Noir Syndrome

TLDR: Not bad, just not as good as I’d hoped.

General Thoughts/Overview:

Noir Syndrome (NS) is an excellent idea executed with extremely limited success.

The base idea of the game is you are a detective hunting a serial killer. The twist in this case being a short tight gameplay loop with randomised characters. The villain is different every time, the scenes are different every time, and the evidence is different every time. The idea is to produce a theoretically endless set of investigations and each investigation takes 5-10 minutes. There is some progression to be had, with ingame ‘badges’ being cumulative, and every few badges giving permanent perks, such as lockpicks, bullets, or cash.

Sadly, the result isn’t great. In some ways there is too much randomisation, in others, not enough. We are limited by time, but time flows unequally. We are limited by hunger, but our fullness depletes based on actions, which are limited by scene. We are limited by scene investigations, but evidence can be found literally anywhere, as can the pool of suspects. We are limited by destination choices, but the city remains forever unchanged, and only different ‘events’ at each location effecting the volume and type of evidence you can find.

Pros:

• The gameplay loop is compelling, but unfortunately extremely repetitive.
  
• The music provides atmosphere and is enjoyable for a few games, but it gets old very quickly and I found myself turning it off.
  
• There is a range of freedom and events. You can get people gathered, you can rob a safe, you can shoot folks, you can collect evidence and eliminate suspects, and you can make educated, or even blind guesses. NS doesn’t try and force a ‘correct’ way of playing on you. It will, however, give you the consequences of your actions. Sometimes swiftly and at the end of a gun.
  

• So repetitive. The game is great for a short sharp couple of rounds, but it gets real old real fast. This is doubly effected by the lack of variation. Even though the game boasts theoretically thousands of combinations, really the gameplay only provides few ways of dealing with the situations.
  
• The evidence collection, time and hunger limitations, and even the purchasing systems are super basic. There is no nuance to the game and it’s basically one button does it all, with a secondary shoot button so you don’t accidently murder your informant.
  
• There is no story and no actual investigation. You’re not going to feel like a genius splicing clues together, and if you get enough cash you can literally buy a hint for the first letter of one of the killers’ names. Why you can’t get the entire name is beyond me… but it is what it is.
  

• A complete overhaul of the mechanics to better fit the setting and make more sense. I propose that the hunger system be essentially identical, but it dictates how many interactions you can do over the course of a single day. Food needs to be purchased and consumed, and the quality remains different, but it gives you more or less interactions each day. This would allow the game to be have more choices, better hide the killer, allow different scenes to provide different information in a more consistent manner (such as not finding clues in random places), and make the player feel smart when they start to work out how to scour the map for stuff. I acknowledge this could stretch the gameplay dependent on the number of actions possible in a day.
  
• Mix the map up. Have primary key locations, infrastructure locations, and secondary locations. They can overlap in function, but it would give each game a unique feel, while changing very little. Just a few different ‘rooms’ which can connect procedurally as well would also give the map locations character, and could provide secondary stories to the player investigating.
  
[*] More music, just a few more noir themed tunes could really breathe some life into the game.

Keywords: pointlessness, ennui, detective, private eye, .38 special, clue-hunting, broke, orderlessness, usual gang of tropes, gangland, tick-tock, brass knuckles

I hate this city, and I hate everything in it. Not such a feat when you can consider what little little there is to this burg, but it makes an honest stab at living simple turn into simply miserable.

I originally set up shop here for what anyone could've easily mistaken for decent reasons: it's cheap, low-maintenance and reminded me of an easier time in my life that, upon reflection, may or may not not have actually been. But you spend long enough here and you'll come to recognize the oppression hiding behind those inviting overtures. And to someone who once did time, the oppressive hymn of marking off your calendar is a familiar one.

You leave your house in the morning thinking that the promise of a new day will grant you a gift of the unexpected. Well, expect this: randomness. Nonsensical happenstance, and you walk pell-mell into this miasma of superficial chance as broke and as clueless as you ever were and when the clues eventually do come to you, they lead nowhere. Like I said: "nonsense." Not worth the money I don't have, and not the worth the time I need.

There's got to be better places to make a living than here. I hate this city.

Without very many logic-deduction style crime games to choose from, Noir Syndrome fits snugly into a largely unrepresented subgenre of mystery.
It has the basic logic features down, it has badges (in-game achievements), challenges (which aren't always in tandem with solving the mystery), plenty of choices in locations to explore, and most importantly - replayability.

