The Mermaid Mask

Great mystery, Great characters, Great puzzles, a perfect game for Sherlock Holmes in the making

Absolutely wonderful game. Just a joy, start to finish.

This is just as amazing as Tangle Tower was. I am only halfway through the game and already grieving it because it's just SO good. Great if you like collecting clues, items, and deciphering/deducing. Challenging, but only enough to keep you interested. I would consider this a cozy game since there never is a time constraint or urgency to anything. Love this game and could not recommend it (and Tangle Tower, which I plan to replay as soon as I finish this because I love this game so much. I am not a re-player) enough.

Sally I love you

very good, like tangle tower

This was a beautifully crafted point-and-click mystery game detective game and fully worth the wait, in my opinion. This is the 3rd (technically 4th I think?) game in the Detective Grimoire series but you do not need to have played the others to play this one, though there are references to the previous game (Tangle Tower). I am really blown away by the level of polish Mermaid Mask has. All the clues are 3d modeled and can be viewed at any angle, allowing you to inspect them all over which is a necessity for discovering new/hidden info in the investigation. The writing is also a great blend of whimsy and fantastical with grounded, contemporary dry humor and gives the world surrounding the main location (a submarine) a lot of character. The voice acting and animation of the characters were all phenomenal. Character dialogue was great but I wish the characters interacted with each other besides just with the two detectives, as everyone mostly stays isolated in separate rooms for the majority of the game. Advancing in the game requires actual deduction of clues and facts, i.e. not trying to combine inventory items until something randomly happens. If you really want to feel more like a detective, make sure to turn Clue Hints and Suspicion Hints off in Settings; they are on by default for some reason and I didn't catch that until rather late in the game. The puzzles that you have to solve to find key clues/items are, in my opinion, just the right level of brain testers but without too much difficulty. The 1st (2nd?) Grimoire game had embarrassingly easy puzzles and the 2nd (3rd?) game felt very advanced in difficulty, which might be a good thing if you love being challenged that way but I would rather be challenged by piecing together clues, alibis, etc. in a detective game rather than unrelated puzzles. Still, Mermaid Mask's puzzle difficulty struck a really good middle ground; they're fun, clever, fairly easy to work out (I did have to use a couple hints on a few of them though), and you can complete several of them in any order so getting stuck on one doesn't interfere with progression at all. One last thing I have to give kudos to the devs for is that, for Mermaid Mask, they STUCK THE LANDING. HARD. One of the biggest frustrations with the previous Detective Grimoire game, Tangle Tower, is that what I can only surmise was production/budget issues caused the confession/finale to be awkwardly sequenced and noticeably lackluster in stark contrast to the rest of that game which was handled quite well. Maybe Mermaid Mask took so long to release in part due to ensuring that didn't happen again. I have no idea. But I can say that the time spent on it really paid off and this is now one of my favorite mystery games of the 2020s.

Great game. Not too but it's really dense unlike a lot of pointing to the adventures, it never feels particularly frustrating. Obviously, one of the big draws is the visuals narrative and just all the artistry that went into it, which is obviously top-notch. Would definitely recommend this game to anyone in the pointing click adventure. The games never particularly challenging but I don't think it needs to be to be good. This is my first game in the series and I intend to play more