izigame.me

Great movie, bad gameplay.
To be honest I am super conflicted about my opinion on the game. Let's start with the good. You get all the D'Avekki goodness. These excellent British actors that (from a couch) bring you into a mysterious town which oozes atmosphere. You get all the D'Avekki tropes... Aislinn De'Ath playing a lady to die for, Rupert Booth voicing the policeman, Cameo-Girl gets a bigger cameo this time and so on. As a fan of D'Avekki, it feels like the family has yet again brought you another wonderful few hours to lose yourself in - and I'm pretty greatful for that. Tim has also learned to not overdo it with the jumpcuts this time^^. Compared to the other titles, the characters are a bit less subtle and a bit more on the nose this time. But the tone has been hit very well.
If there's one complaint I can bring forward in terms of the whole world-building then it's that for the first time, then, for the first time in a D'Avekki game, the lore has been spiked with animal cruelties, which for me personally is something that drains the enjoyment out of the game. In fact I'm quite angry about that, and especially Sally's remarks in that regard makes this game trash-bin material for me. For me, it's a biggy, but I'm aware this will be irrelevant to most players.
Anyway, let's address the elephant in the room - the gameplay. Now one D'Avekki trope is certainly to take bad UI design and make it the sole gameplay loop. Which kinda works weirdly enough for most of the games, this time though, it's a bit too cumbersome.
So, there are 6 suspects in the game. There are three days, at each day, each suspect will be asked one question by the police, which amounts to "are you guilty in this aspect" and the subject will answer with yes, no or maybe. You pick out the person, which answered yes to all three and tadaaa... you win.
All other information is irrelevant. It's unimportant who had the strongest motive and who would be the most capable or just any other background information. It's just these three questions and their answers that matter.
Where the irrelevant fluff information gets used is in unlocking these police questions. Each suspect has three fluff-topics which need to be activated in order. To do that, you hang a painting onto a slot with the corresponding topic and a cutscene will play. The contents are irrelevant, you just need to match the topic. The painting have an ammo-counter, which needs reloading after 6 questions and ammo is scarce. So you can't just ask them all the topics. And the other thing that happens is that the slot will change to show another topic now.
It's not difficult, it's not challanging, it's not compelling, it's not deep, it's just annoying. It feels like they didn't want to make it perfectly easy, so they put the topic-change mechanic in and they wanted the possiblity for the player to fail so they put the ammo-counter in.
Now there are some secrets and some unlocks on repeated play-throughs. So, you're incentivised to play through the game multiple times. There's some randomization going on, but really, even that is done very half-backed, you see the assets not lining up perfetly and so on. Speaking of assets, which the artworks and videos are pretty great, the regular textures and environment certainly aren't. I dig the idea of the art gallery, but the execution is... questionable. Also of course, controls aren't rebindable and a lot of options, such as the fov-slider lack don't show their values.
So, to summerize, this game is an odd mix of the very good and the very bad. It's something where new ground was tested and some aspects sink and some swim. While the atmosphere is stellar, the gameplay is just nothing I could honestly recommend. If you're a fan, I won't read this and will have bought this anyway, which is fine. But if you're new and haven't played the other games yet, start with those.