games i played from steam detective fest

me buying detective games (from kona)

I love games where you gotta solve a mystery. I saw that Steam is running a big sale for Detective Games, and considering how many games I love were included (The Roottrees are Dead, Return of the Obra Dinn, Blue Prince) I decided to check out a couple. Here are the games I played from least to most enjoyed.

KONA

quebec simulator

This one disappointed me. Kona was the last game of these I played, and I'd say it was worth the money because it's 90% off right now at $1.49, but considering I saw people recommending it for fans of the game I put at number one on this list, I was hoping there would be more to this. You play as a 1970s detective investigating an abandoned town in Quebec during a blizzard, which sounds great on paper, but ultimately leads to an extremely same-y environment that you have to drive through for way too long to get to different key locations in your annoying car. The mystery was also just not particularly interesting? It almost didn't feel like a mystery, by the end I didn't feel smart for figuring anything out. The characters involved were kind of boring and nondescript. There's also a completely pointless survival mechanic. You need to make sure you stay warm and all that requires is finding a place to light a fire, of which there are many. You also get attacked by wolves sometimes and you need to swing a crowbar at them, which felt so clunky that I ended up turning off the wolf encounters in the settings. I really wanted to like Kona more because the setting is super interesting, but in the end it was very bleh.

CONFIDENTIAL KILLINGS

this is LA Noire to me.

This was fun! Think The Case of the Golden Idol but much simpler and shorter. Which, to be honest, is fine with me. I found the Golden Idol games pretty frustrating, and I always felt like I wasn't smart enough to solve the puzzles. In Confidential Killings you're, again, a detective, investigating a string of murders connected to a young, up-and-coming Hollywood starlet and an eerie organization that's meant to just be Scientology. There was only one point where I got really stuck. I liked a few of the characters, and the mystery was interesting if not super intriguing. I'd recommend it if you liked the Golden Idol games.

THE PAINSCREEK KILLINGS

real american town

The Painscreek Killings rocks. This was the game that had Koda recommended if you liked it, but this does pretty much everything right that I had problems with in Koda. In The Painscreek Killings, you are actually NOT a detective, you're a journalist, and you're investigating a 20-year-old cold case, where the mayor's wife was murdered and the killer was never caught. Again, you're wandering around an abandoned town, but this one was small and easy to navigate once I got the lay of the land. It was obviously not a town in the United States like it was meant to be, but I thought the environment was lovely. This was the only game on this list that made me feel smart when I figured things out. The mystery and characters were super fun, and aside from one segment at the very end you're never in active danger, unlike Koda's frustrating combat and survival mechanics. Also, there was one single jump scare and I think it cut ten years off my life. I highly recommend this one, it's $7.99 with the sale right now.