If you enjoy deductive reasoning games then this is your jam. Anyone who's played Obra Dinn would love this game, and it comes as no surprise that Lucas Pope himself gave this one a hearty recommendation on his twitter. It takes the death vignettes of Obra Dinn and word magnet mad libs, and slaps them together to create a short, engaging, and unique experience.
The gameplay is really a shine here. Each chapter gets more and more complex, adding new characters to the overarching plotline, involving more word 'types,' and just generally increasing the number of clues and words necessary to deduce the happenings of the events taking place.
Personally, I found the narrative to be a bit silly but for the purposes of the game, well used. The world building didn't give me the feel of being very fleshed out, but I'm not sure it needed to be. Probably, too much world building information would have interceded the large number of clues particularly dedicated to solving each chapter, in which there are already many red herrings. Id say the experience of the story feels very theatrical, and the pace of the story is quite well balanced in terms of the intensity. The music does a great job at enhancing the atmosphere as well.
My main criticism would be that I'm a very stubborn person so I didn't want to use the hint system - and in turn ended up needing to rely heavily on the "Two or less correct" message to clean up some of my mad libs panels. A few times its easy to get some small details just barely wrong and it becomes a little trial and error-ry (if you refuse to use hints). I will say I do appreciate the little help screen that comes up when you press the hint button that reminds you of some deductive reasoning skills before you commit to actually reading any of the hints. At the very least, for any of the mad libs solving, 80-90% is going to be good perception and reading comprehension. Furthermore, even Obra Dinn suffers for a bit of that trial and errory-ness too, so I don't judge it too harshly. Until someone proves otherwise, as creators try to make more games like this, I think it is just going to be a pitfall of games of this type.
The gameplay is really a shine here. Each chapter gets more and more complex, adding new characters to the overarching plotline, involving more word 'types,' and just generally increasing the number of clues and words necessary to deduce the happenings of the events taking place.
Personally, I found the narrative to be a bit silly but for the purposes of the game, well used. The world building didn't give me the feel of being very fleshed out, but I'm not sure it needed to be. Probably, too much world building information would have interceded the large number of clues particularly dedicated to solving each chapter, in which there are already many red herrings. Id say the experience of the story feels very theatrical, and the pace of the story is quite well balanced in terms of the intensity. The music does a great job at enhancing the atmosphere as well.
My main criticism would be that I'm a very stubborn person so I didn't want to use the hint system - and in turn ended up needing to rely heavily on the "Two or less correct" message to clean up some of my mad libs panels. A few times its easy to get some small details just barely wrong and it becomes a little trial and error-ry (if you refuse to use hints). I will say I do appreciate the little help screen that comes up when you press the hint button that reminds you of some deductive reasoning skills before you commit to actually reading any of the hints. At the very least, for any of the mad libs solving, 80-90% is going to be good perception and reading comprehension. Furthermore, even Obra Dinn suffers for a bit of that trial and errory-ness too, so I don't judge it too harshly. Until someone proves otherwise, as creators try to make more games like this, I think it is just going to be a pitfall of games of this type.