Recent reviews by Brazen Bard

...Just finished this.

Würst mystery ever.

That's not a complaint, just an observation that the plot is largely bologna.

10/10, would recommend to hobbyist sleuths.

A short and sweet little crafting game - and I could see plenty of room for expanding on the mechanics, too, though maybe as its own larger game, perhaps a sequel, where you help out various NPCs with shelter or various sophisticated alchemical concoctions made from the different elemental essences.

But make it as unhurried and relaxed as this, of course - no timers, just casual clicking and processing.

I could see myself replaying this a few times, too, whenever I feel the urge to build stuff without having to struggle for the resources, or have to sit and watch passively while numbers go brrrrrrrr...

All told, a comfy, cozy little game, worth the money; it's a very tiny gem, it's not a masterpiece, but it's potentially a very good start on the path to one.

So this game just gave me a nudge toward getting back on my own assorted projects; tabletop RPG work, RPG Maker, the works.

And what's with all these onion ninjas sneaking around all of a sudden?

It... might not be entirely what you expect, or what you thought you wanted, but all the same, well worth the money and time.

The puzzle logic is consistent, though some of the solutions are quite annoyingly well hidden.

Well worth the money, good for spending a few hours of grinding your brain against the rather sideways logic of the problems.

Also, the "Russian" accent sounds a lot more like a French accent to me - similar to that of one André the Giant, specifically. Though that's just a small nitpick. (For reference, watch The Princess Bride, of course.)

I'll admit, I qute liked the mystery unfolding, but...

It might have been better if it was dissociated from Agatha Christie entirely. The writing is not bad, but it's not Agatha Christie, and the Poirot... is no David Suchet.

The mind map is excellent, and the way the game plays is well crafted, but the writers seem to have picked up some... anachronistic terminology here and there - late 20th-century phrases in a game set shortly after WWI, that sort of thing.
Then there's the factory owner, Ernesto da Silva, who looks... I would guess he were from Singapore? Maybe Macau or Hong Kong? Definitely not the sort of name and ethnicity one would expect to find in 1920s Belgium... but then, I could admittedly be mistaken about that detail. The fact that he'd been working with the hosting family for near twenty years, though... makes it seem a little odd.

If you want Agatha Christie's Poirot, this is not quite it. If you want a decent mystery (well, three) to solve with a novel way to reach conclusions, this could very well be it - you make newe conclusions as you go to unlock new venues of query, rather than just answer a few questions at the end of the chapter, and that's a BIG improvement over a lot of such games.
The worst, I think, is the rather drawn-out ending and epilogue; it's something of an extended monologue and moral speech, presented as a rambling diary entry by Hercule Poirot himself... it's good to see the resolution of the case in its entirety, but it gets a little long in the tooth.

Still, all told, I don't regret the purchase, but it is perhaps more for would-be sleuths than Agatha Christie afficionados.

So... the game is still lacking a lot of features, such as dungeons, and a lot of "available" features are apparently not yet fully implemented, such as "Gibs", or "Puzzle Locations"...
I *like* it so far, and I don't mind "investing" in it at this stage, in the hope of seeing it fully finished. For now, I'm probably going to give it a little rest; the progression system could do with a little overhaul, and I think I'll want to tinker with a few notes for how I want to set up a few classes and mobs in a future game, as well as coming up with some good lists of tavern names and the like I'll want to use...

...sort of a pity there doesn't seem to be a way to let others explore the MMOs we make in this, but you never know... In any case, I will probably set the game aside for now, and wait for the dungeon update.

So, a fairly simple game, not the greatest of challenges so far, but good for relaxing with some mild amusement as you watch your little community grow and thrive.

As a big plus, there aren't much in the way of bothersome bugs and glitches, and the developer is very quick to respond to any issues, so that's a major positive for me - it may feel like something of a rough gemstone, but the dev's still polishing, so I look forward to see how this game will evolve over the coming months and maybe years. :)

This tool is handy for quick sweeping database edits, but as a bonus, the database export/import function works fine with MZ, as well.

Haven't tested the Common or Map Events yet. Possible they work just fine, too.

The translation to English is simply not yet ready.

Got my refund, will seriously consider buying it again IF the English translation is completed. As it is, there seem to be irreconcilable gaps in the narrative and instructions.

So, I've sacrificed a few hours to this one now.

I'd say it's not yet finished. While I have... issues with the research system (should have the option of scheduling multiple concurrent technologies, IMO, rather than one at a time, considering how some of the prerequisites work for both techs and elements on the factory floor), the big problem, for me, is the crashing.

It's not every time I fire up the game, it only happens occasionally, but when it does, it still loses me an unpredictable amount of work since last autosave.

The Chief Executive Officer is occasionally nagging me about the pricing being off on one car model or another, but the sliding scale for pricing is... not the best. Would have been nice to have some sort of tooltip to give a small hint about what the market might be willing to pay for a car of a given style, rather than just having to start out with a wild guess and a sliding scale with $500 increments and no guidelines...

So for now, I'm going to have to not recommend this one. In the future, once the stability issues are sorted out, and a few quality-of-life fixes are in, that's likely to change.