Paradise Killer was a nice surprise. I knew it looked great aesthetically, but for some reason I was expecting something much smaller and simpler. This is a full scale, complicated, juicy mystery in a vast island full of evidence to find. It is set in a bizarre and stylish futuristic universe, so you are not just trying to understand what happened, but also what the fuck this place is, what are their beliefs, what is their conception of time, or power.

You have a robust menu system with a timeline, a log of people’s testimonies and alibi’s, and the usable evidence related to each crime committed. You can build trust with someone so they will tell you more and you can cross-reference what they said with someone else. The mystery is multi-layered to such a degree that basically everything you find ends up being relevant in terms of painting a complete picture of what happened. And best of all: It is all addressed in the end. It is probably possible to simply collect stuff and improvise an accusation, but if you go to the trial having thought everything through, the granularity of the system allows you to build the case exactly as you want and it is so fucking satisfying.

There is a bit of first person 3D platforming, which is somewhat finicky as one would expect, but it’s half broken in an ultimately pleasant way; sticky friction if you will. Same with the clash of art styles; you have these 2D characters in 3D environments, and menus that feel like anime title cards. There’s a light layer of vaporwave over everything, but none of the story deals with the frankly boring nostalgic themes of that genre, and the soundtrack is way too lavish and funky to be elevator music. This using something familiar to do something unfamiliar is present in many facets of the game, and it’s very tasteful.

Since the menus are so detailed, when they did omit something, it was a bit of a shame: I still used a pen and paper to note things down because I realised not everything was going to be clear in the in-game notes. And I do wish the world traversal options were a bit more varied.

But overall, it’s a wonderful addition to this genre, with a great level of care put into the parts that matter the most, and clever artistry making the rest of it work.

This is the first game in a while I decided not to finish out for the whole course of the game, especially considering this is a small game. I don't necessarily think it's a bad game, but I just don't think it is for me. I realized that every time I was like, "Damn, gotta get through Paradise Killer so I can move onto my next narrative game" I was genuinely dreading it and I just realized I don't have to endure the suffering simply because I'm a completionist. Especially when I only paid $2 for this game.

Overall, the aethestic is pretty sick. I like the bright colors, I like the environment, and I like the story, though I think it's a bit much and complicated with too much behind the scenes lore to really 1) feel invested and 2) not feel completely overwhelmed and bogged down by information overload.

I was not a fan of the fast travel system costing money and I think that's where part of the enjoyment started waning for me. It's just too costly and you don't find gems that easily after a certain point and hoofing it everywhere gets ANNOYING. The story is too complicated and there's too much stuff to handle for such a short game(I think it's around 11-13 hours long in total, I got through 7 hours of it).

The music in the game was really boppy and fun to listen to and I do think they did a really good job of curating the vibe. So overall, it's not a bad game, it's just bad for me.

I adored every second of this game.

I was intrigued after listening to the 2020 GOTY episode of Besties where they went into a brief summary of the game and it sounded up my street. I wasn't prepared for how invested I would get in the characters and the mystery surrounding them.

The world was a blast to be in from start to finish, the lore and flavour text was so rich and intriguing I couldn't help my mind wandering back to it when I wasn't playing.

I'll be keeping an eye on this dev for sure. Anyway, off to buy myself a shirt with Shinji on it.

Basically felt like a western indie dev trying to make Suda51's Danganronpa. I haven't read anything about the development but I expect if I do they will be cited as heavy influences because they're inescapable.

There are parts to like and parts not to like - the island is just slightly too big and a price was attached to fast travel to discourage it, so you feel like your time is being deliberately wasted as you cycle through interviews with the other characters. Music is diegetic so while there are great tracks, you're only ever catching parts of them as you move from place to place. The regular city parts have an excellent sense of place, contrasting heavily with the Syndicate's dedicated areas which are full of the same three purple statues. There's a weird artificiality to them that seems intentional but also not, because while of course immortal Cthulhu worshippers would build unusual statues, they would not be like this.

I liked Shinji, I liked Sam, I liked Doom Jazz. Lydia needs to learn septum piercings are always a deal breaker, Crimson is furry bait and should be burned, Henry needed more voice lines, everyone else sucked.

