Tangle Tower

Great addition to the series! If you played any of the other games in the Grimoire series, or played any of the demos, and liked it then you'll like this one too. Highly recommend this game.

Very good. The puzzles all made sense and it was good narrative but also not too long. The art style is great, and the lines are really fin. The controls work well.

Such a fun game. Loved the mystery, the story line and the characters very much. The soundtrack was beautiful minus the creepy one item... anyways. Definitely recommend if you enjoy playing visual novel games with interactive puzzles and mystery. Also Poppy and Flora are so cute.

Simple and fun point & click adventure game.

O jogo tem um visual e trilha sonora excelente, a gameplay também visto que você é obrigado a se envolver no universo para concluir a investigação, os puzzles, em sua maioria, são bem legais e proporcionam um desafio intermediário. A única coisa que me deixou um pouco desapontado foi o final, que foi muito abrubto, assim como sua explicação. Dito isso 8/10

This game has a lot of reading/listening but it didn't take long to suck me right in. A very fun mystery to solve, and not high stress at all. All of the voice acting was great. Because I am a fidgety person it helped to knit while listening to the long character speeches.

Detective Grimoire 2.0. Bigger, better, snazzier.

The first installment was such a polished, wholesome affair that it was hard to imagine how it could be improved (if you keep in mind that puzzles were geared towards children), but Tangle Tower managed to accomplish that. Well, if not “improved” as per dictionary definition, than at least go a bit longer, dive a bit deeper and baffle with more complexity.

Cliff notes below.

- The scope of the story is more substantial here. Sure, it’s still silly (in the best possible, cartoon kind of way), but it has richer relationships, backgrounds and motivations, and layers that stand out next to more one-note, although very well executed, first part.

- The world, in turn, also got larger. The exploration of the mansion not only offers plenty of places to snoop in, but some of them open up only later in game, when a certain threshold of investigation has been reached, which keeps the enticement level high.

- The puzzle element is where the change is the most pronounced. Difficulty increased significantly, but again, bear in mind, only comparatively to “untangle this thread” kid-level ones from the first game. It is still very easy for an adult to do, but now you actually have to spend several minutes to solve the task at hand, and children would, undoubtedly, be more challenged.

- It’s only unfortunate that the deduction process is still of the hand-holding variety, but it’s on par with the overall direction the series seems to pursue, and it’s entertaining regardless.

- Visually it’s just as much of an eye candy as it was before, but a lot more detailed this time. Rooms of mansion inhabitants look distinctly unique, the quirkiness of the cast is preserved and elevated, and animations are just as buttery smooth. Polish and style personified (gamified, I suppose). There’s an art book that shows how much thought and care went into the art of this game, and it’s worth a look after you finish.

- The cinematic tracks got cinimaticker… Ok, ok. It’s, AGAIN, a remarkable score tailor-made for each character, and it absolutely sounds like it could roll during end credits on a big screen. Not sure how SFB Games keep pulling this off but I’m glad they do.

If you enjoyed Detective Grimoire, I’m struggling to come up with reason you wouldn’t enjoy Tangle Tower – it’s an expanded version of everything you liked. If you’ve never played Detective Grimoire (you don’t need to in order to enjoy this game), what you’ll get is a family-friendly, exquisitely polished in every single way – visuals, sound, story – murder mystery adventure where challenges lay on the easy side but the whole thing is so darn entertaining that its charm, style and a bit of sass will still burrow its way to your heart for a few pleasant afternoons.

Finished the game within a week on and off, an indulging experience for sure. I played it with my girlfriend. It's addictive in trying to solve the case while amazed by the depth of the story and unexpected plot twits. Overall, I'm happy, my girlfriend is happy, case solved and ya, worth the money especially with the promotion price.

really fun little point and click mystery game. the puzzles are reasonably easy and the hints are helpful. the story is fun too! but i think what made this game stand out are the character designs, voice acting and animation. seeing flora's hair animated was the 'wow' moment that made me realize i was going to enjoy this game. i also loved looking through the concept art after finishing it. what a joy :)

There are no spoilers in this review.

