May 302025
I first heard about Little Locked Rooms when I saw the developer mention it as a game inspired by Ace Attorney and similar mystery games.
It came out last year, so I decided to check it out as part of this year’s mystery celebration.
Unlike the other games we’ve discussed this month, Little Locked Rooms is almost wholly focused on mystery-solving, with very little story content.
The premise is that a father builds little dioramas based on crime scenes and challenges his two children to solve the mystery. There’s a little bit of family drama as the characters interact, especially before and after each case, but that’s about it.
For each case, you’re given the basic facts and then get to inspect the dioramas. I was a little disappointed at first that clicking things in the diorama doesn’t lead to dialogue or new clues being added, but that really sets up the type of mystery game Little Locked Rooms is – it’s entirely on you to observe the necessary details and draw conclusions. Whenever you’re ready, you can give your answer.
Of course, you could just make guesses, but you lose points for incorrect answers. At the end of each case, you’re graded based on how many points you got. One nice feature is that if you give an answer that is correct but doesn’t solve anything, it’s considered a partial answer that doesn’t affect your point total.
The cases in Little Locked Rooms are fairly small in scale since they need to be conveyed through a few diorama scenes and a list of clues, but some of them are actually pretty tricky. There were several parts that had me puzzling over just how it could be done.
Two of the cases also have harder variations, where you’re given the same setup as in the original case but with some key details changed.
Little Locked Rooms is a pretty short game, and I wish it had more story beyond occasional sibling arguments. Nevertheless it’s a cute game with some neat mysteries that really make you observe everything carefully if you want to figure out the answers. If the developer makes more mystery games after this, I’ll be interested to see where they go with them.
That is quite an interesting twist on a mystery game! Though personally I prefer all the story over just observing stuff in the environment (which can be fun too, I’ve played games like that, but prefer when it’s tied with a strong narrator to at least emote or react to things)
Yeah, any story here was fairly disconnected from the crimes themselves, although it was a nice touch that a good number of incorrect answers have dialogue as one of the kids tries to explain how they think it worked and the father explains why it couldn’t happen that way.
Ha, now feels like a very cute conceit! The parent being gently corrective about it all, like “no this isn’t how it could have happened, let’s look at it from a different perspective” like a much nicer version of Ace Attorney explaining to you just how badly wrong you are when you make a mistake xD
Hahaha, yes, exactly.
This game sounds adorable! It reminds me of the Layton Bros game in that you’re not actually at the crime scene, if I remember correctly?
(When is that game getting a re-release, by the way? I never got to finish it and find out what Alfendi’s deal was.)
Oh yes, Layton Brothers is a good comparison with the way the crime scenes are modeled (with the exception that Alfendi and Lucy always confronted the culprit in person, of course).
I’ve been waiting and waiting for a Layton Brothers re-release, haha. It got a manga adaptation a few years ago, so I hope that’s a positive sign. The final case was the best, so it’s a shame you never finished.