Scene Investigators

not a detective game. it's more like an escape room/deductive reasoning puzzle game given how many crucial details are leftout or left to player to figure out (i.e. who's the dead guy? we don't give you a name or ID found on the body or autopsy reports, you have to find out based on clues left behind and some text messages on a phone we found).

Some of the deductive reasoning parts are quite fun but others require a lot of assumptions and leaps of logic to get to the right answer again because of how little evidence they give to solve.

Some of the scenarios are fun, others are a bit outlandish. For example, there's a case where someone was murdered in an apartment late at night and none of the roommates heard the gunshot. I'd wait for this to go on a steep sale before buying. Fans of puzzles and logic-based games might like it but those looking for a more role-play oriented police work/detective game will be disappointed.

Oddly enough, this plays better on the steam deck than it does on a PC built for high-ultra games. For whatever reason, this one sends my PC into overdrive and I have to turn the graphics down to the lowest level. Even so, the camera random flips upwards to the ceiling and it's just...not a great experience.

I respect the effort that went into this but I feel like this was a huge step back from The Painscreek Killings (the dev's previous game).

It feels like you're trying to solve a riddle where the information the game chooses to give you vs what you don't get feels completely arbitrary, to the point where it feels like the scenes were completely made up to be a needlessly difficult puzzle as opposed to a believable scenario that you're trying to solve.

In the scenario "The 4th Floor - Room 401" you're tasked with (among other things) figuring out who was murdered (which I feel like that information would be already known by the police who drew the chalk outline around the corpse of the person who was murdered, which only further feels like you're just going through made-up scenarios with no actual causality in the world, but hey I'm just a detective what do I know).
One of the big clues is that the main tenant of the apartment worked a job with clearly defined hours, with notes to a babysitter about when they would be returning home. Cool, so since we know times when one of our main characters would be out of the building, surely we can cross-reference that with the police report with information about the crime like we had access to in the tutorial level to potentially cross one name off our list, right? Ha, no, that would be too easy.

The game tries to give plenty of red herrings, which sure that makes sense so you don't just brute-force the solution, but it gets to the point where there's just so much useless information and nowhere near enough explanation for certain events that even if you bother to sift through absolutely everything to figure out what's relevant and what's not, you still need to make logical leaps and assumptions simply because you lack the information to rule out certain possibilities.

It feels artificial. The child conveniently kept an empty bottle of alcohol her father drinks because the smell reminds her of him, so you can conveniently match it to a receipt found in a wallet for the same brand of beer (as if it's impossible for more than one person to drink the same brand of beer, and you can never swap brands once you start). Thank god the mother didn't notice the glass bottle the child meticulously hid by... placing it directly on a table in plain sight, or else she would've thrown it away as she was going to check on the gun safe stored in her child's room for some reason (that also randomly has an etch-a-sketch in it for some reason).

TL;DR the game focuses way too much on trying to be "clever" and "challenging" but instead just becomes tedious, unbelievable and uninteresting.

If you're looking for a feeling of actually being a detective - look no further, The perfect experience in my opinion.

I really enjoyed Painscreek Killings and even though this game is very different I still had a lot of fun with it. The game is very unique in how it encourages you to interact with each scene and draw your own conclusions. A lot of note taking and deductive reasoning is needed but if you enjoy such things I highly recommend this game. (just as a side note though - I hated all the doors I couldn't open, that was very annoying)

Aside from needing specifics and not really having a good grasp on how answering tends to work, pretty good time intensive detective game. There's actually some pretty sad scenarios I wasn't expecting. I just thought I was playing a figure this out or find this piece of evidence. Instead, you match identities, situations, and other information to come to conclusions for the case. Luckily, everything is within the game for you to figure things out. Not a bad buy.

If you are looking for the Painscreek Killings sequel, you won't find it here. Scene Investigators is mainly a simulation game that isn't story based in the slightest which is fine if that's your sort of thing.

The main issue with the game is that it's marketed as a "true detective sim" where not all of the details are present in the crime scene. In reality this is generally either made up by witness testimony or video evidence outside of the crime scene. A lot of the game is guess work and when it's done right, it feels good. The guess work in this game is sometimes purely reliant upon a gut feeling which feels unsatisfactory and frustrating when you spent almost an hour on a single level only for the level to say you got it wrong because you went with the wrong "gut feeling".

Another issue is that you are relying upon circumstantial evidence a majority of the time and none of it is concrete which adds to the fact that you can never be certain if your train of thought is headed in the right direction.

Finally, as others have stated, this is not a detective sim but rather an escape room simulation. I cannot stress how much that rings true whenever you start playing the game.

