Better than 10 AAA games back-to-back. This game sucked me in with its atmosphere and story alone. With no fancy intros or recorded dialogue (except for a few tapes found along the way) the story and tragedy of the town of Painscreek got under my skin and kept me up late trying to find the next clue. You actually have to use your head for this one as no quest markers or indication as to where to go next will appear. You figure it out by reading letters, memos, and diary entries, by taking pictures with the in-game camera function and paying close attention to clues and what the characters involved in the mystery are telling you via the lives that they lived.

The somber piano pieces are now living rent-free in my head.

If I was going to nitpick, the game could be accused of feeling somewhat asset-flippy from time to time, but I don't think it detracted from the experience and each unique location has its own personality and feeling. Use your brain and check it out!

Imagine if someone put you in an empty room, gave you a really messed up, obnoxious knot and asked you to untie it while haunted house music constantly played.
That is this game.
Its a chore.
A tedious, patience-grinding chore.

I found myself very bored very quickly.
The walking around is tedious.

Not only did this game give me the worst motion sickness of my life (even with all settings typically adjusted) but the writing is just awful - the diary entries, letters, etc - no one writes like that it's just subpar.
Furthermore, it doesn't look great and the controls are extremely janky.
Overall, not fun to navigate and the writing will leave you far from immersed.

Gameplay is basically,
"Hey you need to get in here, but to do that you need a key which is over here, but to get in there you'll need a key which may be hidden over here, but to get in there, you'll need a code, but to learn the code, you'll have to get in here which you'll need another key to open, and the key is hidden in this safe which you'll learn the combination by combining clues you'll find here and here, but you'll need the keys hidden over there to get them, etc, etc, etc"

This is a nightmare, and I'd sooner arrest the whole town for being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Why can't I just break down doors?
Its a ghost town.
Everyone is gone and no-one is coming back.
Just break whatever gets in the way. Most of the "detective" work is just finding keys so you can search for actual clues.
Graphically, its cheap. I don't mean low-poly cheap, I'm fine with that.
I mean sometimes a tree won't have its branches attached correctly, or a chain blocking your path will have one of its ends floating mid-air.
The kind of work that should have taken two seconds to make right in a game that is already *only* its environment.

Other reviews have been fairly clear on the story.
Its good in the first half, but seems to lose its restraint and becomes too eager to share the answers in the second half.
The ending where they ask you to name the murderer and the weapon are a joke because you just had a direct confrontation with the murderer following a blatant confession.
I don't need to to deduce anything, I just need to get all of the keys necessary to reach the ending and the game will tell me the answer.

a very good quest game with a shocking epilogue. never seen anything like this