The Trace is a mobile detective game that looked kind of interesting in some brief clips in the Mark Brown video from last month.
Turns out that brief video clips can be misleading… It’s actually really miserable, one of the least engaging video game experiences I can think of. Most of the gameplay is investigating small (3-4 rooms) environments. In practice this means one of two things:
- Randomly tapping on anything that looks like it might be an object of interest that you zoom into, nothing, or a piece of scenery that gives a bit of flavor text. There’s a ~1s delay between tapping and the effect, so this is excruciating.
- Trying different kinds of touch gestures to try to open up doors, drawers, cupboards, etc. The system is very finicky either about the exact gestures or the locations, so it can often take a few tries to actually get it to react even if you’re using the right gesture. So there’s some cupboard doors that probably took me ten attempts to open (without even knowing for sure it could actually be opened).
So what do you find when investigating:
- Items that go into your inventory, used for very light and totally obvious adventure game puzzles. (There’s a lever that’s stuck and gives a “you need some lubricant” message; there’s a can of lubricant; I wonder what two items I could combine?).
- Questions (look at an open window, you’ll get the question “how was the window opened?”)
- Facts/observations (zooming in on the window frame gives you the fact “the window shows signs of forced entry”)
You’ll then use the observations to deduce answer the questions. In the above example you’d deduce that the answer to the question “how was the window opened” is “the window was forced open”. I’m not making this shit up; that’s a genuine and representative “puzzle” from this game. (Sorry for the spoilers…)
The strange part is that the plot would have some elements well suited for non-obvious deductions. All the evidence is there. But the master detective you’re playing just totally ignores those. “Huh, there’s some zip-ties in the bedroom with the dead body, probably not important. But let me figure out if this other guy might have a drinking problem.”
So the investigation happens, you’re given no chance to show that you’re understanding what’s going on, and then the game does its big reveal. This system is just no good. Either get rid of the hand-holding of answering canned questions, or actually use those canned questions for the important plot points rather than just to drive a procedural investigation.