The main jest of the game is collecting a list of possible suspects and then narrowing them down based on gender, law affiliation and occupation/hobby. Once you know how the game works, you can easily deduce the culprit with the right clues.

The game may sound tame so far, but it goes a step further by adding a few tension elements: The killer can kill off the other suspects, the killer moves around, the killer can kill you, you can kill the killer or anyone else, you need bullets to use the gun, you need to eat to keep going, you need lockpicks to unlock doors, and there's a time limit.

There's also a 'Dinner Party' mode, which has the basic gameplay of the main game, but with a few twists: you start with a list of all the suspects, you're all confined to one house, they're all in disguise and look almost all alike, they take turns going crazy and will shoot you if you're nearby. This last bit actually is more important than you may think at first.

In all, if you're a fan of the more traditional style mysteries that existed before CSI, you may like this. It fits mostly in the noir/gumshoe category of mystery (hence the name), but not too far from the detective qualities of Clue, Holmes and Christie.

Edit: fixed typo.

Upon playing Noir Syndrome, I did question the meaning of “procedurally generated”. When I think of procedural generation, I think of something like Diablo, or Don’t Starve, not to mention all the rogue-like games out there. The point of procedural generation in games is to create a world which varies just enough to allow re-playability.

The way this works is very simple. You talk to people and collect a list of suspects. Once you have enough evidence, and through the process of elimination, you can arrest some one on your list. That is essentially the game. It reminds me somewhat of Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego, where you gather descriptors of your villain to finally arrest them.

Asides from the main mystery, you can try to complete challenges (for example, use a lockpick five times), collect costumes, hunt bounties, as well as ensuring you are well-fed (using money you gain from bounties or find in the world). You can also use your gun if need be. But these are all little things that have been added to the game in an attempt to create depth without actually doing so. When it comes down to it, all this extra is for naught.

When you solve the case, game over. If you want to replay, you start from scratch, with the killer being randomly generated, along with all the suspects and evidence. In reality, this game is not procedurally generated, rather it has a randomly generated outcome. In effect, the world, the mystery, and the story do not change from one game to the next, only the clues you use to solve them.

I think the effort put into making this game procedurally generated has, in turn, detracted from any of the noir-ish qualities it should have. Because it’s procedurally generated, characters don’t have personalities, or even distinguished faces (the pixel graphics are far from slick). While an intro sets the serial killer up to be some Egyptian cult fanatic, nothing more is ever mentioned or resolved around it.

Setting something in the mid-20th century, with Speakeasys, diners and the mob are not enough to make something “noir”. It’s the cynicism of the protagonist, the fatalism of the femme fatale, or the moral ambiguity of the resolution. Noir Syndrome does not have a story at all, let alone any of these things. The “noir” concept is a skin applied to a simple puzzle game.

But the soundtrack is at least jazzy.

Noir Syndrome is a little puzzle distraction in the same vein as Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?. There is not a huge amount of depth to the puzzle, to the world, or to the re-playability, so I would hold off on buying the game for full-price, or perhaps buy the Android version instead.

A game where if you rob a vault when it's a murder scene you get away scott free!

A very fun little game. When I first started this game I seriously had no idea how you were supposed to do anything but eventually I figured it out and started having more fun.

I kind of like that the game doesn't explain that much to you and the badges and costumes are fun to get. I'm really liking the additions that have been added to the game such as the hunting club and sandbox mode.

I do wish there was more to it, like a mode where you can play and solve as many cases as you can before you die (to try and see what you can do before you die each run) but still it's quite fun and a good time waster.

The music is also quite fun and while I have probably died more than I have actually solved a case, I still have fun even when i'm fighting for my life.

Also being able to pay off the mob/police makes life so much easier.

Though this game is not too replayable, it is still a good game. There are only two cases. Which does hold it back a bit, but it still has enough charm to be a good game. Just expect to play it every once and a while. Get it if you like detective novels, movies, etc. Or if you just want a murder case to solve.

First of all, let's get something out of the way: this game was QUITE CLEARLY made for a device such as a tablet. Now that that's out of the picture, Noir Syndrome is a very strange take on what one could call the detective games' genre.

