The Painscreek Killings

The Painscreek Killings is a fantastic detective game with an interesting story that is well worth playing for fans, despite some overuse of a few game tropes.

You start out the game with a simple mission. A woman from the town of Painscreek died 4 years earlier. You are a reporter and you need to investigate the now-ghost town of Painscreek to find out who killed her, what the murder weapon was, and get a picture for the front page of the paper the next day. From there, The Painscreek Killings leaves you to explore the empty town however you'd like and hunt through the rundown houses and buildings for clues and journals to figure out the story of this town (which is a lot bigger than the one killing!)

Yes, the story overly relies on journal entries and notes scattered about to tell its story but it does a great job of separating what the different characters knew and understood to really encourage you to take your own notes. In fact, note-taking is basically required for anyone playing The Painscreek Killings but I don't see this as a bad thing at all. It made me feel like a detective piecing things together and theorizing as I continued exploring.

Where The Painscreek Killings falters a bit is in two places: its padding and its localization. Let me start with the localization because it's a smaller issue but an odd one. I'm honestly a bit confused by this because EQ Studios is based in Las Vegas and the town is supposed to be a fictional American town but I couldn't figure out this town for most of the game. Fictional or not, I've never seen an American town that looks like this. In fact, it's pretty distinctly European, and that feeling permeates throughout the game. Zip codes are frequently shown and yet this town that takes less than a minute to run across on foot seems to have several different zip codes, seemingly implying that the writers didn't quite understand how zip codes work. One key is labeled as being used for an attic despite it being for the garage and another saying it's for a "chest box". The fake state abbreviation they use is NL, which isn't a state in the US but it is the abbreviation for Newfoundland in Canada, so I actually thought we were in Canada for most of the game. This isn't a big deal except when it comes to using dates as codes, which is done frequently. I often didn't know how to format dates for these codes and from what I've seen online, many other people had the same question. There were also a healthy number of typos so I attributed all this to localization but if that wasn't the issue, then I'm not sure what happened but it's a bit confusing regardless.

The more important issue is the game's padding, namely the excessive use of keys and codes needed to progress the game. If you're tasked with exploring an empty ghost town, you'd expect to come across a number of locked doors. This isn't odd at all and I don't begrudge them using this mechanic. The problem is the sheer number of them you find throughout the game. Every single lock that you can interact with in the game has a unique key, even if they are doors in the same house. Nearly every house has at least one locked door inside that uses a hidden key you have to find somewhere. The Roberts family mansion has 6 different keys that open doors to different bedrooms. Who would ever design a house this way?! If you'll forgive a very small spoiler, a preacher's son has a hidden safe in his bedroom wall that needs a combo lock. You're telling me this young kid bought a locking safe, cut out part of his bedroom wall, installed the safe, and covered it with a poster, all in a rectory???

It wouldn't even be as bad if the keys weren't all scattered in mostly incomprehensible ways. Want to find the key to a burned up house cordoned off with police tape? You'd think the police station may have that key but no, it's obviously over at the local Inn behind the counter! Want a tool to fix the broken drawer that won't open? Well it just needs a hammer and you'd think the numerous toolboxes in nearly every house would have one but no, you don't get to check those. You have to find the one hammer in the whole darn town and I won't spoil where it is for you. Hint: it's somewhere you'll never, ever guess.

I know that was a bit of a rant but by the end of the game, the constant roadblocks get to be really tedious, which is unfortunate because the storyline really is fantastic and worth investigating. I just wish they had cut the number of keys and codes in half and then put some real thought into where those keys and codes should be found. A few of them are very thoughtfully placed and add to the story but most just feel random for the sake of it.

I think if you go into it knowing these things in advance, that it's an American town with dates formatted in an American way, and that the abundance of keys and codes are silly, then I think The Painscreek Killings is absolutely worth playing for any fan of detective games like the Golden Idol games, Obra Dinn, or Shadows of Doubt. The story is fun to discover and I very much enjoyed building out a timeline of events for the different characters. Also, the use of a certain dark-haired figure was wonderfully subtle and I loved where that led to. I'd love to play another game like this in the future.

A really interesting detective game. The story was excellent and drew me in, but I do think the game could have benefited from being a bit more ambiguous - there are multiple files that outright spell out the solutions of the game's mysteries which felt a bit deflating. And the worst offender is the game's ending, which goes out of its way to leave zero ambiguity about events and ends up feeling pretty hokey. For most of the game, the devs went of their way to have no other people present, and the ending shows exactly why this was a wise decision - the one human we see looks and animates absolutely terribly. This ends up removing all tension from the game's finale.

