Tangle Tower

I've been a little under the weather lately. I was scared to death that I had the flu, but when I went to the doctor, it turns out that it was just a respiratory tract infection. However, it was still keeping me down pretty hard, so I couldn't do a lot of the things I had intended to do this weekend involving finishing up the move to my new house, and instead spent the vast majority of it in bed, playing this game. As a result, I kind of flew through it.

I like point and click adventure games, in general. I'm a big Touch Detective fan, and this is a genre that has endured since the DOS days. However, those older games can get "moon logic" level "nintendo hard" which can rob them of most of the enjoyment that you can get out of them, because they were kind of meant to be played for years. I'm not a huge fan of getting stuck on a single game for years. This game had the perfect amount of difficulty for me. I never needed a guide, but, I still felt smart when I solved puzzles.

The artwork in this game is beautiful. It's a delight. The backgrounds are apparently all hand-painted, and the character designs are whimsical and stylized in a way that I really enjoy. I like games that don't go for realism- I think it's getting really overplayed, to be honest. Having a unique and visually appealing art style is important, and I feel like recently there has been a push in that direction from indi developers. Too many AAA games are trying to go for realism, in a way that reminds me of the FMV craze of the early 90s, and it's nice to see a video game treated as an art form, because that's what it is. Every frame of this game is a painting. And, once you beat the game, you unlock an art section that walks you through the process from concept to final implementation of the locations, characters, and clues. That feature is really nice, it's similar to what you would see in an art book.

This is one of the few games that truly holds my entire attention when I play it. Normally, I listen to a podcast or something while playing a video game, but I didn't feel the need to do that with this game. Part of that was the atmospheric sound design and full voice acting. The developers and actors really put their all into each of these parts, and it shows. It allows you to really get lost in the game, and plays with the visuals perfectly. I actually find that to be pretty rare for me; I feel like my bar for that kind of thing is fairly high, so this is one to actually play on the TV if you want to, because it's going to hold your attention and suck you in.

The only think I didn't like about this game is that I felt like it was too short. There's only the one case to solve. I expected it to be like a Touch Detective game with multiple cases, and I was surprised when I solved one case and the game was over. I was left sitting there like, "Oh... this is it?" Now, to be fair, that's a decent problem to have, because it means that the audience enjoyed the game and wanted more, but it's also something that I wish I had known going in, because it is really short; it's less than 10 hours long and I did everything that you can do. I 100% completed it in less than 10 hours, while sick. So I would like to see future titles have multiple cases per game, like the Touch Detective series, even if they charged more for each game.

The actual murder mystery itself was well written, and all of the characters were interesting. I didn't solve it instantly, and piecing together all the clues was fun. I have some issues with the big reveal, but nothing game-breaking or that made me feel stupid or cheated in any way. All in all, this is a really fun game and I reccomend it!