Unheard is a short puzzle game based on audio, a pretty unique concept rarely seen in the video game industry. Immerged in different cases as a ghostly detective, the player is tasked of solving several questions regarding one or more unsolved mysteries. In each case, the player can move around in a map without limitations, various events and dialogues can be witnessed at different locations throughout the audio timeline, which, the player can manipulate at will.

The very nature of this game and the absence of any sort of RNG, allow players to brute force any case if they so desire. If this problem is rather common among puzzle games, what could be pointed out, is the lack of innovation throughout the cases, as all clever mechanics and setups are revealed in the second case right after the tutorial.

But beside that, the game proposes a nice experience, the writing of each case is pretty solid, the english voice acting is also decent, dictions or accents might be not realistic to some extent, but it gives a certain flair to the game and definitely help people who are not native english speaker.

Ultimately, the length of the game fits its proposition, the concept which could be polished, still manages to keep the player engaged from the very beginning until the end of the game. Without spoiling anything, the game tackles compelling themes and even offers multiple endings, and all of them are interesting in their own way.

It may not be a game for everyone, but if you're accustomed to this type of game or just curious, I would recommend this game without a doubt.

They really found a genuinely new idea for a game, although it shares similarities to the even more interesting "The Invisible Hours". You basically play as the fly on the wall, listening in to simultaneously happening conversations, trying to figure out what happened, who did what, etc.
The cases are rather interesting, but there's only five of them (plus a free DLC with one large case and a little addendum for said case). It's a rather short experience, but I had a lot of fun with it.
The voice acting can be hit or miss, with some hilariiously bad lines mixed with some which are fine.
The biggest negative for me was that the game didn't really find a good way to prevent brute forcing the solutions. "Return of the Obra Dinn" had a brilliant solution to that problem, but it would not really be applicable to this game. Still, the way the game is right now, it can lead to you trying out a little bit too much, spoiling your own fun of discovery.

A solid game overall, though.

A Chinese detective game with original mechanics, letting you play the detective role by examining past cases and finding answers behind the outcome. This game requires you to use your hearing and logical deduction in order to make progress.

The gameplay had me totally engaged and had me spend from half to a few hours to come down to correct conclusions. And when I was approaching the answer, the more baffled and amused I am by the nature of the cases that reveals itself (and I'll let you figure it out by yourself if you're interested in Unheard). By my skill level and patience of a backlog gamer, I managed without a guide until the last case (and the free DLC).

I warmly recommend this unique game that's been written and coordinated with care, despite the voice acting sounding spotty. Then again, that may be the intention to distinguish the characters.

really unique mystery and investigation format at the core of things gets tarnished by rougher elements elsewhere. the voice acting isn't very good (which is normally whatever but this is so sound centric) and the attempts at an overarching narrative are wack.

still, i found myself enjoying a majority of the cases at least a little even with the lack of complexity/challenge.

this could be really improved on with another go around, i think.

Unheard is a detective game where you deduce the identities of suspects using only dialogue and placement on a floorplan map. The game is about piecing together events and conversations to figure out the logical conclusion as to whodunit and how. The game cleverly manages to make even the early cases not striaghtforward, and consistently throws a loop into the mix to ensure you never have an easy understanding of the full picture. The game's dialogue works well and walking around the floorplan with the tools given to you is satisfying and helpful to solve the cases.

On the other hand, much of the game is sitting and listening to the dialogue play out, and some later levels can be 15 minutes long. I would have liked the fat to be trimmed from some conversations and for the levels to be more compact, but denser in concurrent events. The audio also really messed me up. Playing with headphones, it was never comfortable to listen to an entire conversation because voices severely pan left or right depending on how your character is standing. I understand it's to seem like we are in the room, but it ended up being more distracting than immersive. I wish this was a toggle feature, to just hear the room in proximity rather than in LR.

Overall, I think the game is really well-done, and I hope that the DLC missions get translated so we can get a longer overall game for the price of admission. I'm excited to play the one that does exist as of now.

Sidenote, i would also love to see someone's take on this concept if it was in 3D, where you can walk around the space and see the rooms.

DEVOURED this. I was a little leery going in, as Unheard looked like a Jumpscares Horror Game (and the game certainly leans into this implication to keep you on edge). In fact, it is a mini-mysteries game with zero jumpscares and a really neat investigation mechanic. Similar to Telling Lies, but the conversation matching worked much better. (And you can skip through the audio, no less.) Each case involves a complicated series of intersecting gambits, with you having to follow handoffs, shuffles, and true identities. I could have done without the "evil psych ward" stuff, and the plots weren't exactly deep, but the basic gameplay was so fun that I wish the game were longer.

Apparently the devs aren't planning to release the other two DLCs in English, as they are too based in Chinese culture to be localized like the base game is. Which is a shame, really--I would happily play it translated but unlocalized.

Amazing deductive mystery! Reminds me of Obra Dinn, where it relies mostly on audio to tell the story and it's up to the player to piece everything together. There's no leaps of logic, everything makes sense once you hear everything. The stories are interesting, without being too easy or too convoluted (the free DLC is the only one that's a bit convoluted). It's a bit short, with 5 cases to solve I would have loved more, but what I did get was great! The 3rd one in the police station is the best!