But overall, I did enjoy my time with this game. The story and characters were very strong and fleshed out, and unveiling more of what happened in Painscreek was very engaging. Just a few issues that kept it from being a 10/10 masterpiece in the same vein as Obra Dinn.

A truly fantastic game. One of the best, if not *the* best of it's kind.

There's not a lot of games that make you cry by being over.

if you are in any way interested in the mystery genre, I cannot recommend this enough. Just be aware, that this is not the kind of game to hold your hand. This game leads you to the cliffs and tells you to find your own way down, metaphorically speaking. Not sure how the new 'notes' function works here, though.

What started as a vague interest in checking out this game ended up as one of my favorite single player experiences I've ever played. While the mystery was constantly engaging and having many twist and turns, with the puzzles being mostly fair to solve, what made me truly adore this experience was its writing. Other than maybe 4 voicemails, there is no spoken dialogue or characters you meet. Your only view of the characters are just from documents, papers, and diaries. Yet, the writing of these characters were handled: How they feel, what they think of day to day life, what pains them, and eventually how everyone ends up by the time you finish each character's story, they feel so incredibly real as if you watched them play out yourself. This WAS the most engaging aspect of this game for me, and the game's ost especially helps when reading these. The emotions I felt when seeing the tragic fates of characters I've never even met really show just how well this aspect was handled. (Shoutout to Dorothy's house theme)

Painscreek Killings isn't an amazing game, but I'd feel bad giving it a thumbs down. It's currently at Very Positive and that's probably pretty accurate. I have a lot of grievances, but I'm still looking forward to the devs' next game.

Now the petty grievances. None of these killed the game, but I'd hope a followup would improve on them.

There's a lot of nothing in this game. Tons of houses you will never open, tons of empty drawers and cabinets, and a lot of dead ends. That's clearly intentional; it's supposed to emulate real detective work and make you think about where you need to look. But, it's somewhat lacking in the execution.

For example, you will often find notes stating that a key is in a drawer in X location. That's good. But just as often, that note is itself in a random drawer somewhere that you had no real reason to search. You still have to turn every room inside out, because the items are easily missable even when you know you're in an important location. Opening/closing animations linger way too long and objects become totally uninteractable until the animations completely finish, meaning checking all seven drawers on a desk—the same model of desk that everyone in town owns, I assume they bought them in bulk—takes about half a minute. That's fine when used strategically, but you open a lot of drawers in this game.

For some reason, when you look at a key item using A, you have to then press B to add it to your inventory. If you press A again you just put it back down. There is never a reason to not pick up a key item. You need all of them. You have no maximum inventory size. You will never once want to put an item back down, so why is that even an option? Why is that the default option?

The menu controls with a controller are unnecessarily frustrating. Directions on the dpad open four different menus. That's fine. But you can't then navigate those menus with the dpad, you have to use the stick. Every single time I tried to use an item I would open the inventory with up, press right to select a different item and instead open the photo menu. Every time.

In general the flow of the game could be improved. Many time you'll get a key, travel across town to use it, and be rewarded with some information. Maybe it reinforces a motive, maybe it incriminates someone. Often it's information you already knew, and/or It doesn't lead anywhere. There might be more locked doors there that will lead to progress, but you don't have those keys yet. That's annoying, doubly so because of how slowly you move around. It is a significant time investment to go try out a key somewhere. More than once I found keys, left the location without discovering the important key, and ten minutes later was stumped because I thought I exhausted every lead.

The town doesn't really make any sense. The story claims everyone moved away years ago. The whole town is closed and locked up. But every single house is full of boxes and furniture, as though everyone in town got suddenly raptured while they were packing. Granted, the game would be really boring if the town was completely empty, but it does hurt the immersion a bit. It would make a lot more sense if you were primarily exploring houses of the deceased, but you aren't.

Fortunately, everything that really matters in a game like this, it does fairly well.

The atmosphere is appropriately creepy without overrelying on jumpscares. Early on getting the cemetery gate code only to find the gate already unlocked, implying that someone else has been here, is legitimately creepy. Little things like that go a long way.

The mystery itself is fairly robust. There's a lot of misdirection and complications, but it's not overcomplicated, and the lightbulb moment when the real killer clicked felt appropriately satisfying. That's a difficult balance to strike, and they did it well.

