Casebook 1899 - The Leipzig Murders

I enjoyed playing this indie game, and some parts I loved. The dialogue was great and I liked the deduction system, and the graphics. The characters were good too. I found some puzzles to be very obscure and found this to be frustrating.

Ein Spiel, dass allen gefallen wird, die damals gerne die Sierra-Adventure gespielt haben (im Gegensatz zu den oft zitierten Lucasarts-Spielen). Schöne Pixel-Grafik, bei den etwas zu groß geratenen Personen ein wenig zu pixelig, sehr schöne Atmosphäre und ein originelles Setting. Ich habe es sehr gern gespielt, allerdings sind einige Rätsel nicht logisch herleitbar bzw. erfordern derartiges um die Ecke denken, dass man irgendwann frustriert aufgibt. Da wäre es durchaus angebracht, mehr Hilfestellung zu geben bzw. die Lösung etwas besser zu verpacken. Leider sind manche Lösungen einfach nur durch wildes herumprobieren möglich, da jegliche Herleitung dazu fehlt. Das ist schade, aber das Spiel ist trotzdem wirklich gut. Ich würde mich über ein Casebook 1900 sehr freuen, gerne dürfte da auch mal Dialekt gesprochen werden. Ich freue mich, wenn das Team Kreiser und Moebius wieder ermitteln würde.

The game starts off decently enough, but gradually becomes weaker, and is very weak by the last chapter. The puzzles in the last chapter are very contrived: You're in an office and you can't reach a paper, despite various furniture around that you could move and climb up onto; you're asking questions from a couple of children but they don't believe you're a police officer ("that badge might be fake") unless you can solve a math riddle (also you [spoiler]steal their dog[/spoiler] and they don't care/notice???); [spoiler]the "random" contents of every actor's locker at a local theater was perfectly preserved, because these contents are referenced in a published book which then acts like a map to find a specific location in Germany[/spoiler]. It feels like the author just ran out of ideas and just placed puzzles to give the player something to do, rather than because it would have made sense narratively. Otherwise, the first few cases are solid, but not outstanding. The puzzles made sense, the characters were believable, etc. Some of the dialog text was split up in a way that led to something akin Garden-path sentence, where you'd think the sentence ends earlier than it actually does, e.g. "No, I only know that years ago he regularly wrote reviews..." (end of sentence? nope!) "... for the theater, but suddenly stopped!" But these are minor complaints. A lot of reviewers also mentioned that they hated the plot twist at the end that made it feel like [spoiler]"nothing mattered"[/spoiler]. Honestly, I was fine with it, though I did sort of see it coming by the end of the first chapter. Perhaps because I saw it coming, I was more prone to "appreciate" what the author was attempting to do. It didn't bother me as much as the twist ending in, say, [spoiler]Danganronpa V3[/spoiler] or [spoiler]Thimbleweed Park[/spoiler], two other murder mystery games with famous [spoiler]"nothing matters"[/spoiler] endings. Ultimately, I went with "not recommended" because I think the current asking price of $17.99 is too high. I would recommend this game at $5. You get to enjoy the first few cases, and if you're a completionist, you can muddle through to the end of the game, or else you can just stop there and enjoy the early parts of the game where it is strongest. If you like this type of game, I think Gemini Rue might be a stronger contender.