Gameplay is a simple "look for clues" ritual, where you click the investigate button near a backdrop and have the potential of finding evidence that points you in the direction of one of the suspects or you click the same button near a person and talk to them, potentially adding someone to your suspects' list. The reason this is quirky is because at the end of a session you may not have had either enough evidence to point you to the real culprit (and thus force you to guess who the culprit is for the session) or, and this one's a real pain and somewhat usual phenomenon, you don't even have the culprit on your suspects' list yet; if this is the case, you have lost, period.

Other game mechanics are a hunger system, where you are forced to interact with salespeople to get food of various qualities for differing prices, a wanted system, where either or both the police and the mob are out to get you, and essentially a pressuring system where at some points during the game the culprit will send hitmen out to kill you. There's also a "quest" system so you can earn a little more money either by killing assigned targets or delivering mail to the intended recipient, but for both of those you need to have found the respective items to access the quest givers via the quirky random chance while inspecting the background, which is the main source of your character getting hungry by the way...

Noir Syndrome comes with three difficulty modes where the main factors are how awful are your starting conditions and how expensive every commodity in the game is. Yes, that steak isn't going to pay itself in Impossible Mode if you haven't been improving your money-hoarding skill that persists through different game sessions, so you'll have to start at Easy and work your way towards it.

...Which, after all, is Noir Syndrome's greatest sin. The game is awfully very much about strategy and luck, as you have to choose which areas you go into in order to get clues while taking into account if the police or the mob have a chance to be represented in the area, and also managing your scarce money to buy bullets, lockpicks and the ever-important food at different locations. But after you've raised your money-hoarding skills to the point of making money become just another number you casually look at while at the hardest of difficulties, it's almost like you're playing on Easy again if you have the right strategy, and the game becomes once again about how lucky you are to find the clues you need. This makes Noir Syndrome fit into the category of mindless fun: at some point, you'll be doing something mechanical, taking the same options as you play essentially the same game over and over again. And it can stop being fun to become boring.

As you've noticed, I don't recommend this game. The reason? It simply isn't worth the full cost, and it hinges on your willingness to continue grinding away until the game becomes "easy enough" at each of the difficulties you'll be playing in. If the game was somehow grander, most of the clues less redundant and/or less narrowing, or if the ideal strategy wasn't too mechanical to the point of almost making you shut out cognitive thought and forcing you to reacquire it when something immediate happens (such as a very innoportune hitman that once killed triggers the police/mob to want to gun you down), I would have recommended this game because it is, surprisingly, fun to go around poking random stuff for random clues which may or may not be enough to catch the culprit.

This game is exactly as advertised, a procedural detective game. Sadly the result is a bland experience.
The clues, suspects, and locations where something can be found are random, this also means that the story -- such as it is -- makes no sense at all. What this leads to is a detective game where you don't care about the story and you just go about at random.
And the gameplay just isn't interesting. Everywhere you go it is the same. Walk up to someone or something and press Z. Walk up to the next person or thing and press Z. Shoot and kill someone with X. Z, walk, X, walk, Z, Z.

Good concept, but sadly lacking execution.

Just play Don't Starve. This game had alot of potential, but the fact that you play as a Uganda refugee really crippled it out the gate. You'll spend more time worrying about the extremely half-assed starvation mechanic than you will worrying about who the next victim will be. Even worse is the fact that, despite this game's advertised replayability, you'll just be visting the same 12 or so locations trying to find clues that won't really narrow down your search since none of them seem to narrow down anything down past "civilian/mobster/police". Ontop of all of this is the horrible coating of generic indie-dev laziness known as "retro graphics". Someone get these guys a color wheel, seriously. There is no redeeming quality about the "artistic choices" made here.

Good concept, terrible execution, what the fuck why is there a starvation mechanic.

Noir Syndrome isn't a terrible game, but it lacks in-depth gameplay. In this game, you solve cases by asking questions and finding clues, but the way you do so is redundant. How do you find clues? Rather than actually looking for a clue, you just press the 'Z' button whenever you stand near something interactable and hope you get lucky enough to get a clue. In other words, you don't find clues in this game; you just wait until the game decides to hand you a clue. How do you get information out of people? The same exact way. Press 'Z' and hope they give you information. No story, no dialogue options, just a 'Z' button. A successful detective game needs to make the player feel like they are actually solving the case themselves. Make them find the clues; make them interrogate suspects. Don't reduce everything a good detective game needs to one simple button. This game is playable, but the shallow gameplay will ultimately lead you to let the game sit in your library untouched for a long time.

