Scene Investigators Review (Vi)
Not many games have tried turning deductive reasoning into fun. Return of the Obra Dinn, sure, and The Case of the Golden Idol, but they both were a bit unhinged and fantastical. I was looking for something more intimate and grounded in reality.
Enter Scene Investigators. Interesting omission of the word "crime", by the way, fitting the subdued atmosphere. No bloodied corpses here. You get unleashed in lived in environments (according to the making of PDF all of the everyday 3D objects are bespoke and not store bought assets, which is impressive) and dive into people's personal lives and items (wallets, calendars, grocery lists) HARD, all to answer highly specific questions ("Would this family's insurance plan cover accident X?", "Where exactly was person X on date Y, including the exact address?") and come up with a working theory. I actually like the "mundanity" of some of these exam questions, which highlighted the idea that you were trying to understand real lives, not just abstract crime puzzles.
The amount of data to sort through can sometimes be overwhelming... which is why I've only finished the tutorial and "The Missing" so far, but I still want to give a recommendation to people who love snooping around and are willing to paint mental pictures.
There once was a budget Nintendo DS detective game called Unsolved Crimes, a cooperation between a Japanese studio and the writers behind Driver. It didn't look like much, but was actually incredible: Several freely walkable 3D crime scenes, and you had a partner in tow that would ask you more and more comprehension questions as you searched around, picked up evidence and made sense of what happened. Most of these questions were multiple choice, but some required you to input names and numbers pertaining to the crimes that weren't always straight murders. It surely was a guided experience, but you still felt like you were connecting the dots.
Scene Investigators IS a game, but probably not to all people, and borders on work sometimes, because apart from each case's test questions, there's no guiding hand telling you "Prioritize and solve this sub problem first in trade for a small reward sound".
Be prepared for delayed gratification. But it will be worth it.