All in all, a decent effort, and I hope the devs hone their craft and make more.

Cool idea, not for everyone. Lots of reading and lots of backtracking, trying to open locked doors and drawers and having to come back later with keys and codes from across the map. I got annoyed pretty quickly and gave up, not because I got stuck, but because it was a hassle to play and without any character dialogue (only diary entries) I found it hard to care about any of the characters. Still leaving a positive review because people seem to like this game so maybe you will too. But make sure you're the kind of person who can enjoy this game before you buy it.

Decent game. Wish there was a more diverse experience of research and investigations rather than mostly diary entries. Sound design is fantastic as each key interaction will play a variety of stored audio files, making it a more realistic experience.

This is such a good game. I am playing with a friend, and the level of difficulty is just hard enough to make all the little achievements thrilling, and the mystery keeps getting bigger. I cannot express how much The Painscreek Killings hit the spot, and made it so easy to get lost in the little town, uncovering the secrets of it's late inhabitants. We kept finding new evidence, new motives, and kept updating our theories. Honestly, we had such a good time, and more people should sit down and play this game. If you are in search of a game with great story, mystery and puzzles, this is it.

Quite the incredible little experience. I came into it rather unsure if I would really like it, afraid of it having too obtuse puzzles and turning into a frustrating "pixel hunting" mess, but to my pleasant surprise, none of these things happened. Despite the open-ended nature of it, it is a surprisingly straight-forward experience, with puzzles clicking into place effortlessly and while there can be one occasion or another, I found myself quite surprised to have missed shockingly little on my first playthrough, without using any guides.
As long as you take lots of pictures with the in-game camera, and make notes of things you've seen to refer back to once you find the key or information to unlock what you need, it was quite rare to get stuck in this game, in my experience, with there only being one very specific moment that felt a bit trial-and-error-y

It is a very unique game and I really really enjoyed unraveling the mystery slowly, the story turning out quite heartfelt, with many different events tying everything together into a very cohesive narrative. Simply put it's a masterpiece and if you find the concept appealing, even if you have some worries (like I did!) of it being a potentially frustrating experience - Fret not, this is quite the exceptionally well-designed little adventure. Loved it to bits.

I'm enjoying the game so far. However, there are some crucial features missing in my opinion.

Firstly, you pretty much have to play through this in no more than 2 or 3 (at most) sessions, because in between sessions there's no way you can remember all the details or what you were doing when you exited the game or how the clues/evidence fit together. You might find a clue in one location which leads you to evidence in another location. It's all interconnected. Which brings me onto my next point.

You don't have an actual journal in game that you can write in yourself and you can't write notes on pictures. Which doesn't make sense since you find journals from other people and pictures with notes on them. You also can't arrange the pictures or label them for easier organisation. A "Ctrl+F" option to search for keywords would be great too but it's supposed to be a realistic experience and obviously a real detective wouldn't have that.

So just from a UI perspective I think certainly there's room for improvement.

The walking/running speed is incredibly annoying as well and just makes everything take twice as long when you're exploring the town. I get it's "realism" but then again you can just hold the sprint button anyway and you never run out of stamina. So that's not realistic either.

Other than that, I got this game for 5 euros during the holiday sale and I think it's a fair price, the experience is pretty much as advertised. I feel like I got my money's worth.

If there was an option between "Recommend" and "Don't recommend", like "Recommend but I have some criticism" I would go for that option because not having a journal to write in is a huge drawback for me in a detective game.

I loved playing this game.

Seeing other people engage with the game on it's own terms, and the different paths they take, is truly interesting.

I will guest on any friend's stream for this.

The game has an excellent story and when the puzzles are logical the game is a blast, however there is one puzzle that made me quit and without spoiling it, the solution is downright evil. There is a puzzle that gives you every hint to the solution and also presents you with the main target, however the solution is found later in the game through something entirely unrelated. I spent 2 hours losing my mind to this puzzle without even knowing that I was missing something all along.

tldr: this game is one that I would only recommend if you have the patience of a saint and are willing to abandon some puzzles to try other ones.

This game will suck you in and you probably won't be able to stop playing until you solve the case. Slowly unraveling the story of this game is really fun. By the end of it, I was paranoid and high-strung, which I think the creators were trying to cause, so they did a great job with that. I don't know what I am going to do now. I want more games like this!!

