Paradise Killer

I have mixed feelings, but after giving it some thought, I’ve decided to leave a positive review.
In my opinion, based on my personal preferences in games, Paradise Killer’s most interesting features are:
1. The Vaporwave Aesthetic: it effortlessly delivers on its vaporwave vibes, with bright colors, ’80s tunes, and retro-inspired mechanics that create an unmistakable atmosphere from the start.
2. Worldbuilding: visually, the island is packed with detail; from the gods and inhabitants to the lore you uncover as you explore. It’s a stunning setting, and I hope we’ll see more of it in future games (sequels, perhaps?).
3. The Plot: Convoluted, yes, but captivating. Unraveling who was lying, who wasn’t, and why everyone seemed guilty yet didn't... It was gripping enough that I kept playing for hours on end, moving costantly to the same places to unconver the intrigue.
Which brings us to the negatives…
Personally, I’m not a fan of open worlds. And despite all its style, details and secrets, the physical world of Paradise Killer can feel... sparse in some places. ...
And of course, these sparse areas are precisely where you’ll find yourself running again and again and again, from point A to point B, to reach who you are looking for.
Not the best design choice, especially with side quests being almost nonexistent.
Also, when you unlock a new line of dialogue from a character a question mark appears over their head, so you reach them to find out... that the dialogue is literally 'I don't know'... :,)
That said, I really enjoyed it and would love to see our Lady Love Dies return! (All those names dropped in the gamehave to be more than just passing lore)
Rating: 8-/10

A synthwave overdose dressed as a neo-noir detective thriller with a larger than life cast of cardboard cutouts, now in mighty 3D!
An acquaintance of mine here on the Steam cyberspace kindly gifted me this game on an inkling that I would enjoy it, and enjoy it I did, demonic goat waifu and all!
Paradise Killer takes place in a weird liminal city that used to be an afterlife of sorts in a really complex hierarchy of gods, demi-gods and mortals grinding on in perpetuity trying to reach the final and most perfect paradise. In this blissful place a horrific murderspree have been committed and it is up to the player as Lady Love Dies, an exiled investigator, to get to the bottom of the mystery and frame the guilty of this heinous act before moving on the the 25th Paradise.
All in all this is at its core a grand mixture of novel existentialism, a cyberpunkish detective visual novel story and a 3D parkour collect-a thon, all set in the backdrop of a 80s/90s mishmash of psychedelic glampunk aesthetics and quasi-japanese culture. The weird thing is that all the components work brilliantly and bring together a great sense of exploration of a largely abandoned world with a few colorful individuals still lingering. During your explorations you gain access to a few limited move-techs that let you explore new and farther places making the collection feel organic and not at all forced. You also get to hang out with a lesser demonic entity that brings in snippets of lore that knits the world together neatly in small easily digested portions.
The detective game is really hands-on with you gathering the clues with your laptop while interrogating the suspects on everything from their whereabouts to their backstory. A good thing with letting the player be a former exile is that you get to experience great worldbuilding as you investigate and interview the NPCs. I really like the quirky characters you encounter even if a few of them started to get on my nerves after a few harsh interrogations.. The more you hang out with the NPCs the more you get to know them, and subsequently the more information you can mine from them. A mechanic that worked but felt rather arbitrary in my travels back and forth to “level up” my comradeship with the persons I was investigating..
What really worked wonders for me was the sensation of exploring the abandoned world looking for clues as well as the general atmosphere it conjured. This setting is a perfect example of the vaporwave nostalgia of a time and place so awesome and funky that real life could never live up to its mythology, something that in a way resonates with a funky afterlife crumbling in its final hours.. At its heart it is a pastel psychedelic fever dream of a place that has never existed in real life and I love it!
Verdict
In the end Paradise Killer is a solid recommendation if you are into neon-noir detective stories with a slight case of exploration. This game has quite a lot of running around talking to NPCs so you better be one that likes to read stories to get the finer details of the case right. In the end however, it is up to you to present the final verdict and pass judgement on your former peers.

Criminally brilliant oddity of a game that is both visually and audibly stunning.
Who could have guessed that running around in circles would make such a captivating experience?

Dense, well written, and just straight up weird. For the first hour I had no clue what was going on setting wise. By the end of the game I decided that it's one of the most interesting worlds I've ever played in. My advice: look everywhere, interact with everything, collect as much as you can, push every conversation as far as possible. You'll be surprised by how much a dying world can have in it, how many stories you're told, and how absolutely deranged some of these clues' hiding places are.
The lite platforming can be frustrating sometimes. The map is complicated and hard to navigate. Talking to some of these people feels like being put in a saw trap. If you can learn to enjoy the friction, take it as intentional, everything starts making sense. Looking forward to more from this team in whatever form it takes.

Heeeesitant recommend. If you go for it, do so on sale.
Psychedelic vaporwave walking simulator with good tunes, vibing and collectibles first, investigation second. I completed almost everything, didn't bother getting every collectible. Reason why I got most of them, is explained in negatives.
+ Pretty uniquely themed
+ Looks good
+ Rather good music (saves the game)
+ Funny, at times
+ Lore building, while in a nonsensical setting, is consistent
* The only minigame is passable, nothing crazy bad/good
* Investigation struck me as amateurish/nonsensical, which partly makes sense considering the theming, but in the end it did not deliver for me personally
- More or less entire game is combo of fetch quest or walking around collecting items, with occasional dialogue
- Movement upgrades exist, but are hidden in the world and there's no tell where, I missed one of them untill I looked it up after beating the game. On the plus side, you don't need them to achieve an ending at least. They also trivialize certain things like locked gates in some places, since you can skip the "puzzle" of finding the button to press to open it
- Permanently missable items (though I THINK they don't mess with the endings)
- Weird design choices at times, where player's time gets wasted for the sake of being "artsy", example being...
- ...fast travel costs non-renewable resource, if you spend too much you might not be able to get stuff you care about. At least it's unlikely this will happen, I believe you can fast travel about 50-ish times total before getting punished. Not that you'd have a way of knowing that
- Very unclear, I believe deliberately, what gives clues/progress, it could be certain dialogue, it could be collecting things untill you have X, could be fetch quest 6... you never know, which is why I ended up collecting almost everything
- Lite puzzles in the game world while walking are kinda bad, but at least they don't take a lot of time
I didn't really feel like I was investigating as much as I was collecting random items everywhere, though once I was mostly done with that, I was able to focus a bit more on trying to follow the plot accurately. Although I'm pretty sure you could wait untill the final trial and then just go from there with a couple of save scums at worst, even if you didn't pay much attention.
Overall I occasionally enjoyed it, enough to finish it, but that was thanks to the good tunes. I wouldn't suggest going for it unless on sale and you have a clear idea of the type of game that it is... which is "art first, game second".

Very fun, if slightly absurd, detective game with solid mechanics, lots of collectables and funky worldbuilding. May you reach the moon.

The best example of a "Vibes" game for me, while also being engaging and interesting. This is a wild journey, a real hidden gem!