Steam Mystery Fest
"Elementary, my dear Watson"
Mystery, detective and deduction games are one of my favourite ones.
The Mystery & Detective Fest on Steam, a week dedicated to detective, deduction and mystery games, is running from 20 to 27 February.
Confirming the fact that I love the genre are two games that are among my all-time favourites, I am talking about Pentiment and Return of the Obra Dinn.
I mentioned Pentiment in one of the previous issues; it is a game developed by Obsidian and strongly desired by its designer Josh Sawyer. Is a rich, detailed, historically consistent game that can be enjoyed on several levels.
Pentiment uses the meals to subtly teach you about the people the game’s protagonist, Andreas Maler, is eating with. Wealthier companions offer nicer food on finer dishware. Poorer ones might give larger portions but barely put anything in front of themselves. Depending on their occupations and status, people will offer different foods, place settings, and topics of conversation that clue you into how they fit into the society. (source: The Verge)
Then we have Lucas Pope's masterpiece, Return to the Obra Dinn. 100% pure deduction, it is the game that has most successfully captured the excitement and thrill of mystery and the satisfaction of solving cases.
The next game I would like to point out is Chinatown Detective Agency, set in Singapore. I had a chance to try the demo during one of the last Steam Festivals and it's a solid point-and-click adventure with a great cast of characters and decent writing.
The Case of the Golden Idol follows in the footsteps of Pope's game and stages 12 gory murder cases, the particularity of the game being that it gives the player maximum freedom when solving the cases. We will be faced with a 'hint' of a solution that we will have to go and complete with our deductions.
Moving on to another type of game, Unheard - Voice of Crime is a deductive game completely based on hearing. Let's put on our beloved headphones and immerse ourselves in past cases. We can review, or rather replay, our cases as many times as we want, moving around the scene and trying to identify the culprit and possible accomplices. A very special game that has been a great success on Steam.
I’ve already talked about Strange Horticulture so this is just to let you know that it’s an awesome game BUT it’s not on discount for this Fest.
Tangle Tower! I played it a little but would like to pick it up and finish it, the characters and writing are at an exceptional level for an indie game of this genre. I played it a little but would like to pick it up and finish it, the characters and writing are at an exceptional level for an indie game of this genre. Ah, the voice acting is great too, unfortunately, the gameplay is not up to the same standard as the rest. It's not that it's bad but it doesn't excel, in fact, often we're almost at the limit of the game of 15, fortunately without ever reaching that level of low.
I have loved the Syberia series like a few others, and this latest chapter seems to close the circle perfectly, managing to leave behind the mistakes of the third chapter and reaching incredible emotional heights. I say "seems" because I bought the game months ago but I still haven't had the courage to start it (you know how it goes when you know something is about to end you don't complete it so that it stays there forever and never ends).
I played an early part when they released the demo before the actual release of the game and the vibe it gave me was incredible, atmosphere, characters, setting, everything perfect. Farewell Benoît Sokal.
Last but not least we find all the games of the Danganrompa series at a discount, also available in a convenient bundle. Needless to say, Spike Chunksoft's series is a must-have for all fans of detective games.
NEWS!
Company of Heroes 3 looks like a great game judging by the reviews. It's worth a look.
Amazon seems to have definitely abandoned the development of new games (apart from New World) and embraced distribution completely. The new MMORPG from NCSoft, developers of the Guild Wars series among others, Throne and Liberty will be distributed by AG in the West.
Many distribution companies (including Sony) are finally peeping on PC ('hey, there's a market here!') unfortunately with often very disappointing results from a conversion point of view. It is high time for PC gamers to make their voices heard.
Wild Hearts is one of the games that suffer from bad performance on PCs. The developers release a patch today but it seems that doesn’t change a lot.
Did Microsoft do enough to convince Europe to let them buy Activision Blizzard?
Don't miss the Tacticon digital event. A digital convention celebrating strategy games of all kinds on Steam ⭐ May 11-15, 2023. Last year was a blast with lots of interesting talks and demos. Follow them on Twitter https://twitter.com/tacticon_games
I hope you enjoyed this issue, if so please share it with your friends and also visit me on Twitter and Mastodon. See you next time!