I love everything about this game! The plot, the soundtrack, the suspense, the build up and everything!! UGHHHH I wish I could erase my mind and play it for the first time again :"))))))

I haven't really sat down and played a game in a long while, let alone all the way through to completion, but I found it hard to pull myself away from this one.

First time writing a Steam review, but this game is probably the most fun I've had playing a video game in a long time. It's a cycle of exploration to bouncing off the wall like a caged monkey when you get stuck to a rush of dopamine when you finally find the one thing you missed holding you back. Trust the developers. If you play the game and search for clues long enough, you will solve this game by yourself without any help. I wish there were a hundred more games like it.

A very captivating, well paced, and overall excellent mystery murder story! I only had to look up a guide 2 or three times (only on two puzzles where I knew that I had the clues needed, but could not figure out the solution. You'll know when you find them). Other than that, I got the ending and then used a guide check off the remaining 2 or 3 items I had missed in my original playthrough for completionist. Very amazing, 9.5/10 would definitely recommend!

Generally good, the best aspect is that the story is intricate without feeling convoluted. Solving the case scratched the detective itch, but it's very reliant on searching for a key and figuring out what that key unlocks so that you can find more keys. And god forbid you search a room and miss something, you'll basically have no choice but to check a guide to see what you missed.

Absolutely loved this game - it's still my favourite PC game of all time. I dedicated a whole journal to solving the mystery and I had so much fun! The game and solving the mystery requires patience, however I personally enjoyed the pace of walking around the town as it made it even more immersive. The mystery was challenging in all the right ways, and the ending of the game was certainly unexpected. Highly recommend!

greatest mystery game of all time, no exceptions, i felt like i actually solved a murder 9/10 little janky and the ending was a little weird but if you really pay attention it makes sense

Gets tedious at times and I think its impossible to complete without googling a guide at least once, but very good and very engaging. I would love to see them produce another game similar to this one!

Genuinely the best mystery game I’ve ever played, it’s a shame you can only experience it once due to how the genre works but everyone should play this if you are a fan of mystery games

This was good, especially if you like mystery games. Wasn't too hard to follow the puzzles and anytime you get stuck you can just switch to some other aspect. Taking the time to sit down and parse (take notes, make a timeline, make character profiles, make a pin board) the information you have at different points helps a ton. Taking lots of pictures helps a ton. The story was great! I loved how it rolled out during the course of the investigation.

Excellent mystery game with very difficult puzzles that actually require some creative thinking and problem solving.

I'm sensitive to motion in first person games, and I'll admit that this game was TOUGH to play for extended periods of time. It was so bad that I ended up switching the controller back and forth with my partner to play, which ended up being the best decision I could have made.

I think this game REALLY shines when you play with others, making the puzzles way less frustrating and giving the whole thing an "escape room" vibe. When playing alone I wasn't sure if I would finish this game, but the second I had another person to bounce ideas off of I was hooked.

An who done it murder mystery with few flaws. This is open world and very nonlinear, so it can be easy to get lost. I caved and looked up a walk through. DO NOT do this if you can avoid it. Of course, if you're thoroughly frustrated, don't quit the game. It's suggested that you backtrack through all available locations and look for more clues you may have missed. Be sure to use all your logic, even if it seems silly, to eliminate all options before looking up a walk through. This game can only be played blind once, and looking up a walk through opens a Pandora's box of temptation to do it again and again.

But if looking up a walk through is what gets you to the end of this game, then do it. Look up the walk through to finish. Because this game, though flawed and a little buggy, is worth it. The finish is worth it. Trust me. The story is amazing, and I'm buzzing with it even after that finish.

This is a fun game that suffers from Unity jank. To find clues and other items you have to go through dozens of empty/pointless drawers In additional to several locked doors, that cannot be opened at all through the game, it makes backtracking a pain. This may be by design as the game is supposed to emulate real detective work. It feels like the camera is fighting you all the way in this game; there is a constant focus on what you are looking at on your cursor, but the rest of the screen emulates hindsight vision, which I hated. Lastly, I think having everything in the journal and not having to take pictures of thing and allowing us to hide things we are done with would be nice.

Ended with a text document of 2424 words, 16044 characters, and 69 screenshots.
Nice.

Easily one of the best detective games I've ever played, not quite on the level of something like Obra Dinn, but high up there. Exploring the town and actually solving the mystery feels rewarding and satisfying. The spooky atmosphere helps, putting you slightly on edge. The end sequence, of the few things I wasn't a big fan of, was altered in patches too, so there's no reason not to recommend The Painscreek Killings.