Overall, you would have to be a very certain type of person to play this game and enjoy it. Unfortunately, I am not that person.

makes you feel like a real detective

Just finished this game, so for mediocre amateur detectives 10hr ingame time is realistic.
I made the HUGE mistake to read the reviews before buying, so my expectations went in the complete wrong way. So i then started the tutorial and it took me 2,5-3hrs until i realized that i was thinking way too complicated for this game. I was so hyped when playing the tutorial, because i thought i finally found THE DETECTIVE GAME. I took several smoke breaks, etc (like the game tells you to lol), was making assumptions in my head, got a ruler to measure distances, tried many, many different way to solve the questions in the tutorial to only come to the conclusion, that you dont have to do that all.
What to expect now from the game?
You can choose between case files. And difficulty (normal difficulty with clues how many clues in which room and if your answer is correct or not. "hardcore" difficulty with no help at all. -> i personally do not recommend playing that difficulty ever)
When you start you get a short summary (introduction) to a scene. Once you arrived you can roam freely within the scene, search for clues, listen to phonecalls, read notes, check purses, etc..
One the one hand i was still a little hyped, because i simply love that genre and kind of game, but on the other hand i was a little bit bummed because how the tutorial ended.

So what to expect now from this game?
It is NOT a detective game, where you put your assumptions, clues, etc. together. (i think this was the attempt from the devs)
Its more like a hidden object game, in which you need to find the informations until you can answer the questions.

This game has really potential. I mean, i couldve stayed in the tutorial scene way longer to solve the case and i wouldnt even mind. I really was in love with this game in the first hours, trying to solve the game "my way". But thats not how the game works. Once i realized i really would have only needed one item to solve the questions really took all the magic away.


Is it worth 23€? I cant answer that question.
Is it worth supporting the devs to improve that game? I guess so
Is it a detective game, in which you can test your theories? No
Will i remember the game in 5 years? No
Has this game potential? Hell yeah
Would i buy it again? propably no




Edit:
Proofreading my review made me realize how awful negative my review is and that the game doesnt deserve that.
I would give this game a neutral review, but steam only offers positive or negative feedback.

Some positive things i want to point out in this game:
The stories are all pretty unique and have depth in them. Yet its up to you and your imagination how deep that is.
The graphics and qualities of the items/clues are pretty good.
The translation to german is pretty good, some minor mistakes, but nothing to worry about.
When i found out that one case is linked to another case, i almost jumped of joy.

The gameplay is broadly similar to Return of the Obra Dinn, in that you reconstruct what happened by the scene left behind, except you're arriving after the action has already been settled. Would recommend for fans of puzzle games, or the studio's first game, The Painscreek Killings.

Don't buy this if you want a detective game. This is more of an escape room with a "detective" theme. You don't solve any crimes, you're just answering riddles using a crime scene as the hint to the questions.

This game changed my life. I played it with my friends and we had A LOT OF FUN T___T. THANK YOU

The cases just make me mad. The game tells you it's not a realistic detective game from the beginning as a cop out, so that it doesn't have to answer for it's own issues.

You're not really given much of anything that a real investigator would be given heading into a crime scene, as far as evidence goes. If you're looking for a game where you're actually piecing together a realistic crime with evidence, this isn't a great representation of that.

If you're looking for an interactive brain teaser that is crime scene themed, you might like it.

Great puzzle style investigation game. More fun with others while streaming on discord and trying to solve the crimes. A lot of the stories could have a few more slight clues to verify some of your theories, but you can figure them out with patience and a lot of notes. If your looking for a puzzle crime scene game then this game is perfect to get that itch.

It's not a detective game. I've noticed how silly it is early on asking me for answer that's solved with opening the case but for whatever reason not provided to us even tho it should be in basic police report that started the case.

Regardless I quickly checked the web about this game as initially went in blind and was able to refund it before it was too late.
You don't solve cases here, you answer questions for cases that have half of the content cut out to make it harder but not logical.

I would love to see more of these games. I appreciate that you can take notes that helps a lot. You really have to think outside the box and perhaps use a tiny bit of outside knowledge to solve these cases. I feel the immersion when entering these cases and you can't help but think about what happened and the story. It can be challenging but it is fun to play with someone else and be able to bounce ideas.

It's a great concept and I can't wait to see how it develops from here.

No need to purchase this masterpiece, I've cracked the mystery. I began to notice a consistent theme among all the crime scenes. When my investigative partner and fellow detective Alexander Wolffe and I were combing through the evidence files we began to see consistencies regarding the time, location and persons involved. Now keep in mind, this investigation has led to an arrest by the United States Marshal Service regarding Officer Allen Jones. It was Allen Jones the whole time.

Signed with love,
Detective YetiB aka Isaac Bane

1. I'd wait for it to go on sale.
2. Great idea but lacks immersion.
3. I still recommend as it makes you think, really think.

