izigame.me

I was so excited for this game and really wanted to love it as I think the concept is fantastic, but future games like this need to vastly improve on the execution. Other reviewers have commented on the clunky controls, strange sound mixing etc., but for me the main problem was that the cases were just not satisfying to solve and I mostly felt frustration when answering the questions, even when I got them correct.
The 'Missing' section was the best part of the game because its episodic nature meant it felt more as though you were piecing together a story, where knowledge of other scenes could help resolve the case or just give context that meant a more satisfying and poignant resolution to the story. The other cases were, sadly, a slog to get through, and occasionally even felt punitive with the sheer volume of (sometimes very uninteresting) information you were required to read to find anything relevant. This didn't balance well with the minor amount of exploration of the scenes themselves.
I don't have an issue with the difficulty of some of the scenarios - I have played other difficult detective games like Return of the Obra Dinn - but where those games felt fun and satisfying to play, with this I just felt relief when each case was over. I nearly quit the game after the tutorial section because the amount of assumptions required was infuriating, and getting the answer correct isn't rewarding if you have to guess. The lack of any kind of explanation after solving a case only added to the meaninglessness. Things rarely slotted together neatly, which I know is more 'realistic' - but who cares about realism if it just makes the game irritating to play?
To briefly touch on the technical issues, I can forgive a bit of jank upon release but some of the game's mechanics really added to the existing frustration. For example: I missed context clues from interactable objects just because trying to turn an object around to look at it from the one specific angle you needed was almost impossible; spelling a character's name wrong by one letter led to me trawling through the scene over and over trying to figure out what I'd missed, before resorting to a guide to see that my theory was correct after all. I think this is unnecessarily unforgiving.
There's clearly a huge appetite for more detective games like this, which in my opinion is why people are willing to overlook some of the flaws of this game. I'm also still really excited to see what EQ Studios do next because I think their games concepts are fantastic and I loved The Painscreek Killings. I just hope that next time, there's more of a focus on making a game that's fun, rather than trying to make it 'authentic' to real crime solving/detective work. Overall I wouldn't recommend this game even to people who love the genre as I just don't think it's an enjoyable experience.