It's a very well put together detective game. It's had so much love put into it, from the music, to the characters and voice acting, to the interface itself. (I actually gasped the first time I opened the map and how smoothly that animated in.)

The puzzles were varied and felt about right difficulty-wise. I appreciate that when a puzzle requires outside information you don't have yet, they just tell you, instead of you banging your head on it.

The characters are all exaggerated, but still felt human. It was great finding out a bit about them. I really felt for a few of them.

The murder itself is clever. One or two aspects of it I figured out in advance, but a lot was a fun surprise. It's great as well that there are subtle clues throughout the game about what actually happened, that are completely obvious afterwards. One particular twist I don't think I've seen done in a murder mystery before and felt very clever - and again it was signposted in a few ways.

The ending is maybe a little abrupt. There are several questions I still have about some of the evidence, and the tower as a whole, which went unanswered. But that doesn't ruin it for me, it just feels realistic? In reality you don't get all the answers. (What did frustrate me is missing exactly 1 achievement because I didn't click on one thing, and not being able to go back and get it afterwards without playing the entire game. Yes this is a really minor critique!)

I did get this on sale for 80% off. It's definitely worth more than that, though full price depends on how much you're willing to spend on a fairly short (but good!) game. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Jogo de investigação bem divertido e muito carismático, o final é um pouco rushado mas o resto compensa.

Now that's a solid, fun sequel.

Tangle Tower is quite a step up in pretty much everything compare to previous game.
The Artstyle is even better, I love the variety of designs, all the sharp edges and soft curves and colours- very nice. The mansion itself was joy to explore and look at alongside all its denizens.
Oh and the voice acting - wonderful job with all performances. You can hear how distinct the characters are and the feelings that grip them.
In general the characters are all very charming with plenty of fun moments and stuff to distinct them. And now our solo protagonist is working with a partner - Sally! Love that gal, such a fun, sassy gal with amazing character design. Grimoire himself has even more distnict artstyle too and has way more moments to show off his serious competent side while also still being his doofus self.
The minigames are nice little puzzles to solve. Mystery itself has kept me questioning and pondering for way longer - even actually kinda surprised me in the end as to who was the murderer! Also man the scope of the mystery - this time there is way more stuff which I don't want to spoiler.
Recommendation for all them mystery games and point & click lovers - SFB Games did a wonderful job with this one.

I don't normally enjoy this sort of game, but I had a great time playing through this one. The visuals and voice acting are great all the way through, and in the 6 hours it took me to solve the main mystery, I felt like I was solving a lot of smaller ones alongside it which felt very satisfying. I found the conclusion very satisfying, and the plot itself was very well written

The only real downside is that its a short game. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it makes it hard to recommend at its full price. I got it for about a third of the price during a sale

The art and music were really unique and cool, but the final reveal was just disappointing. It felt like the game built up so much backstory for a lot of the characters only to throw in a sort of unpredictable twist at the end.

This is an excellent game with fantastic voice acting, I love it so far! A very enjoyable game.

One of my favorite games ever tbh. The characters are great and dynamic, the voice acting is superb, and the story isn't ridiculously predictable. The puzzles are challenging, but not impossible, and after a few attempts you can get a hint. the art and music are both phenomenal.

A captivating murder mystery puzzle game with charming characters and great artwork. Game play provides a good balance of investigative work and puzzle solving. Excited for the next one!

Great story with really nice artwork and animation. There's just enough puzzles to keep the story engaging without overdoing it. The mistery is also well done, I think the ending could be a little better explained but it does make sense and feels satisfying.

pleasant game- had to back track a little to get all the achievements.


I wish some of the options made a difference in how the game ended

Such a good game and an incredible sequel to the first Detective Grimoire. The art and music is phenomenal and honestly I didn't piece together the entire mystery until the very last moment. Difficulty overall was set perfectly, there definitely were moments where I needed to use a hint but overall everything was super simple to get through and all the secrets were hid perfectly. Highly recommend this!

