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May Mystery Game Madness: Tangle Tower Review

 Celebrating All Things Mysterious, Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
May 092022
 

Remember Detective Grimoire?

It’s been quite a few years since we discussed Detective Grimoire, which I found to be a charming and funny adventure game with an entertaining story.

At the time, I mentioned a sequel was planned. Well, that sequel came out in 2019: Tangle Tower.

Since it doesn’t use the Detective Grimoire name and wasn’t mentioned through Detective Grimoire channels at first, I stumbled across Tangle Tower by accident a couple years ago. (And from what I’ve seen, there are still Detective Grimoire fans who are surprised to learn the sequel exists, and Tangle Tower fans who are surprised to learn there was a first game.)

Now, as part of our mystery celebration, I finally played it.

Tangle Tower follows Detective Grimoire and Sally, who is now his assistant, on an investigation at a mysterious place called Tangle Tower, where a woman has been murdered under strange circumstances.

It’s a simple point-and-click adventure game where you’ll gather clues and solve puzzles by interacting with items in each scene. The puzzles felt a little trickier this time around, and everything in general feels like a step up from the previous game.

You’ll meet several characters in the course of the investigation, and talking to them is another way of gathering clues. You ask each character the same few questions – about themselves, where they were on the day of the murder, and their official statement about the murder – but you also can ask everyone about every other character and every item you find, with unique dialogue for each.

That’s a lot of dialogue, and like in Detective Grimoire, it’s funny. Tangle Tower has a lot of great lines that made me laugh, especially from Grimoire’s observations.

Each character also has a secret they’re hiding, which you can uncover once you’ve found enough clues related to it. And of course, there are times when you need to draw a conclusion about the case by filling in the blanks with key phrases.

Taking me around 5 hours to finish, Tangle Tower is about twice the length of its predecessor. I thoroughly enjoyed it for most of that time, too. However, the ending feels a bit rushed and includes some points that aren’t well-explained, and then it ends with what I assume is a sequel hook. Apparently a sequel is in development but won’t be called Tangle Tower 2, so here’s hoping the connection is marketed more clearly this time.

Anyway, Tangle Tower is a great choice if you loved Detective Grimoire or want a funny, intriguing mystery game, even if the ending leaves a bit to be desired.

May Mystery Game Madness: Return to Shironagasu Island Review

 Celebrating All Things Mysterious, Reviews, Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with:
May 062022
 

Return to Shironagasu Island is a visual novel about a detective whose investigation into a millionaire’s death leads him to discover an invitation asking the man to return to a place called Shironagasu Island.

The detective and his assistant, a girl with a photographic memory, respond to the invitation themselves and head to the island undercover.

Once they get there, it soon becomes clear something sinister is going on, especially when one of the other invited guests is brutally murdered.

Return to Shironagasu Island is a dark, intriguing story. It also has a lot more horror elements than I expected, which become more prominent as the story progresses. Most of these are related to the story itself, but it actually has a couple pretty neat scares, with something appearing in the background briefly and then disappearing again. I almost think it would have been more fitting for our horror celebration than this one.

(So it’s like an inverse of my Cartagra experience.)

However, it is a mystery game, and there’s even a bit of investigation gameplay. Unfortunately, this is the worst part of the game because of how it’s implemented. As is pretty typical for this sort of game, you’ll click an object in the scene to get some dialogue about it.

Then you’ll click it again for more dialogue.

And maybe again for even more dialogue. It may or may not be optional. Maybe you’ll have to inspect something else and then come back to it again for more dialogue. Maybe you’ll need to inspect everything in the room and then click something again to finally progress.

It gets tedious, especially since there isn’t always clear reasoning behind it. Dialogue choices function the same way, so you’ll need to pick an option multiple times, sometimes returning to it after other options, to continue on.

One section is timed and makes you visit and re-visit locations until the characters figure out the answer.

Fortunately, since it’s a visual novel, most of the emphasis is on the story. There are several points where you can get bad endings, so you’ll need to pay close attention to the mystery to stay on the right track. The story is compelling, and it’s the sort of mystery that feels very complicated but makes sense once everything is explained. It has a good cast of characters, although I thought the dialogue felt slightly off at times.

(There’s also a character with the surname Edgworth, which caused me to think of Ace Attorney every single time it was said, but I can hardly criticize the game for that.)

Now, once you reach the true ending, you unlock an extra story set after the events of the main game. The extra story is not a mystery. It’s hard to say what it is, actually. Return to Shironagasu’s extra story is strange. It starts out feeling like a lighthearted bonus story (silly misunderstandings, swimming at the beach, a goofy premise), but then it veers into horror.

But… not serious horror like in the main story. Horror that seems to come out of nowhere and leaves you wondering if any of this is canon. It almost feels more like a horror parody, except that it’s playing it straight in the moment.

The extra story is a fun read, but know that it feels very different compared to the main story.

Return to Shironagasu Island is a dark visual novel that I’d recommend to anyone who likes horror and mystery. While the investigation gameplay is tedious, the story is worth sticking it out for. It appears that a sequel is also in development, so I’ll be looking forward to learning more about that.

May Mystery Game Madness: Jenny LeClue – Detectivu Review

 Celebrating All Things Mysterious, Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
May 042022
 

The first game we’ll be discussing in our May mystery game celebration is Jenny LeClue – Detectivu.

(I played the Steam version, but it’s available on most platforms.)

Jenny LeClue was chosen for me to play and review by one of the winners of February’s contest, and although I finished it last month, I held off on my review since I had this mystery month in mind already.

The game primarily follows kid detective Jenny LeClue, but it’s actually a frame story presented by the in-universe author of a series of novels about Jenny. He has been told that his formula is stale since nothing serious ever happens, and his publisher insists he include an actual murder in the next book.

Although the writer is against the idea, he reluctantly goes ahead with it. Jenny, longing for a real case to solve, soon finds herself investigating an actual murder.

At first, I wasn’t too crazy about the premise of this being a fictional story within the game. That always feels like it lessens the stakes somewhat, since it isn’t “real.” However, I grew to enjoy how it allowed for fourth-wall-breaking humor, such as the writer insistently writing about how Jenny will choose a safer option while Jenny ignores that advice.

(As a writer I can confirm that characters can and will act against you if you try to force their behavior.)

It’s an adventure game with occasional puzzles to solve, as well as some detective gameplay. The detective gameplay is fairly simple and usually involves you examining every suspicious aspect of a scene and then connecting these observations to one another to reach a conclusion. There are also a lot of collectibles to find, so it’s important to look over each area carefully before proceeding with the plot.

The dialogue is pretty funny, and there were a number of moments that made me laugh. And despite the distance caused by the story-within-a-story premise, I found myself intrigued by the growing hints of a conspiracy in the quiet town.

Unfortunately, Jenny LeClue ends on a cliffhanger. Not only that, but the whole ending section felt oddly rushed to me. Things were moving along at a nice pace until a sudden revelation that I had mixed feelings about, and then there was an abrupt choice leading to a “to be continued” screen.

The Kickstarter calls it “the first episode of the envisioned trilogy.” The campaign didn’t meet its stretch goals for the subsequent episodes, but the page also says that if they weren’t met, the first game would be a complete story, so I assume a sequel is in development.

Anyway, the ending (or lack thereof) dampened my Jenny LeClue experience a bit, but I found it to be a funny and enjoyable detective adventure game up until that point. If that’s the sort of game you like and you don’t mind a few cliffhangers and unresolved issues, it’s an adventure worth looking into.

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