The Temporal Invasion
This is a review of Cases 1-5 of this game, 6-10 have yet to be released. This is a pretty good game if you enjoy puzzling things out. Will definitely exercise your brain. There’s a variety of different things you will do to solve puzzles including but not limited to…
Googling
Reverse image searching
Deciphering morse code
Deciphering other kinds of code
Using your smart phone as a QR reader
Logical deduction
Scanning documents with UV light (in-game)
Manipulating photos' colors to find hidden messages (in-game)
– Real player with 36.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mystery Indie Games.
The Temporal Invasion is a mystery puzzle game with a great story and very interesting puzzles.
If this review is too long for you, I suggest you to only read the first paragraph about the game’s content and the final verdict at the end.
What is happening in the game:
You are contacted by a mysterious person called Dr. Quantum and before you know it, you get pulled into a series of events beyond initial expectations. The story takes place in an alternate reality and it introduces elements such as time travel or alternate universes and combines them with real world events, locations and people, providing a one-of-a-kind experience.
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game
Greenwood the Last Ritual
Starting as an investigation plot with mystic elements and magic the game takes an unpleasant
! supposedly devotional turn. The player ends with
! unknowingly helping a destructive god in his cruel apocalypse. As is insinuated in found scrolls and conversations, mankind has committed a severe sin in trying to avoid being slaughered instead of just letting it happen. This is, what the player is meant put “right”. The meager story is quite linear, I did not find any way to change this pitiable course of action.
– Real player with 23.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mystery Gore Games.
pros
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dark and creepy atmosphere
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intriguing horror story
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easy, enjoyable puzzles and quests
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big map with many different regions for exploration
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game is not short
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game is cheap
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graphics looks nice
cons
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pixel hunting
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bad and clunky Diablo type mouse controls
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repetetive and frequent paranormal attacks and quicktime-events halts gameplay. it’s getting tedious after a while.
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very long loading time when starting the game
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can’t manually save - only auto save
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frustrating final puzzle.
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Crowalt: Traces of the Lost Colony - Prologue
Beautiful, creative game. I had fun playing, I’ve been following the team for a while, I’m sure the game will improve.
Sounds are really professional, I would even buy some of them to listen all day long.
In my hands our main character would definitely get pneumonia.
Also we won’t get along with the eagle in the main menu of the game, when I try to pet his head, he is turning his head :( … maybe he is trying to tell me something… maybe we will see that in the next episode… I’m very excited.
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mystery Singleplayer Games.
Interesting enough, it has the potential to be a solid point-and-click adventure game if the story’s done proper. There are a few issues though, mainly the grammar. There are a good number of grammatical errors. Misspellings, (not mentioning the pirates), odd spacing between letters, even a line of dialogue where an S is on the wrong word where it was meant to be at the end of the previous word.
I’m not trying to sound like a grammar freak, it’s just since text is the main way the game communicates with the player, it’s gotta be solid for it to stick. It honestly feels like they ran the text through Google Translate, or maybe a less experienced translator working on the English text?
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
RE:Solver
Step into the role as an investigator under the RE:Solver Agency, a new investigation unit designed to take a fresh look at complicated cases. With your skills and newly granted overreaching privileges, you can access numerous confidential records on essentially anyone. Browse medical records, phone logs, browser histories, and social media to learn everything there is to learn about your suspects.
Background
The game takes place within a fictitious world, quite similar to ours, but with a few key differences. As crime rates are on the rise, a private agency called RE:Solver has sprung up, giving new power in the field of digital forensics. They aid law enforcement around the world by diving in and dissecting the case inch by inch, bringing a fresh set of eyes and vital information to the people in the field.
Nothing will stop a member of RE:Solver to get to the truth. Not rules, not privacy concerns, not ethics.
Gameplay
Use the tools given and dig into every corner of the lives of the suspect. Collect phone records, credit card transcripts, daily habits, and more through the Emerald Network. Browse the game-internal internet for missing people, public records, social media, and more.
Once you have a strong case, you may file them and hope you put the right person behind bars.
Production
This game is based on a series of investigation tabletop roleplaying one-shots written and conducted by Nils Munch during the Covid-19 lockdown. A great thank you to all the players and playtesters taking place in building and polishing up this game.
Creative liberty
While the world seems much like ours, all suspects and the criminal cases you are solving are a complete work of fiction, and any resemblance to any real individuals, living or dead, are purely coincidental. All characters portrayed are generated electronically, and no real people are displayed inside the 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
Small Town Robot
fun little game. It was a joy to see I picked the correct person lol. Can’t wait to see more:)
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
Fun short game. The dialog is funny and adds to the feel of the game. You can easily spend a few hours in this game and enjoy some relaxed game play.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
Building 847
A short but thoroughly enjoyable indie storytelling experience!