Very visually interesting and a rich story! You can tell the creators put a lot of care into this game, it shows.

An interesting evolution of the series. There's much more story here than in the second game, which adds a good couple of hours to the playtime if you ask everyone about everything (as I did in all three games in the series), and the cast is far more complex and interwoven here which means more intriguing secrets to uncover. Like the previous games, the story is linear and doesn't vary between playthroughs, but this isn't a criticism as many successful mystery games have a consistent story to tell, e.g. the Nancy Drew games.

The setting doesn't grab me as much as the second game or especially the first—fantasy is a major element in this one whereas it was a present but background detail in the second game and only hinted at in the first (a free Flash game on Newgrounds). This is very subjective, and if you prefer fantasy over more grounded settings, you'll enjoy this aspect of the story. Note that you yourself never do any magic; your power is your mind!

I have to disagree with other reviewers saying that the twist is too hard to notice. I didn't guess it myself (though that isn't really out of the ordinary for me, I prefer to take a good story at its own pace) but I think the clues were there for observant players. (Only click the following spoiler text after finishing the game; knowing any details of the twist early does slightly dampen the experience.) For one thing, it should be suspicious how you never really see Hawkshaw's full face, and once you know that the telescope she carries is actually from the house, that's a dead giveaway that she's not who she says she is. Her and Penny/Penelope even have the same voice talent, which if you can hear the game should give you some kind of subconscious suspicion of those characters because no other characters share a voice like that. Some people are more effortlessly logical than others, of course, but I think this is really a case where the folks who felt motivated to write reviews were mostly the kind of people who can usually predict a twist before it happens, so they're an elevated challenge over most audience members.

Another observation about the story: Officer James and the Little Girl from previous entries aren't in this one at all. Now, I'm no fan of police (I really appreciate that Grimoire is a private detective), but given we were able to interrogate that mustache in both previous games, I would have found it fun to have the guy at least mentioned in this one. Running gags get old, sure, but I think that's less of a risk in a series where mainline installments have been five plus years apart each time. And the Little Girl was in the cliffhanger at the end of the last game! The concept art notes that she was removed from the protagonist team during development, which is fair enough, but I think it would have been fun to establish that that's because Grimoire finally convinced her that it's really dangerous for a child to keep showing up at active murder investigations and that she could still help from the office by securing the map of the scene ahead of time. Maybe they'll make appearances in the next game.

Gameplay-wise, there are more puzzles and minigames than the previous entries. While some of them initially struck me as too elaborate for me to want to actually try and solve, when given a chance they all proved to straddle that line of difficulty very well, being challenging and inventive enough to be interesting but not so difficult as to prompt me to find a walkthrough. The logic sections returning from the second game had a couple of moments where I had to take a couple of guesses before I found the right piece of evidence or line of logic that the game was looking for, but everything made sense once the game fully explained itself—I was never left thinking "that's a stretch".

The art style has changed from the second game (third time in three games, which almost seems like a feature of the series in its own right now—I quite like that and wouldn't mind further changes to the art style in the next game). While the environments are stunningly beautiful and detailed, I think I prefer the concept art designs of the characters from when the art style had more obvious connection to the second game. Their final designs are by no means bad, but having a little more visual continuity with the previous game would have been fun, and keeping the backgrounds looking new would have still preserved that fun art-style-change trait.

The music is very easy to listen to and reinforces the mood of each environment very well. The voice talent is wonderful, though you can tell that Edwyn Tiong's performance as the good Detective has understandably evolved in the years between the second game and this one. I think Grimoire sounds more naturally English here, whereas (and this is pure speculation/subjective opinion, I mean no offense) there were more elements in his performance in the second game that sounded to me as uncharacteristic of a natural English accent. But I did notice that the "th"s are still often "d"s instead, which I think gives Grimoire as a character an enjoyable subtle quirk—as if he showed up wearing a hat that was a little too small (wink). Amber Lee Connors' performance as Sally seems, like her character, more well-defined here. She keeps that very slight sultry element that grabs your attention when Sally speaks, and the character-defining casually-bored tone for most lines, but I think I heard more direction and passion in this Sally than the one from the second game. She's not just tagging along with Grimoire for the sake of a paycheck; Sally has an interest in investigation (a pleasant surprise from the last game!) and frequently enjoys the opportunity to show her reasoning skills. To wit, I think both protagonists have roughly equal mastermind moments, which is a great thing, and I was happy to note many Bechdel-Wallace Test-passing conversations.

