Murder by Numbers

Great fun, visual novel picross thingy. Good characters, nice 90s riff, actually funny at points.

Do you like nonograms? Do you like Ace Attorney? This is your game then!

I love Picross, I love a good mystery, and the main cast are so cool I wish they were my real life besties.

I picked up Murder by Numbers in a bundle thinking I’d found a clever puzzle game for kids, maybe something to sneak in a bit of math practice. What I got instead was a visual novel that occasionally remembers it’s supposed to be a game. And even that part feels optional. The core issue is the complete lack of challenge. You can just ask for clues that practically solve the puzzle for you, and here’s the best part: there’s no real penalty. Whether you solve it yourself or let the game hold your hand all the way through, you’re rewarded the same. So… why even try? It completely kills any sense of progression or satisfaction. Add a story that never really manages to grab attention, and the whole thing just feels flat. Between the lack of challenge and the weak narrative, it’s hard to justify spending time on this. Not recommended.

Husk at følge SpilEntusiasten(DK)-Curator-side: TL;DR: Hvis du elsker nonograms og visual novels så er dette spil et vanvittigt godt spil. God historie og udfordrende nonograms. Godt og skidt (kort) Spillet har en fængende historie, udfordrende nonograms og rigtigt gode grafikker. Det har en god længde, hvor du ikke når at blive træt af repetitions-niveauet i spillet, men du får også masser for pengene. Samlet vurdering: 0-9: Elendigt spil, nærmest ikke spilbart 10-19: Meget dårligt, men teknisk set spilbart 20-39: Dårligt 40-55: Meh (højeste grænse for thumbs down) 56-65: OK (Mindste grænse for thumbs up) 66-75: Godt spil 76-89: Rigtig godt spil ✅ 90-99: Et mesterværk 100: En ægte juvel Spiltid: Det tog mig ca. 24-25 timer at gennemføre spillet Spiltid 100% Jeg fik alle præstationer efter 27 timer og 9 minutter Personligt pris-estimat: 19,99$ Steam Deck-kompatibelt? Endnu ikke testet

I really want to like this game but I have so many little issues that it adds up. This may be jsut the experience of my steam deck game, PC players may have a better experience. First there is an issue with the save system. If you save during a puzzle as to save your progress, since there is no undo button, if you complete the puzzle it will frequently not count your solution as a solve until you mark and unmark the boxes in the disputed row/coulmns. Several times this happened and before I recognized this I kept restarting puzzles. Next, several times inputs did not work such as when opening the map not being able to select locations, pressing the left-right hint toggle buttons does nothing in my puzzles, and when speaking to people show evidence does nothing appear unless I stop using my controller and use a mouse. Steam mouse inputs also sometimes fail to register, so I had to use the touch screen to present evidence, until I realized pressing Y let me do this, but at the bottom of the screen that shows what buttons do what it does not identify this as an option! Finally the puzzles and evidence are as puzzling as the game. When you solve a puzzle in a game like this usually the result is discernible but each puzzle is a pixelated mess that doesn’t look like what it presents. I had several times where I would look at it and think “this looks like a QR CODE” , they should have transition other pixel art to an actual render key art so when I look at the evidence I know what they are or at least make the images easier to read. There are also no difficulty curve to the puzzles in my experience, some are much harder than others followed by a 10x10 that is simple paint by numbers, but perhaps this is just because thr puzzles are sorted by story relevance and not difficulty. It’s a hard problem to balance for in a game like this but it definitely affected my experience. Overall the game and story is great, art is stellar and vibes are great. This is a death by 1000 cuts, and after spending time playing and coming back I’m bleeding out. Still, this game can reallly draw you in, I put this down for months and was drawn back to play it. Hopefully my mood and review will chance once I’m done with it. devs if you read this, please do a patch to resolve some of these issues, there is gold here but it needs some love to shine.

· 数织还行。 · Case3有两个很容易错过的谜题导致拿不到S，虽然不妨碍成就。 · 虽然能凭上下文知道选什么，但推理也太不严谨了。[spoiler] 虽然随后的剧情也证明的确女主的推理很不严谨 [/spoiler] · 女主有时候感觉有点有勇无谋，不过在一个大家智力都不高的世界，也还行吧。。。 · 涉及case3剧透：[spoiler] 一开始觉得女主前任好烦。亲妈竟然还想他们复合？？女主做个亲子鉴定吧。不过女主能和他彻底分手，并且他也受到惩罚，真是太好了。[/spoiler] 还好不是中国言情小说。 · 我不喜欢无性别的时候就默认是男性，不过游戏里倒是吐槽了这一点。 · 很多人物的衣服很土气。不过片尾曲的插图很可爱。 通关玩了54.2小时。。。