Scene Investigators

Relies too heavily on assumptions based on absolutely nothing with no corroborating evidence at all to support some of these conclusions.

I really wanted to love this game. I waited forever to buy it on a decent sale and finally dig in and play it. After *The Painscreek Killings*, I was hoping for another immersive detective/deduction experience, but what I got was a very sterile, heavily confusing game. The idea is great, and the case stories are really good, but the way we’re supposed to find clues and work with them just didn’t do the trick. The UI is also very... weird? It just made it difficult to work and read through everything. There’s no indication that some questions can only be answered by returning to the case later in the game, and nothing makes getting everything right feel satisfying. It left me with a bitter taste... even acing the cases didn’t give me a sense of accomplishment. What a pity. At this point, I would have wished for a *Painscreek Killings Part 2* instead.

Игра по началу показалась довольно интересной, разбор улик в первых делах действительно вёл к разгадкам. Сам процесс игры затягивал, словно пробираешься через слои информации к истине. Но все положительные впечатления смазывает последнее дело. К ответу на финальный вопрос невозможно прийти логическим путём не потому, что он сложный и нужно быть внимательным, чтобы найти ответ, а потому что игра даёт 0 информации о случившемся, а в некоторых моментах путает. Даже ревью после того, как ответ был найден перебором, не проясняет ситуацию. Как, скажите мне, можно было понять, что кто-то кого-то заранее предупредил о происходящем, чтобы он ушёл, если об этом ни словом, ни намёком не упоминается? Всё, что касается последнего вопроса в финальном расследовании, взято с потолка и нечестно по отношению к игроку. Несколько часов привыкаешь к механике игры, чтобы в конце оказалось, что не улики нужно собирать, а играть в угадайку. Разве нельзя было добавить пару хотя бы косвенно наводящих на правильную мысль сообщений или записок? По итогу игра интересная и необычная, но последнее дело лучше вообще не открывать, чтобы не разочаровываться и не портить общее впечатление.

I haven't played much of this because the little that I played so far requires frustrating assumptions that don't make a lot of sense. Spending an hour on one level without having the satisfaction of being confident in your answer is not fun, it becomes more tedious and harken back to the old point and click days where the puzzles just seem contrived. Maybe somebody much more into crime puzzles would like this, but for a casual such as myself I cannot recommend it. I do recommend the old TellTale CSI games for people more casual.

Good writing overall, but I found the solving process rather unrewarding. Way too much time is spent on figuring out basic information (like who's who in communication records) that would be trivial to obtain in real life by either interviewing people or look up an ID database. Once you do figure out, the actual sequence of events is often trivial to piece together.

THIS GAME IS INCREDIBLE i want to every developer to know how much ive been waiting for something just like these since mystery gaming series like Nancy Drew. this game cuts straight to the chase. Boom you are there. Inspect your surroundings, take your own notes, and come up with your own conclusions WITH YOUR OWN LOGIC. I've play mystery, puzzle, or detective type games with my Mom since i could talk and this is by far our favorite of all time. Ignore the negative reviews, want something that holds their hand and they are not ace detectives ;)

Great game overall. The majority of the game is exactly what I was looking for: deduction-driven investigations with minimal hand-holding, strong environmental storytelling, excellent world-building, and several genuinely emotionally effective moments. The game trusts the player to think, observe, and connect evidence rather than constantly pointing at the solution, which is increasingly rare. Unfortunately, I spent nearly half of my total playtime on the final case, and not for the reasons I was expecting. The problem is not that the finale is difficult. Difficult is good, welcome, and expected. The problem is that the type of reasoning required suddenly changes. Throughout most of the game, the player is rewarded for forensic thinking: establishing timelines, tracking evidence chains, identifying contradictions, reconstructing movements, and assigning identities through concrete clues. The finale often feels less like a process of deduction and more like a process of character archetyping. Several crucial conclusions appear to follow from assumptions about who the characters are and how they would behave, rather than from the available evidence itself. At times, the reasoning feels closer to "TV detective logic" and vibes than evidence-based deduction. If you enjoy mystery games as an experience, this may not bother you at all. If you've grown tired of heavily guided Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes titles (which are otherwise great) and simply want to feel like a detective, you'll probably still enjoy the ending. But if your goal is to actually perform deduction and see conclusions emerge from evidence rather than narrative intuition, the finale feels like an insult. Which is a shame, because up until that point, the game had earned a tremendous amount of credibility. I still recommend it. The vast majority of the experience is excellent. But the final case is less a test of deduction and more a test of whether you can think like the writer.

100% honest review. I will censor anything that could potentially spoil stuff. There are things I did like about this game. I liked that the cases were all different. It wasn't the same kind of case just slightly different. I got to go into it with a fresh mind and look on it and get to know the characters of that specific case. Graphics are quite nice. Glad I'm not moving like a sloth unlike the movement speed in their other game (I also played and reviewed that one). Overall, it was ok. I would say buy it on a sale though. I appreciate that this time there was an option to either have hints included or have it so you had to look around and observe to find evidence on your own. I chose option one as their other game was horrible when it came to help. But I'll talk more on this later. Things I didn't like;- I felt like some of the questions asked about the case I had to guess the answer. Which I guess I somewhat expected since it literally said sometimes you will have to trust your intuition. Which honestly? Awful idea. Because of the whole "trust your intuition", I was stuck on one casefile for an embarrassingly long time because there just wasn't enough info to 100% solidify your answer and know you have it right. Their "hint system" is awful. It literally only tells you if you have found all the evidence in a specific room. There is no hint to whether the evidence you found is actually going to be useful or not. I would have appreciated if the hint system would you know, give you hints towards finding out who did it, who was involved, who was there etc. Not give me a list of how many things can be found in a room. As seen by a few other people, which I fully agree with them on, their "trust your intuition" approach is just not good. Like what do you mean [spoiler]the lady who owns the green purse is the killer because there is an empty space in her bag where the tub of pills should have been? It's a woman's bag ffs![/spoiler] There was also a LOT of filler text in quite a few of the case files. At some points I got bored of reading people's life stories which was the worst thing I should have done, because it led me to miss that 4 word tiny bit of information to help the case. I just felt so lost. Even with the "hint system" and having every bit of evidence from every room, I still had no clue what was going on which led me in a massive circle re-reading everything about 20 times. This game had so much potential. It really did. But it just got frustrating/annoying after a while having to just guess answers and hope for the best. It's also, surprisingly, not as immersive as The Painscreek Killings. That game had quite a bit of immersion and atmosphere whereas this one was just: 1. Go into case 2. Run around and find clues 3. Guess almost every answer with lack of clues/evidence 4. Hope you're right 5. If you're wrong, go back and either re-read everything or guess new people/things. Honestly? If you like these kinds of games then go for it. But expect to get stuck fairly often.