I'm very torn about this game. One the one hand I probably wouldn't have bought it if I'd seen the AI art notice but I missed it until I got IN the game and saw the art on the walls and I was dismayed. I wish they had just hired a small artist to do the victim's paintings and just used creative commons paintings otherwise. That aside, this game has a lot of potential but there are some major issues holding it back. First and foremest of these is the fact that it commits the cardinal sin of detective mysteries and shows it's hand WAY too soon and obviously. I figured out the big twist in the first 5 minutes of gameplay. If you intend to play the game and don't want spoilers, I suggest you stop reading here.



SPOILERS AHEAD



The name of the game was a big clue when combined with several obvious lies you were told and the way the mansion location was set up and played. If you hadn't NEEDED to search every room for successive keys to finally get to the actual crime scene and were allowed to miss vital clues if you didn't go out of way to investigate everywhere I feel like figuring it all out early would make the player would feel clever, not disappointed. It immediately raises suspicions that getting to the crime scene to investigate was so difficult when we were invited there to do exactly that. Having the main hall, staircase, and the victim's bedroom freely accessible but the rest of the house locked up that we could work to get into would have allayed suspicions more. Most importantly, the shadow appearing so quickly to the player character after literally seeing a reinactment of the victim's lover reacting to a crazed figure that never actually poses a threat and the statements of the maid about his sudden personality switches and cruelty made the truth glaringly obvious. The first time the Shadow appears was great, Spotting him stalking the halls and making us run to hide for a bit made sense and for that moment I wondered if I was wrong about the twist and there actually WAS still a killer around. But then a few minutes later we see him just standing a few feet away on the landing, staring at you without any hint of a threat and then disappearing the moment you go around a pillar to come towards him made it exceedingly obvious he wasn't real. If he'd continued to stalk towards us so we had to run and hide until we couldn't hear him anymore again, it would have been so much better.

The asylum location and the unfurling of the mystery there was much better handled. I didn't see the victim's role in her own murder coming so that was a nice surprise. The client's phone calls during that section that were so emotionless and vaguely sinister were not as well handled. Our player character was still acting confused at her while I was rolling my eyes at how obviously she was setting us up for something. The reveal of the detective book in the final location was clever, though, as I hadn't realized she was repeating her daughters initial crime that closely.

All in all I feel like this dev team has real potential. The characters were interesting, I liked the voice acting, the style of the game was fun, and some parts of this mystery did delight me. Just get rid of the AI art, slow down on the reveals, trust your players are smart and will find the answers without you needing to feed it to them by hand, and give us a credible threat next time and I think it could be amazing.

I really liked this game. It was fun to play. Had a great storyline. It was a little shorter than I would like but over all a great detective game to play. The graphics and visual style of this game are good. I would recommend this game.

A short and sweet mystery game that does what it sets out to do. An enjoyable experience and a decent story. The devs clearly took inspiration from a fairly well known thriller movie, but I won't give out the name to avoid spoilers on the game. I found it to be predictable but that doesn't mean the game or story was bad. I recommend it to mystery fans for sure.