Detective Strange:Case notes for Pc

Good game, but holy Jesus there are so many ads. I’m used to a lot of ads, but this is a whole other level. Marking it down for that alone.

One of the best escape games I’ve played. Wish they had more!

I spend a lot of time between Rusty Lake releases to find interesting puzzle games, and kind of stumbled upon this one, and I’m glad I did! And it’s actually one of several games localized to the US by Hundong Game Studio — an indie group that focuses on puzzle/escape games. What makes this game stand out (to me) from their other current offerings is the smooth UI to match the awesome graphical esthetic. It’s all very dark and mysterious, and goes with the “ghost story” theme of the investigation very well. You can tell a lot of time and effort went into the texture and style of the artwork. And the controls and interface are all pretty intuitive — one thing that caught me at first was how to make inventory items interact with each other, but once that’s figured out, no headaches there. And the structure of the story is quite well done, though there are moments where the dialogue localization comes off sounding a bit weird; however, it kind of adds to the charm. The fact that there are multiple story routes to take (you initially have the option to attempt the less-difficult nighttime investigation versus the full-on day investigation, for example) really gives the game lots of replay value. A common knock you may hear about this studio’s line of games is how hard the puzzles can be, and how you’ll feel forced to purchase clues, but since this is done merely by watching an ad or two, it really didn’t bother me at all since the only cost is some time. And the devs get some ad revenue, so it’s a win-win. And yes, some of the puzzles are pretty darn hard — or the clues may not be as obvious at first glance to decipher. I’ll admit, I’m no puzzle genius, and needed a leg up more than a couple times. But the fact that the game was so engaging made me want to continue on, to find out what would happen next regardless of how many tank commander ads I had to sit through. It’s been a lot of fun so far, and maybe hopefully it’s the start of a series featuring these characters. They have another offering on their site called “Bizarre the app 2” (at least that’s what Google translated it to) that I hope we get to see on iOS in the near future!

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