This year, I played The Painscreek Killings to ease that itch I’ve had for a full blown detective game with no hand-holding. Just the facts, evidence and my own brain to piece it all together. Despite the corny chase scene at the end killing the enigmatic vibe, the case of Vivian Robert’s murder delivered exactly what I was looking for and I was hooked on the story right until the very end. You can imagine my excitement when I saw that, after five years, EQ Studios were releasing their first game since The Painscreek Killings this year!
What The Painscreek Killings lacked in technical achievement it more than made up for in its writing, and I can very much say the same for Scene Investigators. Forgoing the single, overarching narrative that The Painscreek Killings had, Scene Investigators opts for a series of case files containing crime scenes to piece together. Set in the future, we are a trainee licensed investigator and must solve a selection of reconstructed cases in order to receive our license. We start with an AI voice that sounds like it was recorded in a tunnel telling us that we are going through a training program and must provide answers to a series of questions on each case – we will then be graded on how many questions we answer correctly.
There are three initial cases to solve with a fourth one being unlockable after you have scored an A grading on the first three cases. The first is The Missing, which tells the story of three different crime scenes which are linked in some way. The second is The 4th Floor which has three different crime scenes taking place at different times on the same floor of an apartment building. And the third is Blood Bath where you must solve the case of a mass shooting in a police station.
During this introduction, we’re given a list of points to keep in mind. The first being that Scene Investigators gives us 70% of the information that would have been present at each crime scene. We must use our gut instincts to work out the remaining 30%. Like The Painscreek Killings, Scene Investigators has no tip system or hand holding. In fact, sometimes it will purposely mislead you. Which is exactly what I was looking for in a detective game.
You have a bar at the bottom of the screen which will have your exam questions, the exit button, an information page on button mapping and tips on how to solve the case, and occasionally added pieces of evidence such as interrogation recordings, witness statements, or even the cause of death.
You have a notepad at your disposal, though I found it easier to keep a notepad and pen at my side as the in-game notes carry over through each case and I didn’t want to have to delete them or fiddle with creating a new page. ColePowered Games’ Shadows of Doubt has a brilliant detective/note board which I hope more detective games take inspiration from in the future because it was honestly perfect for note taking. You also have a camera for taking pictures and a torch. I also feel the need to point out that, although you may find it strange that Scene Investigators has a crouch button, you will be needing this to spot or access low-down evidence!
Aside from the laughable end chase sequence, my biggest problem with The Painscreek Killings was the endless maze of locked doors and keys needed for them to progress the case, clearly put in place to prevent the player from completing the game too quickly. Although Scene Investigators does not reunite us with this mechanic, it does bring a series of its own problems – mainly technical ones.
I think the biggest problem with Scene Investigators, for me, is the fact that there’s no summary of any kind at the end of each case to properly tell you what happened. A lot of thought has gone into the environmental storytelling of each case, forcing you to use this to piece together what has happened. But I think even in the cases where I perfectly understood the situation, it was still missing that emotional impact because there was no kind of cut scene or even just a written summary at the end to finalize the whole story; Scene Investigators just relies on its players to put this together themselves. The problem with this is, as the game itself says, we only have 70% of the whole story. The Painscreek Killings ended with our character writing a letter to the person who had hired a private investigator to solve the mystery before we stepped in to tell her what had happened and why, as well as her final questions on the case. I think Scene Investigators could do something similar, maybe with newspaper clippings, which would give these stories a great lasting impression and also make it feel more rewarding that you solved them.
That being said, each case is written well. There were some where, once the mystery finally clicked in my head, I had shivers from what I had unraveled. I also loved the level of environmental story-telling. In some cases, there was very little written evidence and I would instead need to evaluate if any furniture had been moved, the trajectory of any bullet holes, and the belongings in the room to determine who was present.
Once you have answered each question, you can submit them and the game will tell you how many of the questions you guessed correctly. I really wish it would also tell you exactly which questions you answered correctly, because once you see that you got one answer incorrect, your next task is to go through each question and changing the answer to see if the total correct answers figure changes in order to work out which one you’re getting wrong. This involves submitting your answers, landing back on the case selection menu, and then having to reload the case again (and again after that if you’ve reloaded it and can’t do anything because of a bug). At the time of writing, the developers’ notes do state that they are working on this.
I also didn’t realize, nor was it made clear, that the different scenarios in the first case, The Missing, were actually linked and I was supposed to go through them all before answering the questions. In the second scenario, I was completely stumped on who the intruder to the apartment was – not realizing that the idea was to give up and go to the next scenario where I would find out that all three of them are linked. I wasted around three hours going over this apartment with a fine tooth comb for this missing information and entering answers for this question which I blatantly knew were incorrect but was trying anything to finish this case, which was really frustrating.
I also wish there was a way to check the date, time and address of the crime without having to leave and reenter the level or use the evidence in the room to work it out. A lot of the time, answering the questions correctly depends on this. Similar to The Painscreek Killings, the default button mapping for Scene Investigators is also really strange. These developers are really keen to use the whole keyboard rather than the keys closest to your left hand for comfort.
Although the level designs are brilliant and the graphics look gorgeous, the badly recorded voice acting is a consistent theme in Scene Investigator’s audio quality. A lot of the voice acting doesn’t sound right, and there are moments where there should maybe be some environmental sounds in the background, such as at an eulogy reading in a room full of people, but we can only hear the voices of those speaking and the occasional loud footsteps of whoever is walking up to the podium. Each scene has a piano track playing as the background music, which suits the game well, but each time the loop comes to an end there’s a really long, noticeable pause before the music restarts again. I also swear the track from Case #2 of The Missing is the same as one of the tracks used in The Painscreek Killings.
In its current state, Scene Investigators is chock full of bugs which the developers are in the process of fixing. Some of the ones I experienced included severe lagging when typing notes into the notepad, already filled out question answers being erased if I’ve left a case and then gone back into it again later, a phone in apartment #401 of The 4th Floor kept freezing the game every time I interacted with it, and sometimes when leaving a level while interacting with an object, that object will be floating in front of your face when you reenter the level. I also noticed that every time I loaded up a level, it would take a moment for the game to settle and stop lagging and teleporting you around when you move.
While I did much prefer the more simplistic scale of Scene Investigators over traversing back and fourth in The Painscreek Killings looking for door keys, it does require some fine-tuning. The amount of bugs and issues in audio quality make this game feel really unfinished. On top of this, there’s some improvements needed in the gameplay and also the case set-up for this to truly feel satisfying to play and to have the same emotional impact that the story of Vivian Roberts had on me. That being said, each case is written well and it has the foundations to be a great detective game in a few month’s time.
Jess played Scene Investigators on PC with a review code.