It's a really simple logic puzzle game at it's core.
You walk around at a frustratingly slow pace and keep pushing the "Z" key. That's basically it, you collect clues and the names of suspects. Once you have a suspect that matches your clues i.e. "female, mobster, dancer" you go to the location where the culprit is and push the "Z" key again to arrest them. Riveting!

Add to that an absolutely annoying and unecessary hunger feature, that requires you to purchase food at regular intervals and you have a game that could have been pretty fun but gets repetetive the 3rd time around.

If you're looking for a challenging detective puzzle game you won't find it here.

I may have gone into this expecting a little much for a procedurally generated mystery game that I bought for a dollar, but there really does not seem to be that much in the way of content. I am willing to admit that maybe I'm not willing to root it all out, but after an hour on Normal I feel like I was able to reliably solve mysteries by blindly searching everything and arresting the first person that met two or three criteria.

Also, having the COMMIT MURDER button right next to the CHECK NOTES button is really unfortunate game design.

I had high hopes for this game, and while it might possibly be worth it's sale price, I don't recommend it at the full cost.
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There isn't really any mystery to solve. People are dying, but the clues you can find are rather meaningless, and in the end you need to just guess who is the murderer, (and with as many suspects as there are, it is nearly impossible to correctly choose your suspect). The idea of there being a new "mystery" every time is entirely laughable, since it takes place in the same town with what might as well be the same people. While I wouldn't mind this normally, they advertise it as one of their main selling points. On the postive side, the pixel graphics fit the noir style nicely. The music, (however basic is is), also helps set the tone.
Basically, in the end, what we have here is a game of "Clue" or possibly even "Mafia", just without any deduction or the fun of other people being there to enjoy it with you. I do not recommend it at full price, I'm simply glad that I got it on sale.

Well isn't this a nice little game, a creative idea executed fairly well.

The idea behind it is you're a private investigator in a violent town, trying to arrest an assassin. As a result, you investigate this filthy town while trying to stay alive.
The clues are randomly placed in the environment and you have to investigate every nook and cranny to get the clues that will reveal who the true culprit is. Some clues are more decisive than others, for example, a bullet casing may indicate the culprit is a Mobster or a member of the Police, while a Police ID precisely tells you the culprit affiliation.
You have to figure out 3 things : Affiliation (Civilian, Mobster, Policeman), Job (Driver, Chef, etc.) and Sex (Male or Female).
Of course you can just guess and try an arrest but if you get it wrong you fail.
As to how gather suspects, you have to talk to the people in various places, crime scenes don't have people lingering about but have generally more clues and some events make people amass in a place, particularly if they're from one affiliation.
Anyway, this becomes quite important when playing a higher difficulty than normal, because either the police or the mob want you dead, so the investigation becomes much harder with shootouts, especially since bullets are limited and costly, that's why it's wise to avoid places where the affiliation that wants you dead hangs out.
Bullets aren't the only thing that can kill you however, hunger can as well, you have to manage your money to buy the right resources like lockpicks, bullets or food to survive, everytime you investigate or talk with someone you get hungrier until you die.
Some places need lockpicks to explore fully and you can even rob some places where hopefully you don't get spotted or you make another faction your enemy.
Everytime you start a new game, the culprit and the clues are randomized, as is the faction that hunts you down, the events of course are randomized too, as is the place you can find clues.
The gameplay is free and you can go whenever you want mostly, but you have a time limit in days to catch the culprit... or you might just go on a murder spree.
All in all this is a repeatable noir detective story with a great soundtrack and a great feel to it. Recommended, but might get old pretty fast.

One dimensional, lacking in interest and overall disappointing game.

There's no real substance to the 'clues' or game mechanics, and there's nothing really detective-y about it. There are murders which produce crime scenes; this could have been cool - it could have featured a chalked out body with higher probability of clues, and witnesses to question. Instead, you get the same area, and gameplay simply boils down to pressing Z all over a few locations until you have enough clues to blame-by-logic.

Feels like an iPhone game, plays like a free flash tite.

Game really has the incredible atmosphere and flavor of film noir. Proceduraly generated events are satisfying and suggest a greater story. The game only starts showing its flair and difficulty on hard mode, so its best to use normal a bit like a tutorial. This game is well worth it, so give it a go!