I really liked this game, but the grammatical errors absolutely ruin it for me. "Okay, you type your reviews like a menace" this is a published game. You should be able to use commas correctly. In this game, there are no (or very few) commas used with direct addresses. Instead of saying, "You should come to my house, LD." it's "You should come to my house LD." Incredibly pedantic, but it pisses me off so much because i actually liked all elements of this game. Im still rating it very positively- this game would not get higher than 4 stars for me even if this mistake was corrected- but seriously. I (obviously!! look at how this is typed!!) dont care what your grammar is like in your social media posts, just when it's a published work! With unintentional errors! It kills me!

Anyways, i loved the story, i loved figuring everything out, and i loved exploring! I played on switch and i would play on pc in the future because i think first person platforming is bad on switch and I didn't explore everything i wanted to because i am just a mouse and keyboard first person controls person at heart. but as a fan of weird ass mysteries, this really entertained me.

Para apreciar Paradise Killer, uno tiene que tragarse ciertas cosas que le causan rechazo de primeras. Por ejemplo, los sprites 2D en un mundo tridimensional, o la innumerable cantidad de coleccionables, o que los personajes tengan nombres como Doctor Doom Jazz o Kafka Memory, o la omnipresente estética vaporwave, o la música hortera… En general todo el juego es bastante hortera, o kitsch, o camp, o como lo quieras llamar.

Pero, como digo, si uno traga, o dicho de forma más suave, mira más allá de la superficie, encuentra un muy buen juego de detectives. De hecho, encuentra algo que no sabía que quería pero con lo que le gusta mucho haberse topado. Imagina si te dieran un caso de Phoenix Wright y te dejasen explorar todo el mapa a tus anchas, sin restricciones, ni de movimiento, ni de acciones, ni de interrogatorios. Que un sólo caso de esa saga se desarrolle hasta constituirse como un juego completo. Eso es Paradise Killer. De hecho, es incluso mejor que eso.

Cuanto más piensa uno en este juego, más reconoce sus virtudes. Quizá la mejor sea la ausencia casi total de condescendencia hacia quien lo juega. Te dan herramientas para que tengas apuntada toda la información que te dan los personajes, pero tú y sólo tú haces todas las cábalas necesarias para ir desenredando la madeja. Y cuando ya has leído, escuchado, visto y visitado todo lo que hay, y tus únicas armas en el juicio son los propios argumentos que has elaborado y las conexiones que has hecho, esas armas no parecen suficientes y te sientes de lo más indefenso. Pero si aciertas en tus suposiciones, la victoria en el juicio no te la puede arrebatar nadie.

La otra gran virtud está en la exploración. El mundo de Paradise Killer es una isla que ansía ser explorada. De ahí los coleccionables, para incentivar que vayas a donde no te habías planteado ir. También de ahí que puedas saltar y luego puedas hacer saltos dobles, para que llegues a cualquier lugar. Quizá, quien sabe, este sea el motivo de que el juego elija la tridimensionalidad, para regodearse en las esquinas y recovecos. Todo llama a tu curiosidad.

Pero a pesar de todo ello, no he sabido apreciar Paradise Killer hasta el final. Primero por el mal trago inicial, después por la repetición, volver una y otra vez a los mismos lugares a hablar con los mismos personajes (que evoque una investigación policial real no lo hace más sugerente). Y luego están mi impaciencia y mi falta de educación videolúdica, que hacen que me pese mucho lo accesorio y lo que difiere de la norma. El caso es que sí, me costó conectar con este juego. Luego ya me encariñé de él y de su particular carisma, y el tramo final junto con el juicio me parecen simplemente brillantes. Como ya he dicho, Paradise Killer es un muy buen juego de detectives. Y, de hecho, quizá sea el mejor.

Remember way way back, before Persona 5 and Dark Souls, when Atlus and From Software were making weird niche games that rarely left Japan and sold only like 10,000 copies? Because Paradise Killer will bring all those memories rushing back. It's a zany, colorful blast from the past that would feel right at home on Dreamcast.

Although it's often compared to Phoenix Wright, Paradise Killer has more in common with collectathon platformers. You spend most of your time running around Island 24, gathering clues, collecting blood vials, and interrogating suspects. It's a true open-world game -- there are only a few progress-blocking gates, and most of them can be worked around in multiple ways. You can also end the game at any point. Once you feel you've collected enough evidence, you can return to the judge and start the trial.

