Murder investigation is one of the most enduring themes in popular entertainment. It dominates books and films, and games are no exception. EQ Studios previously dipped its bucket into the well with The Painscreek Killings, a game it billed as a mystery-based walking simulator. Scene Investigators, on the other hand, eschew an overarching story in favour of several smaller cases (three linked, three in the same building, and two standalone). But does the game make investigating homicides feel like the real McCoy?
The basic gist of Scene Investigators is that you’re a cop trying to pass an exam to become a detective. You’re presented with cases, and your job is to pass them all by answering questions. You need to get half of a file’s questions right to pass. Get all of them right, and you’ll get access to a final case that’s probably the toughest out of all of them.
The cases in Scene Investigators all have their own unique, believable environments, such as houses, apartments, and even a police station. All of these locations are realistic and are designed to feel as close to the real things as they can get. Gameplay-wise, it definitely reminds me a lot of Gone Home, albeit with a very different focus.
“The cases in Scene Investigators all have their own unique, believable environments, such as houses, apartments, and even a police station.”
Once you start each case in Scene Investigators, you’ll want to search every inch of the location carefully. You’ll find notes to read, items to examine, and situations to ascertain. Searching these environments is quite engrossing, and I thoroughly enjoyed looking them over with a fine-tooth comb. Not a literal one, mind you, that wouldn’t make sense.
What’s more impressive is the way they all tell stories. The first case file, Missing, tells a story that’s so rich and interesting that a mini-series could be made out of it, and it could be fantastic. And that’s all from just surveying the locations. Not all of the stories reach that case file’s quality, but they’re all mostly varied, which kept me eager to see what was next.
Granted, things aren’t perfect. Due to the nature of Scene Investigator’s premise, you’re not examining real crime scenes in-universe, so it doesn’t quite feel like you’re truly solving mysteries. This is hit home by the way the game handles its progression. All you need to do to pass is answer the game’s questions. Many of these are exactly what they should be.
You’ll need to answer as to who was murdered and who did it, as well as answer questions demonstrating your ability to observe and piece together information. The game uses a 70/30 principle, meaning that 70% of the info is given, and the other 30% is up to you to deduce on your own.
However, many of the questions the game posits seem perfunctory. They’ll ask for trivial details that don’t seem to add much to the overall case. The second location has questions regarding two characters that I couldn’t find mention of anywhere that had little bearing on anything. But there are also questions where you’ll need to input multiple answers, which can be tough.
Granted, these are a great way to force players to actually figure things out, as many of the other answers can be brute-forced by guessing. Although I didn’t care for some of these questions, the end result is that I still had to figure out cases and do my best to piece things together.
“…Scene Investigators does mostly accomplish what it sets out to do, with engaging stories and about seven to eight hours of satisfying sleuthing.”
One thing that irked me, though, is how some information that detectives would be privy to is omitted. For instance, the game rarely tells you outright who was murdered. Normally, this is something that’s immediately obvious in many homicides, and some of these victims would have been identified immediately.
It’s weird to piece together who a person is just because you’re arbitrarily not told whose house it is when that info would be readily available. There are also a couple of questions that are more like math problems than anything else, which took me out of it a bit. Why am I figuring out the exact percentage of wealth a deceased man left to his four sons by using an arbitrary points system?!
Additionally, having to get every single question right to unlock the final case seems a bit steep. That’s simply a really big ask that some players won’t be able to get through without help, some of which is due to the awkwardness of a few questions.
But Scene Investigators does mostly accomplish what it sets out to do, with engaging stories and about seven to eight hours of satisfying sleuthing. I may not have felt like a real detective, but having my own personal interpretation of these crimes is one of the more involving, memorable gaming experiences I’ve had this year.
