As time goes one has to look at more and more niche games to find their fix.

Finishing up with the Portopia Case, I looked online for something else to grind my teeth on, and landed on the Painscreek Killings. A cold case mystery game that promises investigation, deducing, and puzzles – and there are not many of these games. Another really good one in the genre is Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. I probably won’t write a review on it, but I can recommend that one eyes closed (pun intended).

The Painscreek Killings is a bit older, coming out in 2017. So I’m almost 10 years too late. You begin only knowing two things: you’ve arrived in Painscreek, and Vivian Roberts died here. Your employer wants to know who killed her.

One reason I’m talking about it, aside from the fact that I want to popularize deduction games (they still don’t really have a proper genre name!), is that it really reminded me of Portopia. It’s open world and non-linear - something that I thought about often as I walked through the idyllic rural town of Painscreek. Seeing all the Japanese names in the credits I figured oh, there might be something there. Portopia is so famous in Japan it’s unlikely there’s people who haven’t at least heard of it there.

It’s open-world and non-linear from the start. You can explore the sheriff’s cabin you spawn next to, or just head straight into town. You can even leave immediately, which ends the game with an email from your boss asking for the killer’s name—a neat touch, though I accidentally triggered it and alt+F4’d to avoid spoilers.

So you walk around, taking in the sights and wondering where you’ll even being, and then… she appears. Scary ghost lady.

There she is officer, she did it. Arrest her. I’m getting out of here.

Yeah, there’s a ghost in this game. I could kinda tell from the atmosphere (love a good creepy atmosphere that only hints at things) but it’s jarring, in a good way, to come out of a house and see this shadowy figure staring at you from across the river. It also changes the entire tone of the game.

I have to admit from this point on I got spoiled a little as I looked online to make sure there were no jumpscares lol. I will list the spoopy events in a spoiler at the end if you’re like me but want to play the game.

The story relies heavily on diaries and documents, which eventually shift from letting you piece clues together to outright telling you “hi it was me i did it”. This exposition dump makes the writing feel hamfisted. I’ve also always found these documents in games funny. Like when you think about it, everyone left town but conveniently left behind the diaries that incriminate them so you could piece the story together.

Due to this the game overstays its welcome a bit. The story is not particularly difficult to piece together - I got most of it by the midway point, but still had to keep going. The game repeats a lot of stuff you’ve already figured out (because it’s non-linear and you need the clues).

So there is a walking sim aspect to it. The thing with non-linear storytelling is at some point you’ve gone as far as you can on a lead and have to look somewhere else. So you’ve done everything you could in one location, which means going to another location. You find a clue there and it brings you back to the location you were in before because it opens something up. See what I mean? You do a lot of back and forth the more you progress through the game. Like I said at some point I was ready to turn in. It wasn’t a mystery anymore and I wanted info on other leads.

I had to pick up a walkthrough for a bit of it. It completely ruins the fun because you might just have missed a clue to know the solution to the code or where to find the key, but at the same time, you kinda have to pixel hunt. It’s not as bad as in some games but for example I could not progress at some point because I forgot to check a drawer in a much earlier location. I would have never caught that by myself, there’s literally dozens of places to go back to. The lightning engine is not great and you can definitely miss stuff because of it. There is also one puzzle that has a clue in the same room but wow, first of all you have to notice it, second of all you will have no idea how the two fit together.

Oh yeah, and take notes so you can keep track of things.

At the end, you can leave the town, or you can achieve the ‘true’ ending, and… guess I’ll put it in spoiler?

I would honestly prefer an ending where you just leave in your car and submit your story to your editor, and then there’s an epilogue or something based on what you found out.

Despite what I’m saying, it’s still a recommend from me. There are things that could have been improved, and I believe they did incorporate the feedback into their 2023 game Scene Investigators (notably that game lets you piece together the scene from just the clues), but it also does a lot of things right. For example I really liked how the town was laid out and that even some doors that could not be opened could still be interacted with. It gave a sense of scale. I liked the nonlinear attempt, even if it didn’t hit the mark all the time. I liked the atmosphere as well. I liked that there was no time rush - I would have actually appreciated if your character could sit down on chairs while I was writing down my notes, just so it didn’t feel like I was standing in the middle of the hallway with my notepad.

But in terms of lasting impact, I think I will forget about it soon. I’m still thinking about Ever17 and that was a week ago already. Feels longer.

And here are the sightings if you’re a scaredy cat like me. I can’t help it there’s too much materialism in my body.