Mindcop Review (whiskeyflowers)
Highly recommend this game for any fans of the detective/investigation genre. Mindcop is full of small intentional details, potential red herrings, and interesting twists. While it has a helpful UI to keep track of topics and locations, it does not hold your hand through the investigation. I was suspicious of multiple people by the final day and sort of guessed my way into arresting the correct person, but still played the game a second time to see what I missed, and felt that the second run was worth it.
You have 5 in-game days to solve the murder mystery. The bulk of the gameplay is a sidescrolling map with a bunch of interior locations where you can either inspect objects (highlighted in red while in inspecting mode), question characters (which always starts with a questioning relevant to recent events, then opens up for you to ask about your collected topics or items), or mindsurf the characters (meaning, succeed at an optional minigame and have access to a few of their abstract memories). All of these actions subtract from the day's available time, and the game is honestly pretty unforgiving about this; you have to really pick and choose who to ask about what, and what leads to follow. You'll also have to make choices about which item to ask the lab tech to analyze, which lead to have your assistant follow up on in the background, etc. It's possible, and likely, to miss a lot of details and backstory in one run, but it's also really satisfying when a hunch pays off and you discover a new twist.
The music is good, the art style is polished, there are a lot of great QoL features - if the genre interests you even a little, buy it!