Actual detective work. Backtracking varies, I did a looooooot. Requires so much attention to detail. I kicked myself with how many small things I missed that were actually simple to find (really get in there with the crouching). Very enjoyable and fun to actually take notes as I went in a journal.
I sort of thought the game might throw something creepy at me when I saw something ominous in the beginning.
Yes, yes it did. And I panicked.
Good fun, and good if you want a challenge to piece everything together and get achievements.

Few games have gotten this close to providing a true detective and investigation experience. The game does not pull any punches and requires the player to come to any conclusion on their own and understand the implications of the story.

While the game copies some found documents and diaries into your journal and provides the ability to take photos of everything, the lack of an ingame way to organize your thoughts means that you will still want to write down your own notes to keep track of important things and see connections between events and persons. (I made a timeline and relationship chart during my playthrough in the free online tool Excalidraw)

Note that due to the nature of the game, it is very easy to overlook things if you do not closely examine every nook and cranny of any place you find. It can be a bit frustrating to get stuck further down the line, just because you did not click on something in a past place. Because the game does not provide any help, you are left to wonder whether you missed something in your previous investigation scenes or are just failing to make the right conclusion from the things you currently know. And there are plenty of locked doors and containers around that just exist as decoys - don't expect everything you can interact with to be significant.

The puzzles are fair for the most part. The only exception being one dreaded darts puzzle that throws some red herrings at you and makes you think that it's solvable much earlier than it actually is.
It is possible to accidentally sequence break some of the puzzles (getting some revelations earlier than perhaps intended), but for the most part the game does a good enough job of providing you clues that let you know which thing to focus on next.

Figuring out the individual mysteries can feel very rewarding, but you will need to pat yourself on the back for that. The game only does a very rudimentary check at the end to see whether you uncovered one particular part of the mystery, although it is connected to a much bigger picture. It does not really check full understanding and gives too much of it away at the true end.

And while the music can help create a constantly tense atmosphere, it can get a little repetitive and annoying - especially the part with the screaky piano key.

Oh my gosh this was a ride! I was expecting it to be scary but rather it was kind of like What Remains of Edith Finch or Gone Home or Firewatch. I loved uncovering the secrets hidden around the town and while sometimes the back and forth between locations felt like it took a little long, I ended up growing attached to the place and people you learn about. It was absolutely an incredible experience and made especially moreso by the great deal it was on when I bought it. Highly recommend playing it, and then also watching the videos Vote 4 Holt made about it on Youtube afterward!

Honestly, besides a maybe just slightly underwhelming ending (the final cut-scene for the completionist ending being kind of goofy aside), this game was really fucking awesome. As someone who is studying to become a journalist, this game was really fun to play, and take notes on. By the time I had finished everything in the game, I had about 4 and a half pages worth of notes. I do wish the game didn't just straight up give a confession at the end though, as it would've been a bit more suspenseful without out. I managed to get every achievement in one day, took me about 8.5 hours. It was a really awesome game, and I heavily recommend if you are interested in this sort of thing. I found out about this game through Vote 4 Holt (please sub to him hes awesome), and I watched about 30 seconds of the video, thought the game looked cool, and bought the game and played the whole thing and got every achievement without even closing it. It truly held my attention. Also, apparently this is the dev's first game??? That's crazy, hats off to them! Overall, amazing, 9.5/10. Only thing that could've made it a 10 was the ending being a little better. absolutely amazing work dev's :D Oh also the music got kind of annoying at times, specifically the piano one that sounded like it was from granny (the DUN DUN DUN DUN) that played in any house lol. Besides that track pretty good soundtrack lol. (Also I rarely review games in this length, so yeah, take that as you will).

Its complex and confusing but in a good way. The ending was a little janky but overall pretty fun

Best experience opening drawers, clicking on the right pixel, and backtracking I've ever had.

Very very very amazing game, it's really fun to solve this mystery and you just feel satisfation while doing that. 12 houres of good spend time.

Warning!
Please play at your own risk!
After finishing the game, you can NOT enjoy detective games anymore because you can NOT find a game even near this one

I think the highest praise I can offer for this game is the fact that I played this game as an after-thought, I initially found it somewhat boring and was confused by the emptiness, but the game changed my mind within the first hour.