Being an open-world game, Paradise Killer exhibits the same pros and cons that are common in the genre. Early on, when the world was still full of collectibles, I had a lot of fun running around, jumping up mountains, and chatting with random characters. But as I neared the end and there were only a few unresolved mysteries and uncollected items left, my patience began to wane as I aimlessly ran around the map in search of the missing piece. Ultimately I was able to find everything without resorting to checking a guide, but not before feeling a twinge of boredom.

Naturally, the game's open-world nature impacts not only the gameplay, but the narrative as well. In my case, I stumbled upon a very big piece of evidence right at the end of the game -- it was literally the last thing I found before taking my case to trial. Because my playthrough unfolded the way it did, this revelation led to a serious sense of deus ex machina. It was like the final piece clicking into place and it felt all too convenient. If I'd found it earlier and had been given time to mentally fit it into my investigative puzzle, perhaps it wouldn't have felt like such an abrupt contrivance. I suppose that's just the nature of open-world games. Everyone's experience will be a bit different, for better or worse.

The final trial is also relatively straightforward. If you're expecting the twists and turns of an Ace Attorney game, you'll be disappointed. Despite that, however, the character are well written and the story that's here is enjoyable enough.

Finally, I must note that the soundtrack is an absolute banger. If anything, I think it's underutilized -- the songs are played as background music when they really deserve more time in the spotlight.

Anyhow, that's Paradise Killer in a nutshell. Come for the platforming and vaporwave vibes, stay for the characters. I'll see you in Perfect 25.

A delightful deductive narrative experience. All of the characters are more or less well written, the VA work (as little as there is) attributes a different accent to a character based on where they were born, which was a nice addition and helped breathe life into the 2D cardboard cutouts floating around.

The main attraction is obviously the clue and collectible search. You get to travel around a vast world, solve very simple puzzles and basically create your own narrative with what you find. The game invites you to explore every nook and cranny, because you never know if there's gonna be a key item there or a useless collectible (until you memorize the sprites).

From the mystery side of things, there's some stones left unturned even if you got all the clues. Not getting into any spoilers, since everyone needs to experience this game blindly, but I wasn't left entirely satisfied, since there were some contradictions with the suspect stories and the evidence collected, that I didn't get an explanation to (must have chosen them during the trials I guess, but it's not a good way to do that).

Overall, spankin good game, enjoyed basically everything and it's brimming with it's own style and world.

God I love paradise killer - the mystery isn't super in depth in and of itself, neither is this game a standard detective or puzzle game if that's what you're interested in. It's a collectathon platformer, based in truly one of the most interesting and creative sci-fi/fantasy worlds I've seen in games. Every location is just oozing style and vibes and the amount of stuff to explore and find is excellent.

It's quite wordy so if that's not your thing this won't be for you, although also if you just want words it also won't be for you. The platforming is a little jank, but only imo in ways that enhance your ability to get to each nook and cranny of the game world and the story doesn't quiiiiiiiiiiiite stick the landing, but not in a way that massively impacted my enjoyment of the game.

Overall highly recommend it, if it seems like it's your thing it will be.

If gamers actually cared about getting games closer to 'art' they wouldn't focus so much on endless discourses on 'level design' and 'mechanics' and would instead turn their focus to reproducing what is done in Paradise Killer. This game actually uses its ludic elements mostly well, since experiencing and navigating the landscape is key to the way it crafts distinct 'senses' of what occurred in the island's final days. The use of memory and the necessarily empty yet evocative quality of nostalgia weaves into the skillfully used vaporwave aesthetic/city pop music. The game's aesthetic also clearly derives from a sort of Western nostalgia for the Japanese bubble, which itself is fascinating to see. There's probably at least a chapter in a book somewhere on the sensorium and capitalism in Paradise Killer. Or memory and ethnicity. Or any number of other topics, really. It is a very rich text.

What is interesting too is the ambivalence present in the movement. This is not a somber walking simulator, but one in which you are dashing and moving through the air with speed and it is quite fun at times. Until it isn't. Until that too becomes mundane and boring. That itself reflects some of the dynamics within the themes of the text.

