pace and some janky mechanics. The jump scares that I’ve encountered so far have been hit or miss because sometimes they’ll happen behind a wall or not in the way that I’m facing. I’m currently stuck because either one of the mechanics is broken (I need to push a box out of the way but when I interact with it as prompted, nothing happens.) or perhaps I need to unlock something before I can make this piece of progress - I’m not sure because the map is incredibly vague and there’s no compass of any kind. The fact that you walk SO slow made me give up, hopefully just for now. The story seems good so far but the mechanics make it a bit unplayable. I do want to pick it up again but it’s almost a chore to navigate around this game. I’ll still recommend it though cause for all I know these issues could only be on my end and it’s 99 cents.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
A Hand With Many Fingers
So I was given a key for this game, to create some content. The result of which you can see here: Before you watch, to clarify the video contains SPOILERS however this text review does not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaO7fwtkQUQ
Firstly the concept of the game is great, I would love to see this adapted to a more conventional case-based system for murders, true crimes, etc. Maybe split into an episodic story etc.
The searching, retrieving boxes, reviewing evidence is interesting although a slightly tiresome mechanic. Thankfully the game isn’t too long, much longer and I would have resented the walking up and downstairs.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
I absolutely loved A Hand with Many Fingers.
In my college studies I work under a history professor as a research assistant, focusing on digging through FBI files from the mid 60’s / 70’s (specifically COINTELPRO related documents). Given this context, A Hand with Many Fingers scratches an itch I have only ever really been able to experience while doing actual archival research work. The game is a like a direct injection of the dopamine rush experienced when something finally clicks in your investigation. Leaving out the hours of scanning useless or redacted pages of documentation, this game plays like a highlight reel of those “Ah ha!” moments of coming across something juicy or finally making an important connection that can move your research forward. The use of a conspiracy cork board that you put together over time only goes to make the experience even more satisfying as things fall into place.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Conway: Disappearance at Dahlia View
It’s a fun and interesting detective game.
Pros:
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good voice actors
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interesting rendering style, I love the subtle outline effect.
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compelling and fresh gameplay. Every scene had something new and interesting.
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probably the best lockpick mechanic in a game
Cons:
- I did find myself arguing out loud with the protagonist when he’d make blatantly wrong and biased observations, but after finishing the game I think that was an intentional character flaw to propel the narrative. It’s just frustrating to feel trapped by bad decisions the character is making without my input.
– Real player with 20.0 hrs in game
The third entry in White Paper’s portfolio brings back wonderful Ether One memories, not only because it references its setting a great deal, but especially because it shares the same approach to building its central character. Conway is the same type of main character you played in Ether One: he’s stubborn and determined and frail, especially frail, so frail that watching him on screen is almost painful: he can’t climb stairs, he blunders about from hotspot to hotspot, bumping into things and knocking stuff over all around him, he himself gets knocked out a few times during the investigation and you almost expect he won’t be up again, but being frail and moving clumsily mean nothing when you’re that stubborn and determined and he’s just as set on solving the case as Thomas Fletcher was on sorting out his mind in Ether One.
– Real player with 17.5 hrs in game
Em-A-Li
I hate when there is no options for key bindings. Don’t like playing with arrow keys on pc. Both Em-A-Li games can be navigated by mouse, that’s good but you have to press enter key to enter doors or use items, which ruins it.There is a non stop static noise in bg from start which is annoying for me. The story is not that good and the voice narration lags behind the words narration so I end up reading faster and skip which ruins the fun.No options for narration format so no choice. Game is small and doesn’t eat up time. If i play it continuously it will finish within 35 mins i guess. Still not worth the time for me. Ended up watching youtube while playing lol.
– Real player with 2.2 hrs in game
Another of those games where the overall rating is probably neutral, but there’s no such option on Steam, so I’ll err on the positive side because I did enjoy my short time with it (my playtime is quite a bit longer than what you need, I started in a different computer and then I tried to be very thorough).
The game is almost a visual novel/walking simulator in terms of how limited interaction is. There’s a few hotspots along the way which you can interact for more flavour text which can be mixed, but the main narrative has a grand total of one meaningful “choice” in it, which really only skips you some small amount of content if you take the more “obvious” (at least if you are generally genre savvy) option. I saved at this supposed fork in the road and when I came back to see what happened and was relatively unimpressed with what was there.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game