I’ve played a little. It’s okay. The one I was playing didn’t do anything approximating the Mind Palace and was very, very linear-- which I think is better than the Sherlock Holmes style games. It was the everything else about it that annoyed me into turning it off!
I love mystery games, so–
Love: When mystery games actively draw attention to the idea that you need to draw your own conclusions about what you find in the game, and make your own truth, instead of just following a track
Hate: when the above is expressed as a formalized “Mind Palace” mechanic à la the more recent Sherlock Holmes games. That’s just covering the track with a tarp instead of letting you build your own theories. Either let people accuse who they want with the evidence they have (once again I plug Paradise Killer) or acknowledge that there’s only one acceptable answer
When I stop plugging Paradise Killer it will be because I am dead and in the ground. Absolute masterpiece of theming and plot. It’s a mystery game without the clunky logic puzzles-- just your patience and intuition. And my God, the music. I’ve been obsessed for over a year now.
Someone gilded one or two of my comments (shitposts), and I felt so grateful to them and so proud of myself that someone thought it was worth spending money to reward a dumb joke I’d made. That stuff makes an impression. But I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw a gilded post because it literally doesn’t mean anything now
As a fellow old.reddit user, you probably also remember when buying/being gifted reddit gold was a big deal. One stupid little gesture, very few actual perks (beyond an “exclusive” subreddit no one used), but the money went straight to reddit and it was so popular it was a staple of reddit’s early culture. Being gilded was a massive honor.
Now it’s just one of a handful of paid reaction trophies you can give, and it’s not worth paying attention to at all. Reddit was so money hungry it cannibalized the process through which people gave money to reddit for basically free
I will always, always, always go to bat for Parade Killer. I think half my comments on Lemmy have been shilling for it. I desperately want more mystery games like it. Not just for the reasons you described, but because it so, so, SO completely nails the relationship between its aesthetic and its plot question about what it means to have institutional power in a institution that’s downright malicious. The player character is explicitly a tool of the evil Syndicate. Is she even interested in effecting change? Could she if she was? Is Paradise worth saving?