Paradise Killer

I finished this game in 2 days, forgoing trivialities like "food" and "sleep."

There is a LOT more platforming than you would expect from the description. I usually get motion sickness but the accessibility controls were good enough that it wasn't an issue too much when I was playing, so I wanted to give that a shout out.

I finished the game three days ago and have thought about it constantly. It is hard to believe that at some point I considered stopping playing it. So my advice is this: if you ever feel stuck, keep exploring, keep thinking, don’t look for external help. The game gives you everything you need. This is perfect design, perfect writing. You will be rewarded immensely.
This is why we love indies. Simple gameplay, limited resources, and yet a fiercely smart, stylish, entertaining, and, if you interpret it as I think it was intended, heartbreaking experience. Could not recommend it more.

In this game i discovered i'm not fit to be a detective in the real world not because i'm weak in logic but because i have emotions.
It is an open world detective game and features in an island. You will traverse the whole island in order to solve a murder case.
At first, i was expecting the game to be like phoenix wright or danganronpa but its more nearer to disco elysium. Dont get me wrong this is not a RPG. the main difference is the open ended nature of the narrative and the lack checkpoints and detailed maps and structures will make you force to truly understand the information that you were given and remember the places and name of the persons involved.
You can start the game anytime you want and end it anytime you want. Game will not tell explicitly tell you if you got everything or not. Game will not also punished you if you blame the wrong person or not. This is your game and you just have to live whatever your decision to it.
It got all of common features of detective game. A laptop that contain your notes about the person, statements, and evidences that you gather. Memorable and greatly written characters and a trusty old sidekick that will explain some things to you.
Most of the cases doesn't have feature actual evidence and relies more on circumstantial evidence, so you are require to talk more frequently to people. As you started to unravel the truth bit by bit, the world started to open up more and more and you start to discover new things, evidences, and new path to your case. You will develop multiple paths to the truth and trying to weed out those paths and find the true path. Sounds like a typical detective or mystery game. but the thing is, i think most players missed this, is you have a choice if you're going to be an ideal detective or not. I chose the latter and let my emotions get to me. i deliberately let someone take the fall instead of the characters that i liked but guilty as well. Few games has feature like this and it is one of the best feature of this game.
For the aesthetics, world is bigger than i expected, it features a small town, mountains, beaches and factories. Evidences and people are everywhere. Even the collectibles. The collectibles are truly optional but every collectible that you collect features information about the world that you're traversing.
One of the highlights of this game is the music, The Vaporwave infused soundtrack make you desensitized to f up world and case that you're working on. As one of the characteristics of vaporwave music, it makes you sentimental and makes you familiar to things even though you never actually experienced it. I never expect to be grooving while making blood sacrifices and having conversation to the people involved on how gruesome the crime is. Voice acting is incredible done well too.
Downside, it can get quite slow at first since, the world is totally new, you need to discover more about the world and also the collectibles. if you want to get the perfect achievement for this, you need to tally collect stuff scattered around the world ubisoft style. It's a lot and some of them requires platforming.
Final words. This game has a lot of twists and turns and so many storylines to explore or not if you choose not to. This is one of the few games, i really feel that i'm an actual detective, you only have your notes and youre the one needed to figure out the connections of this in the case or events. Memorable characters, the open world is really great coming from an indie devs (don't expect AAA type of open world) and a refreshing take to the detective genre of games.
Some people treats this as another phoenix wright/danganronpa games, you will be disappointed if you expect the game to be that kind. I'm having a hard time coimparing this game to another. i believe what kaisen game works created is truly one of a kind and exceptional. You have gained a new fan and will buy and play Promise Mascot Agency and look forward to your future projects. I am bit surprised that i didn't see this game in most yt videos for the top indie games of 2020
Truly underrated gem. A must have for adventure loving gamers.