There is very little creepy factor here, though. This is a step up from the second game which did not unsettle me whatsoever, but the only time I felt on edge was in the final confrontation, worrying if there was some kind of fail state I might blunder into at the eleventh hour where the murderer killed the team for guessing the wrong piece of evidence. (There isn't, by the way. At least, I didn't experience one.) The first game was genuinely creepy, though that probably had as much to do with the early-2000s Flash game art style as it did the setting, backgrounds, and music (I hope that's not too harsh; I like it!). I would not mind creepiness being a more central element in future games at all, though I think keeping fail states out of the series is a good call. But if you'd rather have a mystery experience that you can comfortably play at the dead of night (maybe aside from the climax which is marked by the daytime backgrounds shifting to nighttime), Tangle Tower is for you!

Overall (and TL;DR), Tangle Tower is an engaging, charming, witty, and easygoing mystery experience with skill and care showing in every aspect. I got it on sale for under five US Dollars, and I'd say it's well worth that price. My total playtime which included trying to hear every piece of dialogue I could came in around 12 hours, two of which were me away from the computer with the game open. I'd say eight hours is a good estimate for someone who's playing casually but to the credits. I think $20 is a bit steep for 8-10 hours of playtime given the state of wages in this country (the game, as with all quality games, is of course worth that and more in a vacuum), so I'd recommend waiting for a sale down to $15 or less. But if you'd prefer quality and immediacy rather than value, then full price is not bad at all. Plus there's a free demo so you can make sure you're likely to like it before you buy (this is a good thing and every game with a price should have a free demo). Easy recommend.

A very well polished detective game, if you've played detective grimoire, imagine that with a expanded world and added level of confusion towards it, it took me a while to actually narrow down who was the killer, I eventually got to it, although I have to admit the ending is disappointing, feels like such a rapid switch up, but the extra investigating when I assumed the game was over was very nice. If you want a fun playable comedic story where you get loads of dialogue then this is for you.

GET THIS GAME, especially if it's on sale, it's amazing the puzzles are tricky but not insanely tricky were you rage out, and each time you get it wrong your given a hint handy, but the story is so good like bro this game is so amazing like I was in tears cause the characters are so in depth and so written out

A beautiful and engaging interactive visual novel type murder mystery. Phenomenally voice acted, engaging puzzles that provided the right level of challenge without being to easy (for me personally). I can't wait to show this game to my boyfriend and watch him play through it. If you loved the Nancy Drew point and click games, this will scratch a similar itch for you! I loved it.

I played detective grimoire as a kid on my ipad about a decade ago and loved it. i was delighted to find out they had made more games since then! this game is amazing, and i can't wait for the next game release! tangled tower has great gameplay and storyline.

great art style, voice acting (hey tomar it's you), writing, and characterisation. Too bad all that is overshadowed by a terrible ending that disregards everything you "investigated". Twist endings can be good but when the twist doesn't make sense, contains information that we couldn't have known before hand, and contradicts evidence that we've spent the last 5 hours collecting, it just feels unsatisfying and rushed. There are so many plot holes and contrivances that are thrown in just to make the ending make sense. Also 90% of the suspicions are just bickering and melodrama that could've been completely left out.

one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, you can just feel how much love and creativity was poured throughout making the whole thing; the art gallery (when you finish the game) proves my statement even further!
not only that, the gameplay, the story, the characters, the lore, everything was so fleshed out.

i love you, artists. thank you for making such a fun and pretty game <3 i can't wait for the next one!

i really loved the artwork, the story and the thing that caught from my neck was the voice actors (and the plot ofc hehe), but nevertheless, best detective game on my list. cant wait for the mermaid mask !!