It's an unusual game, and we need more unusual games. You move an invisible avatar across a building blueprint, listening to past conversations in order to solve mysteries.

What is most interesting is that while Unheard focuses on hearing, the best clues and 'aha' moments come from silent pauses, from what isn't spoken.

But the game feels like a demo. After a handful of scenarios Unheard suddenly ends with a hackneyed twist that doesn't justify its central conceit.

The real deal breakers are the over-written script and the awful voice acting – killshots for a game that's all about listening.

O jogo era exatamente o que eu esperava, gostei muito da progressão de dificuldade dos casos, todos os casos do jogo principal são relativamente fáceis, mas não deixei de me divertir.

O caso da DLC é o melhor disparado, foi muito interessante tentar entender aquele caos, devo deixar aqui que não gostei muito da resposta sobre a arma real, não fez sentido na minha cabeça, e deu uma murchada no caso.

Mesmo assim um jogo absurdo, para quem gosta de dedução como Obra Dinn vai gostar. (O jogo é todo em Inglês e sem legenda.)

Completed with 100% of achievements unlocked, DLC case completed. Unheard puts a distinctive spin on the detective genre, tasking the player to solve a series of crimes with the use almost solely of sound. The game is played from an overhead perspective, with 'sound sources' (the voices of the characters in each environment) marked and you can move between rooms to listen to the events within each, with voices dynamically increasing/decreasing in volume and moving in 3D space as you move around them - it's an impressive effect. Taking a cue from immersive theatre, each scenario has events constantly taking place simultaneously, in different locations, and of course that means that not everything can be experienced in a single run. Fortunately, the flow of time can be manipulated at will, with fast-forward, rewind and skip controls to aid in the detective work as you gradually piece together events - first by identifying the names of each individual, then by answering up to three questions that define the crime that you're tasked to solve.

Perhaps worth noting is that the voice-acting quality is a bit of a mixed bag, likely at least in part of being a dub from native Chinese. The game is arguably a bit on the easy side and - at least until the final case or two - the way that your solution can be 'marked' at will makes it very susceptible to brute-forcing - but this didn't particularly detract from an engrossing overall experience; with only five cases, it's over all too quickly!

Unheard's gameplay is a novel concept which I have never seen utilized before in any form of media. Oftentimes, video games will explore narratives and experiences alike traditional forms of story telling with order, sequence, and crafted story whereby the mystery unravels in a predetermined order.

Unheard takes advantage of the freedom of video game design, allowing players to experience an intricate story with several plot threads, characters, and events occurring simultaneously in front of them. By manipulating time and the position you're listening from, you must solve the mystery behind various crime scenes using nothing but your ears and your brain. This allows you to fastforward, rewind, reset, and skip through the footage accordingly, in order to piece together the story.

Although there are only five cases, with an additional free DLC case (which is fantastic), there is still a great value for money here. Each crime scene increases in difficulty and scale as you progress through the game, offering challenging puzzles that demand careful deductions and active listening. I found myself several times taking notes on pen and paper so I was able to attach the particular voices to their appropriate names and create timelines that allowed me to solve each of the crime scenes. This was incredibly rewarding, I've played plenty of difficult puzzle games before, but none have required me to write things down and evaluate and compare my findings. This is the closest I've felt to what we think detectives do on a daily basis in fiction, and it was truly an unforgettable game.

The Final Script crime scene which is a free DLC case that you can install, is by far my favourite, taking several hours for me to solve. As you'd expect from a game designed around listening, you can expect solid vocal performances throughout. However, I do have criticisms with the general overarching story. Although the narrative of each of the individual cases is fantastic, I personally found a lot of the added context between the cases that attempted to connect them and explain how this was happening was unnecessary. I sincerely hope that NEXT Studios are working on a sequel, with more crime scenes, because this game was a delight from start to finish.

This game really makes you think about how masterful Return of the Obra Dinn is. It's a very similar premise--looking back at a story and trying to piece together names to voices, figuring out who did what and why--but this is, to put it bluntly, a bad version of that. The writing is very weak, not to mention the voice acting feels like an amateur D&D podcast, and there's basically none of the clever "aha!" moments you get in Obra Dinn. You notice how in Obra Dinn they almost never just say what their names are? Or give names at all? In this game every character pretty much just loudly announces their name at some point so you can't screw it up. It's so lame.

Interesting premise, but painfully underdeveloped.

The whole schtick of deducing the mystery through audio alone has promise, but the game really doesn't live up to this for a few reasons.

1) There is no deduction. Everything about each mystery is just told to you by listening to the characters.

2) The audio could have been replaced by text without any problem. There is never a moment where hearing something gave any more information than just seeing it in text would. You never have to identify who an unknown voice belongs to and the direction that the audio comes from is never necessary to figuring things out.

3) Its incredibly tedious. Just listening to a bunch of audio with no feasible way to speed things up, often repeating the process multiple times since you need to listen to multiple conversations that are occurring at the same time, makes solving the mystery more a matter of how much time you're willing to spend than how quickly you're able to figure it out.

It might make for a neat tech demo and template for a future game, but its not worth playing as is.