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.
I was a little uncertain at first about buying a single case on its own, but Chapter IV took me a full 6 hours to complete, compared to the 8 hours I spent on all of Season One, so I’d say it’s well worth it.
Like Season One, investigation segments have you investigate environments and gather information from a top-down perspective, and trial segments play nearly identically to Ace Attorney, with witness statements to press for more information and then present evidence against when you find contradictions.
The trials in Chapter IV are fine, with some tricky contradictions to spot, although I couldn’t help but notice that almost all (if not all) testimonies have their contradiction in the final statement.
Now, when I reviewed Season One, I mentioned that I wasn’t too crazy about the investigation gameplay being broken up by mini-games. That happens here again, this time in the form of side-scrolling brawler battles. I didn’t mind it as much, however, because its inclusion into the narrative felt pretty smooth and the battles weren’t frequent enough to get annoying.
As for why there are brawler battles…
Do you remember how the first Nina Aquila game included actual supernatural elements? Well, this case involves investigating a murder during the rehearsal of a magical girl show, but it turns out magic is real and the city is under attack by monsters. Nina gains magical girl powers, complete with a transformation, to help defend the city. Although I did feel a slight pang of disappointment that the case wasn’t entirely mundane in nature, the magical girl aspect of the story is important enough that I warmed up to it.
Nina and Dylan both saw some good development in this chapter, and the case had a good cast of characters as well. I also really enjoyed the mystery itself and how all the pieces came together for the final revelations. Meanwhile, the new elements of the overarching story have me looking forward to the fifth case!
As we enter the final week of this year’s Celebrating All Things Mysterious, let’s discuss the third and final game included in Touch Detective 3 + The Complete Case Files.
Touch Detective 3 is the third entry in the series and the most recent one to be released. For the west, that was after a significant length of time, but there was a bit of a time gap for the original Japanese release, too.
Touch Detective 3 didn’t come out until 2014, for the 3DS.
In other words, the first two games released a year apart, but there were seven years between the second and third games. It’s little wonder that the third game feels the most different. (And since it wasn’t localized until the collection came out last year, western fans waited an additional ten years on top of that. Never say it’s too late to hope.)
The first thing I noticed was that the UI had changed. It still functionally plays the same way, but the icons are in different spots and the inventory is spread across the bottom of the screen instead of being confined to the corner. It also has save slots, instead of a single save. Strangely enough, the resolution seems to be slightly worse than the older games, although it’s still fine.
After I completed the standard tutorial section, I got another surprise, as the game rewarded me with… Funghi Coins? Soon afterwards, I also received a Funghi Coin while tapping something in the environment. What is this, Professor Layton??
Yes, the most notable addition to Touch Detective’s gameplay is that you can now find Funghi Coins hidden in the environment, as well as being rewarded with them for completing each case. These coins actually can be spent on hints, but I never used them for that. Instead, I used them to fill out my figurine collection; yes, there are now collectible Funghi Figurines you can get by spending your coins on a lottery to get a random figurine and spending 5 coins to combine two to get another one. It’s a bit too luck-based for me to completely fill out my collection, but it still made for a fun change of pace every now and then.
The cases feel a bit more disconnected from each other again, although there are some narrative threads throughout, including the return of the Cornstalker.
We also see the addition of yet another detective rival for Mackenzie. (Maybe they’re going for the Ace Attorney approach, where you get a new main rival in each game.) He doesn’t dominate the story to the exclusion of the previous rivals, though, and he has a great theme song, so I don’t even mind.
Now, this is by far the easiest Touch Detective game. I mentioned that the second game had less tedious back-and-forth, but 3 simplifies things even further. Everything was very clear and straightforward, and the cases felt a lot faster as a result. I also found it easier to find entries for the touch list, but that might have been because the addition of Funghi Coins had me madly tapping everything in sight.
While it was nice not to get stuck, it might be a little too simple. The gameplay felt like it was lacking something. On the other hand, the charm and humor are as intact as ever, so it was still an enjoyable experience.
And I really do love the addition of the coins and figurines.
Touch Detective 3 left me with one big question: will there be a Touch Detective 4? There’s easily room for more wacky cases and silly antics with these characters. In fact, when I view the series with that in mind, I’ve changed my mind about the Cornstalker. I finished the second game thinking it was an odd omission to not have a big reveal of his true identity, but I’m now convinced it’s an intentional wink to the player to imply his identity while keeping it a secret from the characters, so that he can be a recurring antagonist who is never truly defeated.
Of course, it’s been 11 years since the original release of Touch Detective 3, so a fourth game seems unlikely. But since Touch Detective 3 + The Complete Case Files released just last year and brought in new fans like me, I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll see more Touch Detective games in the future!
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.