It is not my favorite game, but it is very close to it and honestly it is probably the closest I've seen a 'game' approach transcending the label while also nonetheless having 'gameplay' and not simply being a point and click adventure or a visual novel.

Paradise Killer is weird as hell, but it's absolutely my kind of weird. I'm a big sucker for worldbuilding and unusual settings, and Paradise Killer sure does deliver that in droves. The world seems to be entirely built around juxtaposition; high-energy disco and jazz music imposed against the ghoulishly empty streets, the fantastical sculptures and temples cast against the grimey tower blocks in the town below, and of course the bright and cheery facade of the island in general cast against its horrific purpose and history. And this isn't a case of 'seemingly nice world with a sinister undercurrent'; the world of Paradise Killer is cheery, idyllic, suave, mysterious, horrific and terrifying all at once, and this is all quite apparent from the get go. It's such an interesting way to present a Lovecraftian/cosmic horror-type setting like this; I've never seen anything quite like it, and I loved every second of it.

Of course you need a game to go with the setting, and it felt like Paradise Killer's gameplay revolved around two fairly disconnected cores. There is a kind of collectathon nature to the game, where you're encouraged to scour the island, complete puzzles and platforming challenges to find various things. Sometimes these things are important clues which tie into the other half of the game, but more often than you're just finding money or snippets of lore. And I'm not sure this really adds too much? The platforming is often very janky, and sometimes things are hidden out of the way at the ends of areas with nothing else to see, and so this aspect of the game can come across as a little time-wasting (especially as the island is fascinating enough that I found exploring it to be its own reward). I do think on the whole I was grateful for the collectathon elements as a change of pace in between more intense investigative parts of the game, but it's definitely not where PK shines brightest.

The investigation side of PK, on the other hand, absolutely gripped me; I legit lost a fair few hours of sleep trying to piece together pictures of what might have happened from the snippets of clues I had at the time. The characters you spend much of the game interviewing are all fantastic with excellently written dialogue, and it is absolutely fascinating trying to piece together their motives and backstories. By the end of the investigation I still feel there were one or two things that didn't really fit into place anywhere, which was a little frustrating, but aside from that I think this is probably one of the best-written video game mysteries out there.

The other part of this project that has clearly had tonnes of love and care poured into it is the presentation. Paradise Killer is incredibly stylized, especially in it's UI and in little flares like character's VA's constantly blurting out catchphrases mid-conversation. I mostly like these touches, they help to make the game feel even more standout and unique than it already is, but it does lead to the game being a very full-on and generally loud experience that isn't easy to play for too long at a time. And of course I have to mention the music, which is fantastic and somehow fits the setting absolutely perfectly (I wouldn't even be surprised if the music came first and the game was designed around it). But there are a couple of presentation choices that I didn't get along with. Most of the VA is... pretty bad, to be honest, but this almost feels like a deliberate choice? I quite liked the weird things all the characters would constantly yell mid-conversation, but it feels like most of the VAs weren't really given much direction and the performances come off pretty weak. I also kinda hate the way characters are presented in the world. Every NPC in Paradise Killer is a static jpeg that is either locked in place or slowly rotates to try and face you at all times. None of the characters have any presence or 'pop' at all, and it just looks kinda bad... nothing breaks immersion like walking past a taxi driver too fast and seeing her collapse into an infinitesimal one-dimensional being, or walking straight past a suspect because he was standing flush against a wall and your brain just assumed he was part of a wall texture. I get that 3D models are a whole other thing and would look out of place in this world, but I would have preferred PK to do something like Doom where the jpegs are locked to always face you exactly. In fact, as a proof of concept, Paradise Killer does exactly this with the various inanimate collectibles in the game, and they all stand out from the world just fine.

So yeah, little things like the character models, outdated-looking textures and some stiff platforming controls do give Paradise Killer an unmistakable air of jank (topped off with its lack of autosave, which seems a bizarre choice to make in 2020). But if some corners did have to be cut to make this then it was absolutely worth it, because that time that was saved was clearly redirected into making this game as special, well-written and memorable as possible. It's a great experience, with a great mystery to solve and a highly satisfying ending, and this is one I can thoroughly recommend.