When a game delivers a premise and ends without a conclusion, I say it is a waste of time and further attention should be directed elsewhere. Just imagine if a Sherlock Holmes story ended without any sort of conclusion, and you already have some idea of the disappointment you will find if you play this game to the end.
Save your money, buy a game that is actually complete.
Playing this with my nine-year old son and he's surprisingly good at the puzzles, loves the (occasionally) mildly inappropriate humor, and cannot WAIT to move on to the next part of the story.
I've tried a lot of games I thought he'd like playing together, but this has been a super hit. Great pacing and a decent variety of puzzles, and the story really does keep you guessing. Love the conceit of watching/making the story unfold through a conflicted author's perspective.
Overall imaginative and fun for adults and mature youngsters.
This is one of those relatively few games that delivers on your experience as a whole. The metaplot is refreshingly high-concept, lending it substance, while the production values make for amazing art style, music and voice acting. You'll thrill to each new surprising development and scene!
FYIs:
*This is part 1 of a planned series. Yes they leave us on a cliffhanger but honestly I ain't even mad.
*Gameplay is about 15 hrs.
*No mouse support, so the keyboard-only controls are a bit clunky.
*There is some light cussing (not a problem for me, but heads-up if you have kids)
Have fun!
I feel so ripped off by having bought it (because it's not cheap, I had expectations!) that I want to warn you. You know what they say about certain persons - they're pretty until they open their mouths. Same is true for that game. It's like a pretty, but dumb person. So unsatisfying! And so boring. Sad.
- terrible voices in all children, but yes, there is voice acting (why did you do this to their voices, really?) and holy f, that sound when J reaches the edge of a roof - as if she breaks her neck, yuck!!
- given clues or information visible on screen is then doubled in shallow dialogues, redundand and boring, no real brain activity is needed, neither for solving puzzles nor for guessing the plot or characters; there is no space for imagination - like everything is doomed to stick to it's definition of just being simple and boring.
- one third of regular play time is occupied by long distances Jenny must cross, seemingly artificially lengthening the game, sign of a lack of true inspiration...
- mechanics and controls are NOT made for jump and run (even if they pretend), yet there are passages where you even climb; all feels bulky, very slow and tedious
- another third of the time you spend picking up irrellevant "clues" that have nothing to do with the story but are artworks and stickers (way too much)
- content/plot and suspense of a 10 min prologue or tutorial - that's what a good game would've done, put all that in a tutorial and then really START A PLOT. I cannot take how shallow and predictable it all feels. (All the time I waited for the real and deep story to start, but... no. This is nothing near a deep Wadjet Eye, Daedalic or Double Fine adventure.)
- but! turns out: IT IS! chapter 1 of ??? BAMBOOZLED! 13 h prologue, congrats!
- BUT ALSO: prize of a full game - which then comes with full game expectations, sorry!
Most of the time this game feels like labor. I'm sad about this. It feels thin. "Like butter scraped over too much bread."
‘Jenny LeClue: Detectivu’ is one of the best adventure games I’ve played to date. It’s a small town mystery adventure game that stars a young, precocious, smart and boastful detective named Jenny. Unsatisfied with the little cases she gets hired to solve, she yearns for a mystery that would challenge her, and present her with adventure.
Don’t let the children’s book art style fool you -- this game has a well-developed story arc for the protagonist, intertwined with the tale of a struggling children’s mystery novelist who also acts as the game’s narrator. There are some intriguing cases to solve in ‘Jenny LeClue’, all of which build up to a surprising mystery. The story is funny, touching, and exciting; it’s too bad then that it ends on a cliffhanger, leaving players wondering how the grander mystery would play out.
The way ‘Jenny LeClue’ is structured reminds me of Donald J. Sobol’s ‘Encyclopedia Brown’ book series, in which the readers can solve each story’s mystery and check their deduction against the real solution. In this game, you seek out clues, and play an active role in deducing solutions. There’s also some platforming, especially in the last third of the game. It’s more than I cared for, but it’s neither boring nor aggravating. I just wished there were more mysteries to solve.
My biggest complaint is that there’s no mouse control, which would have made some parts of investigation faster and easier. There’re plenty of choices for players to make in directing how Jenny reacts to different situations, and these choices immediately affect the dialogues that follow. Yet, many player choices have no major impact on how the game’s story unfolds.
I really hope there will be a second ‘Jenny LeClue’ game. It’s a surprisingly fun, mature adventure game that offers just enough challenge for players who want play gumshoe for several hours. The way the game ended really left me curious about the lengths that Jenny will go to solve the bigger, more personal mystery.