I wasn’t sure I’d get through it in one sitting, but I found the ambiance very compelling and surprisingly tasteful in all its lighting and sound effects, so I couldn’t stop until the end. Overall, the writing does a great job at introducing what ended up being a rather intriguing story, so it was easy to follow along even without any voice acting.
Very promising. Looking forward for future titles from these devs!
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game
The ambience of this game is through the roof!
Sound quality is good, it really sells you the mystery and the thriller inducing chills imo.
Now i will be describing some of the good and some of the problems and i don’t want to spoil things so play the game 1st then read the next part.
! Some pros:
! * I already told this but the ambience this game delivers is really good from the sound quality and overall gloomy and dark atmosphere really gives this game a boost.* I love detective/mystery games and if there’s a slight thriller/horror vibe to it i love it even more (e.g of games i love detective wise (sam and max, monkey island, the sinking city, wolf among us, the long reach, the last door series, disco elisium etc)).
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
GRUNND
GRUNND is a 100% handcrafted, fully voiced adventure game about travelling to a seemingly ordinary place right next to you that slowly introduces itself as surreal and twisted world and has it’s own invisible gods, agendas, and order. You - tired after a dull day at your 9to5 job - fall asleep at the train on the way home. Next thing you do is jump out of that train into unknown station, and now need to plan your way back home. Surely enough, it’s not so easy?
People you meet are slightly weird, and in the air there’s an ethereal, omnipotent power floating just beyond your senses…
A bit of a different take on the point-and-click genre, with platformer-style built locations, fast travel, and multiple choice events introduced early on. This is not a puzzle heavy adventure and all puzzles are made without any nonsense or moon-logic. There is a rich story background for you to unravel; that is not only about you and the world - the people around you have their own thing and they are not here to help you.
The world is inspired by the works of Franz Kafka and David Lynch, and the setting has those taste droplets of Southern Gothic. This is not only the Protagonist’s journey - it’s yours as well.
Please enjoy the Demo, and let us know about your experience!
Lamplight City
Steampunky Island
Systemising detective work in games is difficult to do well. That’s why my interest was naturally piqued when hearing of City’s absence of a failure state. I’ve enjoyed various other games experimenting with text entry and linking/contradicting evidence to allow the player to truly embody the role, so the ability to ‘fail’ was suggestive of a promising amount of player agency. Playing Lamplight City remains a joyous experience, but it isn’t so much in its systems that it entertains, but its presentation, stories and characters. As a modern take on the 90s point and click it truly thrives.
– Real player with 22.6 hrs in game
sniff sniff I smell a murder.
I could always go for a great mystery story. Whether it’s the core of the story or just one part of it, like trying to find out how one guy is cheating and in turn, how the main character will try to outsmart them. Then there’s a choice between how interactive the story is with you. Other than what kind of mystery you’ll be facing, there’s also different levels of interactivity. Some aims to let the audience tag along and give you a chance to try and solve it alongside the main character; while some actually keeps their audience in the dark till the end to focus on being fun (personally, I take a liking to both). With games, you can’t exactly be kept in the dark and you get the added bonus of being in the middle of it. In Lamplight City’s case, you take the role of a detective, ready to solve the various cases that is brought to your attention.
– Real player with 18.7 hrs in game
Bloody Chronicles - New Cycle of Death Visual Novel
A promising VN at its beginning that went south due to developer’s shift on other games:
That’s the title that I’m giving this review, while it may seem bad, I’m going to talk about the positive aspects that initially drawn me to like this game.
The start of the game opens up to a
! horrific accident that causes the protagonist of this game to lose their parents, already within the first few minutes, we have some backstory about the main character that we play as. As we progress through the game, we become acquainted with a few other characters, Suzumi, Kaoru, Aki, Akito, and a few others that are quite important to the story, but the enlisted ones are part of the detective team that we work at.
– Real player with 64.9 hrs in game
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A little update of my review since I did a second playthrough of the game with the update 1.3.1
The improvements brought by the v 1.3.1
The UI : it’s way much better, it’s clean and well design, now my complain about the backlog is no longer relevant
Side story : This is a new feature and it is a nice one, my only complain is when you finish a side story it bring you back to the main menu wich (for me) break the immersion i would have prefered it’s bring you back just where you where in the story
– Real player with 63.0 hrs in game