This game was nothing short of inspiring for me, so I'm going to write up a meaty review while I'm still inspired.
It all takes place on a densely-packed island you have complete freedom to jump and sprint around in. The different sections of the island all blend into each other, so it's really easy to feel lost at the start. You can view markers for where the important characters are, allowing you to navigate until you get a feel for the layout. It was fun to figure out new parkour paths as I revisited old locations with new information, which I had to do a lot. You can unlock more movement options to make this more fun. The lack of a grappling hook is a crime, though.
The investigation process of this game was surprisingly interesting to me. I think the core mystery was written by methodically planning out every step of it, and then stress-testing it so it makes sense from every angle of approach. The end result is that you can ask literally any character any case-related question and they will answer in character, even if they don't know the answer but personally know someone who does. Solving the case is incredibly free-form and the game makes it clear that you yourself can decide how many clues are enough to solve a mystery. The game lets you start the final trial whenever you want regardless of how complete your evidence is.
I want to stress how cool the free-form nature of the game is. There is a character called Witness that you can access pretty much any time but I decided for some reason to not visit him until near the end. This decision kinda mythologised him for me, as other characters would occasionally mention him and his role on the island and I built up my own idea of him as I played. Despite him being a major character, the game didn't punish me at all for not talking to him for most of it. Any gamer can play this game by blocking off characters or locations to make the mystery feel a little different but still be ultimately solvable.
Talking to characters is pretty good. I really like that they all come off a bit cold and will not break down if interrogated. Even when they're wrong they will all be defiant of you. Their coldness towards you isn't as cool in the "hangout" interactions since most of them are pretty dry when a more casual tone would have been better. It's also obvious from these hangouts which characters the devs like more. I noticed some consistent grammar issues, especially with Yuri. A lot of missing commas...
The coldness of the characters is also a bit out of place when they're being executed in the trial. The game makes it clear that they're still emotionally human but they don't act like it. They don't try to plead or get violent or escape or compromise and Lady Love Dies doesn't have any internal thoughts about it: she just shoots them and that's it.
The story surprised me. From the art, I kinda typecasted it to be a certain way but it ended up being closer to Warhammer 40k than Steven Universe or whatever (I don't know anything about either but I'm sure I'm right). I like how open the characters are about the cruelty of their setting and they choose to rationalise it instead of denying it. It would have been a bit plain if the mystery was all about how this paradise island is pretending to be nice but is actually super duper evil, but instead the mystery is focused on the murders and the dark nature of this world is open for discussion.
It felt really clear to me that the world itself was fundamentally hiding something. The natures of gods and demons felt like it was building to a revelation about the truth/fraudulence of god worship. Almost everything associated with the gods was cruel, so I was looking for a dialogue path that would suggest that the gods are a type of demon, which would somewhat explain Damned Harmony and Enchanted Blue. Another theory I had was that the Syndicate are misinterpreting the will of the dead gods when they enslave and sacrifice humans and that is why they stay away from the islands. The dialogue path I was looking for to really explore this issue never came. Henry, Shinji, and Witness let me down a bit because they didn't want to explore this at all despite feeling appropriate for it. Witness is still the best character though :)
I also wish there was a way to challenge the establishment itself at a personal cost, instead of just being a pawn for the system no matter what you do. As funny as Judge is when they're being your #1 fan and hype-man, I did want to turn against them but there was no way to.
When it comes to collecting things unrelated to the case, this game chokes you with two hands and a wedding ring. Literally wherever you go, you can collect:
- trinkets
- songs
- coloured crests
- Shinji interactions (he is the Joker)
- god lore
- side quest / puzzle items
- whisky bottles
- blood crystals (money)
- soda
- skins
Each of these are their own distinct type of collectable. This can either be very intimidating or very encouraging depending on the gamer. I ended up collecting most things just by backtracking between locations as part of my normal detective investigations, and then actively hunting for the things I missed at the end with a certain upgrade. Something that REALLY sucks is the player's inventory: nothing is categorised or searchable or even in alphabetical order. It's practically useless for the kind of collectathon game this is. Another thing that sucks is that the game creates a pop-up that you have to manually close every time you pick up anything. There are hundreds of things to pick up, so this gets annoying really fast.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that the hacking minigame required for finding some items and clues is shockingly easy at all levels. If a hacking system has less variation and difficulty than Fallout 3's, then it needs a hard redo.
tl;dr Free-form detective game that delivers greatly on the free-form and detective parts. Has a collectathon side that your mileage may vary on, but it doesn't takes away from the main game. Also this game requires you to pay to fast travel, which is stunning and brave and honestly every exploration game should do this unironically.

This game was an absolute blast, the most fun I've had with a game in a long time!
It's a convolutate murder mystery in a very weird setting, and at first I had no clue what was going on or who anyone was. It took me a while to get my bearing in the setting and with the characters, but discovering more lore about the world and people was extremely fun and the more the plot dragged on, the more I was wondering who - if anyone - was actually innocent, not who was guilty. So I kept investigating, finding new clues, learning new things from the characters, and in the end, made a perfect case, convicting everyone who deserved it (and executing them). The ending was pretty satisfying, and made investigation every nook and cranny worth it. You could also start the trial without any evidence and fail to convict anyone or the wrong person, so the game rewards you for actually doing the legwork.
It took me around 13 hours to explore everything, finish all the side content and collectibles and I enjoyed almost every minute of it. There were a few annoying moments, mostly the sub-par platforming required to get all of the collectibles (which you need if you're a completionist, but not for the main story), and honestly there were a few too many of those. But that's pretty much my only complaint. Other than that, I fully recommend this game to anyone who likes murder mysteries or discovering weird gaming worlds with pretty messed up lore.

Many people talk about their frustration with the ending of this game in that it isn't as interactive as people expected it to be. I can appreciate what people wish the game could have been; but for what its worth, if you put in the time to find all the evidence I found it fun that I was able to put together a solid case presentation to Judge.
I myself am not great with platforming, and there were admittedly many moments where I felt disheartened that I wouldn't be able to continue to the next plot hook. I can say that I finished the game with many hidden items still to collect but with all main plot hooks researched to completion. Its a fun game.

The complaints about the mystery/detective part being a little underdeveloped are fair, especially the climax, and first-person platforming isn't great. But who cares when the game is this cool! Everything is absolutely drenched in style, the visuals are bonkers, the soundtrack is an amazing city-pop/jazz fusion mix that perfectly fits, and they've created a world and lore that's bizarre, terrifying, and deeply compelling. If you go in expecting a simpler detective game, I think a lot of people will enjoy exploring Island 24 and its secrets.