You have two weeks before the mysterious killer known as Anubis assassinates the mayor. Ask around to find suspects, and narrow down your list by finding clues to the muderer's identity. Try to avoid the wrath of the police and the mob, because they'll kill you on sight. Or play the dinner party mode, where you're locked in with the killer, and the other guests occasionally go mad and kill you. Collect badges to level up your subsequent characters, and play on three difficulty modes, all of them challenging. Noir Syndrome is great fun with procedurally generated mysteries that usually don't last longer than ten minutes, but there are some obvious flaws.

Controls are fully rebindable, as they always should be in a PC game. There are only five action keys, but a couple would have been helpful. The "investigate" key handles all actions except shooting, which is quite annoying when someone is standing in front of an object you want to investigate or a door you want to enter, but the game insists on making you talk instead.

The interface is a bit clunky as well. Using multiple screens to try to manage a very small amount of information on the suspects is rather ridiculous. The game doesn't let you cross off suspects who don't match the clues you've gathered, and you can't un-designate a culprit once you've selected one (though you can change which one you'll arrest if you talk to him or her).

The tutorial is bare-bones; some will appreciate learning the mechanics on their own, but it would have been nice to learn more before being thrown into the game. On the whole, though, there's a lot of pixelly fun to be had here.

Noir Syndrome is one of those games that falls into the quirky category of "For its price, it's pretty good." In spite of the claims of the developer, to say that each playthrough of Noir Syndrome generates a new and unique procedurally generated Murder Mystery story is a bit of a stretch. That being said, it's still a fun puzzler that mixes in enough demand for quick reflexes, gut instincts, and the ability to bluff with confidence to make it a very worthwhile experience.

In Noir Syndrome, you play an anonymous flatfoot who wakes up one day to a city under siege from the mysterious murderer Anubis. You are given 14 days to explore the city, interviewing citizens for tips and suspects, searching through garbage cans and police desks for clues, and avoiding the bullets of the police and the mob (assuming you were rude enough to tick off either party somehow). Over time, Anubis will strike again and again, reducing your score but also helping weed out suspects. Visiting crime scenes burns through your valuable time, but searching for clues and chatting with citizens burns calories, so between the actual detective work you'll need to scrounge up funds and get a bite to eat. You can also spend cash on tips from the mob, lockpicks to aid in your more "thorough" investigations, and bullets for taking out those who take offense at your methods.

Once you have enough clues and suspects, you'll be able to narrow down the names and know for certain who your man is. Of course, if time's running short, you might be forced to make an educated guess and hope for the best; given the choice between walking into a nest of furious gunmen and placing your faith in a coinflip, sometimes half-baked detective work is really your best bet. Each game takes about 20 minutes to complete, so it's not like you aren't committed to success, but at the same time losing isn't exactly the end of the world.

Eventually, the game will get a touch dull; there's only one city layout, and the number of variables they can flip around really isn't that huge. Fortunately, there are three difficulty settings which drastically affect the experience, 30 in-game Achievements to acquire that provide you with bonuses for future cases, and an alternate Dinner Party play mode that forces you to find your man in a fraction of the time of a normal game, and which unlocks a variety of goofy costumes (always a solid selling point).

Noir Syndrome accomplishes all this with a presentation better suited for an NES than a radio serial broadcast. It might not scratch any authentic murder-mystery itches, but it's a clever little puzzler that's well worth the price of admission.

Very fun game, especially the replay value.

Your in game achievements allow you to start with stacking perks. Like start with a few dollars, bullets, etc.

It has a lot of depth despite being quite simple, which is a strength I believe.

There is a lot to this game, I don't want to spoil, but things like shooting someone who could have given you a clue, by accident.. Or that person being Mob or Police... you can see where this goes.

It's a fun game. You can solve a case fast if you are taking a break, or take your time to build a strong case to be sure.

I found this game a little too challenging. Often I'd run out of time before I'd met everyone, or I'd find I had missed a crucial bit of evidence that means I couldn't properly identify the killer. The tutorial is too basic and doesn't really cover off the more detailed aspects of the gameplay. If you don't search a crime scene immediately, it's gone for good. You get the same answers from potential suspects and their accusers which doesn't really give anything away. I wouldn't recommend this to the casual gamer.