Oh that makes sense! I was like ‘I’m friends with Poirot’.
They’re lovely things to stew on aren’t they? Maybe there will be more Cases in the future! That would be great.
So the bit that has had me stumped the most so far in Case of the Golden Idol is in chapter 9 with the murder at James Turner’s house. The middle paragraph I could not work out until I saw that Ergin belonged to the eleventh clan and the eleventh seal was missing (in his pocket) coupled with the Lemurian herb that could transfix one on to something and make them lose track of time. Gideon had drunk some herbal tea and got fixated on the chess-house! The most stuck I’ve been, but the most satisfying aha moment!
The way the story emerges as you click things together is remarkable and something I don’t think even Return of the Obra Dinn did quite this well.
Case closed!
Damn this was great! I think the Epilogue was perhaps a chapter too many but I suppose it was a nice way of pulling all the strands of the story together for anyone who lost the plot. I don’t think you’d get that far without being able to piece it all together though. I had a feeling the twist with Edmund/Lazarus was coming but the final payoff with Peter at the manor blowing him to kingdom come with the cannon he’d won gambling was amazing. What a bunch of bastards. Loved it.
Do you think that game would work well on the Steam Deck?
The Verge review says YES.
Golden Idol was also a great Steam Deck game… I could tap around scenes with the touchscreen and onboard controls
Thank you! Then I will definitely be getting that. Story rich games and mysteries without the need for reflexes seems like the most accommodating thing for me right now.
I think you’ll like it! I would recommend Strange Horticulture as well, but I’m seeing some complaints about it on the small screen. It has a lot of handwritten text that’s pretty small…
I finished that a e coup weeks before I went into hospital. Loved it. I hope the developers do something similar again.
Doesn’t look like there is much discussion of The Forgotten City anywhere else on QT3, which is a shame. I’m working through it right now and I think it counts as a detective game, considering the whole game is about trying to solve a crime. It just also has a bunch of RPG city quests to do in support of solving the mystery. It’s really got its hooks into me!
It has a decent sized thread:
Thanks. Google search failed me.
Thanks for bringing that up. Putting at the top of my wishlist!
I thought Heaven’s Vault was really good. It’s a detective game but solutions aren’t a requirement to progressing the game. This makes it so that you can just misinterpret things but you will also start to ponder things just because you want to learn more instead of a motivation to find the solution to a puzzle.
There’s a list with questions about the story from the developer in the Steam forums that you can check out after finishing that can serve as a test to see how much you really understood. I couldn’t even answer a fraction of the questions and jumped back in for a new game+.
I played Detective Di and the Silk Rose Murders over the last day or so, really enjoyed it. It’s more of a traditional point and click adventure style of game with mystery elements, but there is some detective work involved. You play the titular character, a magistrate who acts as judge, jury and investigator for crimes in the service of the emperor during the Tang Dynasty in ancient China. Not sure how historically accurate the whole thing is, doing CSI style murder scene investigations and collecting forensic evidence but it is a pretty engrossing little game.
This is an interesting (and short) video from Yahtzee about detective games.
Shadows of Doubt, the procedurally generated procedural, now has a demo available, for a limited time as I understand it.
The game looks cool, but also looks like the type of game you wouldn’t want to first experience as a demo when the release date has yet to be announced.
Sandbox mode, with variety each playthrough. I’d prefer it look a little less Minecraft Detective but I’m interested.
Oooh! This is one I’ve been very interested in since it was first mentioned in this thread. I’d gotten a little worried it had dropped off the map.
This is probably not what you meant but every time Steam does those indie demo events, I download a bunch of demos that turn out really unpolished, like the developers rushed to get something out in time. This one seems to have the same problem, with tutorial prompts not triggering correctly and a an interface that seems unclear and inconsistent, but there’s still enough to like here that I’m optimistic for the full release.
“Detective game with procedurally generated crimes in first person open-world” is one of those gaming holy grails for me.