Detective Grimoire is a point-and-click adventure. You'll be playing the titular detective as he investigates a murder in a rather quirky game world. The game manages to keep its mystery interesting despite the comedy and the wackiness of the setting, which is commendable.
The gameplay works as you might expect, you find clues around the world with some pixel hunting, you interview the various suspects with a set of fixed questions (more unlock as you progress through the game), and you can also ask them about all the clues and the other suspects to gain more info. More interestingly, you'll be some time tasked to make logical conclusions connecting items/characters/locations in a sentence with the given options.
Sadly, not all the puzzles are interesting. The strength and weakness of the game is how easy it is. You'll hardly find yourself puzzling over any given clue or situation. On the other hand, this also makes the experience quite fluid, and enjoyable, with quick progress.
The game is also quite short, you can't really expect more than 2 hours out of the game (unless for some reason you get really stuck somewhere).
The story of the mystery is overall good, but I'll say that despite its short run time, I feel it reaches a little bit with its conclusions near the end, and some of the clues could have had more interesting and informative details to them. You shouldn't have problems guessing the culprit, however.
The visuals are stylized, and I think help quite a bit with the game's charm. The music, voice acting and comedy are all solid, boosting the charm even further. UI could be better, but it's not egregious.
In short, the game is a fun experience, but extremely short and simple, which limit its ability to really be something special. Still, its personality carries it past its gameplay/narrative minor flaws, and delivers an enjoyable ride in the game's world. The game also has a sequel, but it doesn't use the Grimoire branding ("Tangle Tower").