This game is a real gem. It has incredible charm in its artwork, sounds and writing and the amount of effort put into it is very impressive.
The detective work is light but engaging and the game has a nice pacing between gathering clues, solving self-contained puzzles and answering little 'mini-mysteries'.

My only big con relates to the final act and the actual murder mystery you are investigating. As a mystery story this game falls flat in the final act. It feels much more rushed than the rest of the game, and the final reveals are, simply put, quite bad. The presentation of the final clues and the motives just do not make any sense, and many questions are left unanswered as the game just ends rather abruptly.

However, it's a solid 5 hours of great fun, and the ending does not negate that, even if it leaves behind a somewhat disappointing ultimate mystery.

This was a really interesting murder mystery puzzle game. Everything is fully voiced, and the voice acting is very good. You meet many colourful and bizarre characters, and you can question everyone about everything.

Every scene has a lot of things you can look at and interact with, there are lots of hidden clues to find, and there are puzzles interspersed throughout the scenes, which are fiddly enough to get you thinking, without being too taxing to solve.

I particularly enjoy the "suspicion" scenes where you have to assemble a sentence explaining why something is suspicious. Because it's assembled from short phrases, the main characters will voice any combination you pick, so you can have them say some very dumb things.

Overall a solid 9/10 in my book.

SPOILERS




I liked everything about the game, the characters were fleshed out and realized, the art and music. but the ending really did leave a bad taste in my mouth. There was no foreshadowing at all that they were the same person and them being the same person makes a bunch of plotholes. Having that be the ending leaves out a lot of potential for someone else being the killer as it was fun to figure out the mystery. I also don't like that Hawkshaw and Penelope were just lying about everything completely because talking to them is a waste of time then. Like I said, it would be better if you could figure out there was a connection to Hawkshaw and Penelope, like Hawkshaw having bird motifs on her clothes, or mentioning liking Penelope. If she's in disguise, then she would at least say something positive about herself wouldnt she? Why she did even marry Fitz? Why did she study birds of all the things? Wouldnt her leaving the tower involve birds in some way? I could complain all day, but I did ultimately enjoy the game, the ending just came out of nowhere. The puzzles were fun and not too hard and discovering that the knife was just a feather was satisfying. It's unfortunate too because I actually like the character of Penelope and her being the murderer would have made sense if it turned out literally everything anyone knew about her wasnt fake. I hope the next game won't stumble at the end.

Like I said, everything was great, just stumbled at the end.

A brilliant mix of storytelling, humor, and puzzle-solving. The dialogue is witty, the characters are memorable, and the art is stunning. A short but incredibly enjoyable detective experience that will keep you entertained from start to finish!

Tangle Tower is a calming and very delicious murder mystery game with a very good story to twist though it. Story wise I love it; you really learn about the houses residents and the complex story that weaves them all together to the murder, It is a puzzle game so I should explain how the puzzles are. I would say more were good and pretty smooth to complete but some of the puzzles are not Easy so that that as you will, But I will say the ones that stumped me were like two of them and the rest was really enjoyable. That art and the voice acting blends so perfectly and it was a treat for the eye and ears. I do recommend the game to people who loves twisting plots and a good old murder mystery 8.9/10 game!

cool

Get ready to be dragged into this eccentric family crime scene - each and every one of its members a mystery! It's a wild ride, just don't expect the big reveal at the end to make that much sense (semi spoiler alert: was I the only one positive that it must have been a suicide after all, amongst all these toxic family issues..?!)
So much creativity went into this,, highly enjoyed it& would recommend!

A really fun mystery game! Good clues, interesting story, absolutely adorable animations.

Superb voice acting and stellar animations. Jokes actually made me laugh out loud. Started out innocently interesting then went downright bonkers at the end. Super fun.

