9th August 2024
Hello! Welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing over the past few days. This week, we struggle to come to terms with ending a game, we delight in a superb interactive fiction detective game, and we revisit an old zombie game that apparently refuses to die.
What have you been playing?
Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.
No Case Should Remain Unsolved, PC
After Lottie’s recommendation a few months ago (and the badgering of several other detective game fans in my life the intervening months since), I absolutely wolfed down No Case Should Remain Unsolved this week, and cor, it really is quite a special little game. Several years after the fact, a retired detective is tasked with finally solving the only case that she let go cold: a case about a missing girl whose father mysteriously insisted she let it remain unsolved. But memory is a fickle thing, and inspector Jeon Gyeong can only remember fragments of each witness’ testimony – and not necessarily in the right order, or even the identity of the person who spoke them.
What follows over the next two and a half hours is a gradual piecing together of events that builds and builds towards a highly moving climax. Certain words can be clicked to unlock extra snippets of conversation, while linking together the correct chain of events and matching them to the right witness slowly builds the keys you need to use to unlock some of Jeon Gyeong’s trickier and more stubborn memories. It’s a complex tale that requires proper deductive work from its players, and the gradual unravelling of its story is both wonderfully paced and absolutely devastating to watch come into focus. Complemented by sparse, but evocative pixel art, and a beautifully layered musical score that crescendos as more and more details of the case start to crystalise, No Case Should Remain Unsolved is one of the most masterful works of short-form detective fiction this side of Her Story. And all for less than a fiver to boot.
Baldur’s Gate 3, PC
I will write about another game one day but guess what? I finally finished my Dark Urge playthrough, which I’m writing about in much more delicious detail for a Supporters piece this weekend. I also managed to write a big ‘Making Of’ piece about the Dark Urge in case you haven’t seen it. So, well done me, I suppose?