The game looks like you'll be a detective and solve cases. You wont. The game totally ruins it's own immersion by having each scenario slated as a training. I felt like this was a game show rather than a detective game. Everything from the setup, to the robotic AI female voice.....immersion killer. You won't solve the entire mystery, instead the you are asked specific questions. I found myself initially just wanting to check the questions off, rather than understanding the entire story. Once again, total immersion killer.

If you want to feel like you're on some type of game show, or being evaluated by fictional instructors while you complete your training rooms, buy it. If you want to be fully immersed in the role of a detective, solving a story rich cases, you'll be disappointed.

This game is a comfortable blend of a Who Dunnit riddle with an investigation-style game like the old CSI games or a good Nancy Drew game. It's been a long time since I found a game like this and I look forward to enjoying many hours of it in the future.

Enjoyed my time with it, definitely worth the asking price. Neat mixture of case types and fairly satisfying vignettes. Couple of intuitive leaps required to solve the cases, but they make that clear as part of the tutorial.

Only slight ding is performance on the final mission. Didn't feel like the art quality justified the FPS drop compared to the other missions.

Hope the devs continue with the formula. Could easily see this turning into a series (or DLC) with more cases and additional mechanics.

Tons of fun to solve puzzles

Obsessed with this game. Wish there were unlimited cases to solve. It's so fun to play by yourself and also with a co-detective. Highly recommend!

I played painscreek killings first and loved it. The atmosphere, looking everywhere for clues and making conclusions until having a unique answer. This game takes a different approach, small scenarios with less clues but faster. The first scenario where all stories connect was my favorite. The other ones eh... not that much. I expected a big case in the "bonus" but it was even easier than the other scenarios. Overall, I recommend it if you enjoy this "cases", it feels like this can be improved even more for future games.

yes

At every step of where this game succeeds at uncovering environmental storytelling, it faceplants and fully disappointing at what the story is that you're actually uncovering. Not to mention that not every case is actually successful at that story telling, so its not even worth it in my opinion to play for that sake.

Long story short: I would not ever recommend this game to a friend because I am sure any friend of mine would find the stories they uncover upsetting and extremely odd.

Long story long?:

I would like to know who wrote this and I would like to know why they made the choices they did.

Upsetting narrative choices like: Child prostitution Mass shootings False rape accusations mental break in a schizophrenic person

Why did you choose this? When you write a story, you have the ability to put anything you want, and the only restrictions are the theme you choose or narrative consistency. There is no cohesive moralistic theme for these cases, there are themes for each case file (with 3 cases in them) but the theme is a location, or the same person's story . These are not moralistic themes so why do we have these upsetting narratives choices? Why is the world you chose for this game a world that sucks where a dad tries to line up his underage daughter to be prostituted whilst another, good dad, dies for trying to make things right? A world where you chose to make a story where an assault accusation is fake and the person dies for it.

These choices: 1. suck and 2. make finding out the stories an exercise in constant disappointment and overtly disturbing. This is not L.A. Noire. The theme of the game is not noire. If it is, it is not even good at having a point to the feeling of ennui that the player experiences, we are not playing a consistent, deep character, you are just literally upsetting your audience for weird reasons.

If this game was the same gameplay but with better stories that actually made me feel some kind of resolution at the end, this would be a different review. I want to see a new version of this game but with a better writer.

A serious step down from Painscreek.

The whole game doesn't feel like I'm investigating crime scenes. It feels like I'm solving long form riddles. Some of the assumptions I was meant to make seem pretty flimsy. I arbitrarily don't have access to very basic information about the case. There is some sort of asinine neo-future robot voice talking to me between missions. Overall I wasn't having any fun.

This game made me use my last 2 brain cells. 100% will play again in the near future!

Got the demo to see what the deductive process looked like in the game. Mostly I was interested because a lot of logic puzzle style games, investigation, etc. often struggle to find the line between providing enough information to figure things out and not making it too easy. This game kills it. I've seen some people talk about logical leaps in the game and how it doesn't give you enough information. I completely disagree, and I've failed almost all of them the first time I tried. Once I realized the reasoning behind the solutions, I realized that I was cutting corners, not thinking things through, or I had completely missed some evidence crucial to making the right decision. Sometimes you have to take a stab, but overall I think they did an awesome job here of providing enough evidence to decidedly answer the questions and discover the chain of events while also ensuring that you were working hard and really trying to find MOTIVE.

To be very clear, this game is quite difficult (I played on the hard setting) and you really have to think from the human perspective, not just A+B=C of finding clues and picking someone. The fun of it is trying to reconstruct the timeline of events and fitting the clues in. Highly recommend. Super fun and a great brain teaser if you're into that sort of thing.

For those who have been eagerly anticipating this kind of mystery investigation game, it offers an exceptional experience that truly stands out, unmatched by anything else.

