Murder by Numbers attempts to solve the mystery of what happens if you mix Phoenix Wright with Picross.
And yeah. It's a little rough. There's something very relaxing about Picross, at least for me. It's a thing that I do when I don't want to do a thing. And combining that with a visual novel is a little odd. It feels like you're going through a story and you get this roadblock that you have to go around before you continue, but it's a thing you do to chill... it causes a weird feeling. Like I need to do this thing that I do to relax as quickly as possible to get onto content.
There's this robot who found itself discarded in the dump with no memory. And there's this actress who plays a detective who runs into a robot who needs help. The actress loses her job on the same day her boss is killed and is obviously a suspect, so goes about solving the who dunit with the help of the robot. They then goes on to solve a bunch of others and try to help the robot get it's memory back.
It takes the form of self contained mysteries which culminate in a larger mystery that threads them together somewhat. Some of the murders are fairly straight forward where the shiftiest person did it, others less so.
Maybe I've been spoilt by Picross. The controls on this one was a bit clunky and often the puzzles wouldn't resolve into something that I could identify even when they were coloured in. And I ended up with a correct, but unintended solution which I'm not sure has happened in any of the Picross games I've played (though has happened in other nonagram games).
Most of the puzzles are fairly easy to play without assistance, though one puzzle I wimped out and used assistance. If you complete all the puzzles in a chapter without assistance you get an extra memory that you can view. Sadly, you can't go back and do individual puzzles without playing through the entire chapter again, which is a shame.
I really feel like I should have loved this game, but as it is, it's OK.
And yeah. It's a little rough. There's something very relaxing about Picross, at least for me. It's a thing that I do when I don't want to do a thing. And combining that with a visual novel is a little odd. It feels like you're going through a story and you get this roadblock that you have to go around before you continue, but it's a thing you do to chill... it causes a weird feeling. Like I need to do this thing that I do to relax as quickly as possible to get onto content.
There's this robot who found itself discarded in the dump with no memory. And there's this actress who plays a detective who runs into a robot who needs help. The actress loses her job on the same day her boss is killed and is obviously a suspect, so goes about solving the who dunit with the help of the robot. They then goes on to solve a bunch of others and try to help the robot get it's memory back.
It takes the form of self contained mysteries which culminate in a larger mystery that threads them together somewhat. Some of the murders are fairly straight forward where the shiftiest person did it, others less so.
Maybe I've been spoilt by Picross. The controls on this one was a bit clunky and often the puzzles wouldn't resolve into something that I could identify even when they were coloured in. And I ended up with a correct, but unintended solution which I'm not sure has happened in any of the Picross games I've played (though has happened in other nonagram games).
Most of the puzzles are fairly easy to play without assistance, though one puzzle I wimped out and used assistance. If you complete all the puzzles in a chapter without assistance you get an extra memory that you can view. Sadly, you can't go back and do individual puzzles without playing through the entire chapter again, which is a shame.
I really feel like I should have loved this game, but as it is, it's OK.