Really enjoyed this game! Art direction is charming and very appealing. The voice acting is great. The length of this game is incredibly cozy; it's long enough to get invested in the characters, but not too long that you have to worry about taking notes between play sessions. You can even complete it in one sitting!
The puzzles were easier than I had anticipated, but that isn't a bad thing. I personally think it makes this game more accessible and could be a good title to get people interested in this genre as a whole. Very comfy murder mystery. I do recommend it :)

Amazing animations, satisfying puzzles and a unique story! ALOT of character interactions!

Genuinely one of my favorite games. There's not much replay-ability if you're on your lonesome, but I like to get on discord and watch them experience it and that joy of playing it for the first time is there again. Besides that: An immaculate art style, funny dialogue with charming characters, good puzzles, and a well-written mystery.

Personally I love mysteries and detective stories, and this game does not disappoint about this matter :) It is very well designed, illustrations, animations, buttons, etc. so it is very pleasing to play/watch/observe. If you put a surrounding sound (I put my JBL behind me) it becomes immersive and very amusing! That means the music is also very good. I think I'll put in my 'Focus' playlist and listen to when I study.

Cool game. There are actually very few games that remind me of the -professor layton- games from my childhood. So seeing this approach to a point-and click riddle story made me quite happy. For my personal taste the game could have been a bit longer but overall the quality is great, you can clearly see the work and care that went into this game.

So yeah i would recommend the game, but maybe wait for a sale.

Lovely puzzle detective game with great voice acting, animation, soundtrack, characters, and mood. Only found one of the puzzles a little too devious for me to figure out but then again I am not very smart. Definitely worth playing.

It was enjoyable while it lasted. A 2nd playthrough was interesting for a short while.

The ending hides a lot, and some questions are unanswered, but it only makes me more excited for the next game!

Great variety of gameplay, characters with depth, great voice acting, simply amazing story. I was in disbelief at the end. I wish we had more to reveal the sub-mysteries though.

Okay so I have up and down feelings about this game! I will try and put it as concise as I can.

Pros:
1. I really enjoyed the game play of this, it was super fun to find all the clues and figure out everyone's secrets
2. The voice acting was super good and I was truly impressed by it!
3. Most of the characters were really fun to interact with (mainly the main two characters but also Fifi, Poppy, and Flora)
4. I really enjoy the art style!
5. The puzzles were fun to do and didn't feel like a slog at any point

Cons:
1. If you are hugely into mysteries like me, you will find the solution to this so annoying, because there are things that seem like clues all the way through that point to the right suspect that aren't actually clues it seems? Accidental clues? How? Also, the main issue is that it leaves me with so many more questions than it answers, none of it really makes sense, it is just mostly vibes based. Truly, the more I think about the mystery the less it makes sense to me. I guessed who the culprit was, but for wildly the wrong reasons, mainly because I think the canonical reason is insane.
2. For an achievement hunter like myself, it was a little annoying to have to go back through the whole game to get one final achievement that you can't just go back and get
3. Some of the characters were either so incredibly annoying that I wanted to punch them, or they were almost entirely irrelevant

So yeah, I think that about sums it up. I enjoyed playing but the resolution of the mystery did truly baffle me

Elegant and whimsy, loved the game and its secrets to the very little bit!

Absolutely LOVED this game! I played it on Apple Arcade and I FELL IN LOVE. I saw the game posted here and I couldn't help but buy it. Truly a real piece of art, from the voice acting, story development, animations, and puzzles I truly enjoyed myself! The ending might be a bit less satisfactory to some, but overall a game worth to binge on!!

This is hands down one of the best games I‘ve ever played. The story is SO GOOD! The story gets more sinister towards the end and has plottwists I would have never expected. I wouldn‘t say it‘s too hard regarding finding clues and putting them together, just the perfect amount of challenging.
I loved the artstyle and the music. I could just see how much effort went into this game and that the developers put a lot of thought into every little detail.
When you finish the game, do yourself a favour and check out the artbook. There are a lot of sketches and drawings of all the characters and places you see in the game.
Works really well on the steamdeck.