This is too good omg

Great game, exceedingly difficult but really unique in it's approach to detective games where you have to make logical leaps to solve cases. Forces you to really use your brain as opposed to having your hand held through the solving of a case by being explicitly told everything.

I wasn't frustrated about the lack of obvious info that detectives would have like names of suspects, scene descriptors, etc, given the devs explicitly stated that those things would be lacking. With that being said it probably would've been better if they incorporated that into the story, like instead of an official detective you're part of some shady or underground organization, so you lack all of the basic info that law enforcement would have.

My biggest gripe is when you make a game this difficult and based purely on logic and deduction, you have to be really careful of the gaps in the game's logic and how it can lead to false conclusions. For example, in the last case with the police notebook, it referred to a body that was outside the scene of the crime, not the one on 2nd floor. On one hand it was illogical to think the note about a bloody body was the same clean one upstairs, but it was equally if not more illogical to assume a note from the police at the scene of the crime only makes mention of one body and it's one that is outside of the scene of the crime. Ran myself into circles for hours trying to figure out how the bloody body didn't leave any blood on floor 2, and that it must have been shot in the head but then moved to floor 2 for some reason - really brutal when I had to look it up and learned the note was referring to a different body. Something like that could've been easily cleared up by adding "found outside" in the notebook, and wouldn't take anything away from the game.

This game scratches a 25-year long itch I had. For a loooong time I have been trying to find an old detective game that apparently no longer exists. Scene Investigators does what this mysterious old game did, but better. To put it succinctly, this game lets you do some good old fashioned detectiving. A notepad and a crime scene, and off you go.

It has some bugs that occasionally has me have to restart the game (like noclipping through the building into nowhere, or all art assets going pure white) but nothing that makes me want to put the game down.

100% completion on painscreek killings and was excited to try out another investigation game from the same developer. As a crime story fan, this game makes many things way too difficult that would not be difficult in real life. Even in just the tutorial, why do i have to figure out who the getaway driver was, when the police literally arrested a guy in the van? Give me the guys name that you arrested there, his id, phone records, etc. I brushed it off and went on to the next level of a missing person and instantly didnt want to play anymore. Why can i not have a police report of who made the 911 call, or who is actually missing, or better yet, alibis and other evidence that people provide? If its a missing persons case, i shouldnt have to figure out who is missing, or who was where at what time because i should have a police report with info already. I really wanted to like this game but the severe lack of info that would normally be there in a case is just simply not there, which doesnt make the game challenging in a fun way, it makes it very annoying and strains the brain lol. btw, i played with the clues and hints turned off.

Looking for and finding minute details, deducing and solving mysteries, by being able to answer specific questions about the cases... A bit reminiscent of the CSI-games from many, many years ago...

"Painscreek Killings" was way better. It's okay, though.

I really wanted to like this game, as I'm a fan of similar puzzle/detective games like Meridian 157, Painscreek Killings by this developer, Aurora Hills, etc. But I just couldn't get into Scene Investigators - playing through the first few levels with hints turned off felt incredibly tedious. Each crime scene offers you a certain amount of information in the form of diary entries, body outlines, blood spatters and personal effects (calendars, voice messages) and asks you to answer a series of questions about the nature of the crime.

Answering the questions to 'solve' the case required more guesswork than deduction or investigation. Based on the information given, it's difficult to construct a narrative of events or care about any of the characters' relationships to one another. The clues seem designed to overload you with information to increase the difficulty but the correct answer is often unsatisfying and convoluted. I felt this acutely in Missing, where each level is meant to build on the next but where the characters are disjointed and motives for the crime don't seem to play into what actually happens. It's easy to miss clues because of the graphics/lighting as well.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this game.

Game is unplayable for me, constant hitching and lag, Played about 10mins and just non stop lag on a 4080.12900k build.

I tried liking it but there are a lot of gaps of information that wouldn't be missing IRL like not knowing when the police were notified of the call, not having the ID of the victim despite being completely identifiable, having witnesses but for some reason not a single one of them were questioned or ID'd etc. There are GIANT leaps of speculation that make some of the questions being asked literally impossible aside from guessing which takes the fun out of it for me because there isn't any follow up to it. Some Scenes would literally solve themselves, there's a break-in case where the twist once you investigate is the person who got broken into kills the intruder who was her ex-husband. Yet for some reason you had to figure out who was in the house when the break-in happened and who was killed?? Ask her?? she's the victim and still alive she just shot the dude breaking in case closed upon arrival. If you like escape room type games where shit purposefully doesn't make sense or leaves out info that should be there but is purposefully left out just to make it artificially difficult then you might like this game but if you wanted a real detective reasoning game with logical and realistic info available at an actual crime scene investigation then you won't.