Murder by Numbers

Let me start off by saying, if you don't like picross, or you can't stand visual novels, this game will do nothing to persuade you. That said, this contains a fair story which ties up nicely over 4 chapters, giving you a bit of dialogue and story progression between picross puzzles. The puzzle solving itself is fine, I would've liked an Undo button. A few times I had to restart a puzzle because I'd made a bad logic call but couldn't remember how things looked that bit back. Likewise I at times had trouble distinguishing the colour change in the numbers when you'd solved a block, making me take a bit more time to parse what I was seeing. Other than that, this is a nice collection of Picross puzzles ranging from 5x5 to a few around 20x15 at the end, with a story to keep you moving on for just one more puzzle. Apart from the 4 cases there's also a bunch of unlockable bonus puzzles. All in all, if you're looking for a game to scratch a Picross itch, this will do just fine.

This game is a split between a visual novel and nonogram puzzles, with a heavier lean toward VN. There are four cases, with characters and events that recur in later ones, and some overarching plot elements. I thought it was fun and liked the characters. I do hope to see a sequel. When the game is complete, there is a little bit of extra story after the credits, plus some freestanding nonogram puzzles. One negative: you must click to move through the dialogue in the VN portions. It would have been nice if you could press a key like spacebar instead of clicking all the time, to make it easier on the hands. The other negative is bigger: when doing nonogram puzzles, there is no Undo button like most other puzzle games have. Therefore, if you are filling or X'ing out a long line and the cursor jumps to the neighboring line, you will have to hope you remember what was supposed to be there and what was not. An Undo button would be a big help. Still, I felt for the money paid I got a lot of enjoyment, and will likely replay this again in the future.

+++ + Charming story and characters. + Lovely art. + Decent amount of queer content. + Picross puzzles start out easy and ramp up to satisfying difficulty without overstaying their welcome. Puzzles were mostly not too "obvious" or symmetrical. Can also use hints or easier difficulty. --- - To unlock all bonus scenes, you need to find and solve all the puzzles. I managed to miss optional ones in case 3 and had to redo the entire case from scratch, including re-solving every single picross puzzle. - Only 3 save slots. Avoid if: * You need a story with "choices that matter". This is more like a kinetic VN with very minor dialogue choices. * You're not a fan of picross puzzles. I had a great time with the game and would love a sequel.

I'm not sure who this game is for. The cases are simple with obvious solutions and plot twists, with the protagonists constantly taking bad decisions and jumping to conclusions. Meanwhile, the nonograms are generally small, easy and don't look like what they're supposed to once completed mostly due to the extreme close-ups. As such, the game has no challenge nor is satisfying for veterans of either genres. You'd think it would be a game for children then, except that there's a bunch of pop-culture references and serious subject matters here. Add to that a bunch of oversights in the user interface (you can't back out of the save menu, for instance), and the result is a game that I unfortunately can't recommend to anyone. Get Ace Attorney and Picross DS instead.

If you like nonogram puzzles this game has a few and a funny fairy tail-ish Hollywood story that goes with them. It doesn't stand out as a masterpiece or anything but it's alright. However, the story isn't skippable so if you don't like reading mostly pointless dialogue/flavor text, I'd suggest to avoid it.