After it hooked me I could barely tear myself away, and as the game encouraged, I wrote down a dozen pages of notes which I felt gave a compellingly realistic investigative experience. I appreciated the fact that a lot of the time it felt like the characters of this world had actually valued their privacy, and although consistently hitting locked doors until I found a code or key was frustrating, it helped keep the story realistic in my opinion and made the finds that much more satisfying.

On the other hand I did not find the ending as satisfying as I found the other hours of time I spent playing the game. SPOILER WARNING: I felt like the overall story of the game had been consistently surprising and imaginative, and while the idea to have a "walking sim" game suddenly set a lurking killer on us was inspired and certainly set my heart pounding for the first few seconds, it unfortunately fell short.

The killer canonically killed to hide his crimes, but... Recorded a confession? A multiple part confession to cover all of his murders? At this point the player has already discovered MULTIPLE secret rooms in which lesser secrets such as "I have an affair child" and "I'm searching for my mom's killer" were hiding, and so finding such direct evidence pointing towards the killer by following clues literally written on walls around town immediately damaged some of the great immersion that had been building the whole game in my eyes.

The killer was very slow, easily dodged even in very close proximity, and Sofia's unclear directions led to me running in circles around the hospital after having already kited the killer around the roof without the ending triggering, and I did have to pause and look up how to end the Scooby Doo-esque chase. I feel that if I had been more hard pressed by the killer I would've had less time for frustrating thoughts like "Why is he still here YEARS after the town was abandoned?" "Where has he been getting groceries?" "Is his plan literally to stay here for the rest of his life and kill anyone who uncovers the evidence?" "Why? When he could literally have burnt this town down with no one here to notice, or otherwise destroyed the evidence himself?"

All in all, in spite of my dislike of the ending, I was still so utterly in for the ride for 99% of the game that I'm willing to simply ignore my misgivings, and I would still recommend it.

While some puzzles were a bit much and some others I looked up were more my own failure, I overall had a good time. I did feel that there were too many number combination keycode puzzles.

Great game. I really had fun uncovering the story piece by piece and trying to sort out the details.

Best detective game I've played. It is clumsy by the end, but there was no other game that really had faith in my intelligence and just left clues to direct me, as I took regular notes. I love it and will check out their next game!

Overall okay game. Collecting clues and putting the mystery together was pretty nice, as well as the story but too much of a hassle running around and constantly coming back to certain locations. Especially if you missed a clue the game gets quickly frustrating. A fast travel option would have been great, as well as an better overview of the clues collected.
I personally hated the eerie music and the feeling of not being alone. Like the opened graveyard door and the person appearing after visting certain locations. I constantly felt anxious and as if someone would come out any second to murder me. Considering my fears the ending made me really uncomfortable and i stopped playing right away, not being able to play the last bit. But every persons different and there are people who enjoy everything i dislike - so thumbs up anyway. Gamers with patience, a keen eye for detail, love for puzzles and horror will be very satisfied.

Fun game with lots of twists, definitely worth a play through. Hats off to the developers.

This was such a good game!
I did get a bit confused, and had all kinds of theories but i was nicely surprised by this game.
The story is interesting and the way you learn everything unfolds from photos notes etc in an empty street, house, town,
Its really well done and I wish there was another similar game to play.

I liked this game overall, but i must admit that it has plenty of flaws.

It's pretty ugly. It looks like an asset flip, and it is not helped by the weird filters and strange haziness(?) in some parts of it. Sometimes it looked like i suddenly developed nearsightness, because some things got weirdly blurry.

The controls are also not very good. They are somewhat annoying to navigate. I was very annoyed by the fact that you need to aim precisely at the locks of the doors to use keys. Why? Is me aiming for the door itself not a clear enough indication that i want to open it?

The story was interesting, but some of the main twists were EXTREMELY obvious. I called some of them after reading a couple of early game documents. And while the majority of the story needs to be put together by you, the hardest part of it is actually FINDING the documents, not figuring things out. The drama is told in the documents pretty clearly.
And in the ending the final mystery is straight up just told to you entirely in one interaction. No figuring things out, no thinking, no questions. Just a wall of text that tells you exactly what happened. Sure, you probably already figured it out if you got to the final point of the game, but come on.

I'm gonna be honest -- the first hour of playing i considered refunding the game. I guess i'm just not a type of person who enjoyes things like that -- not being told some basic quality of life things (for the most part, if the door does not open immidiately or does not have a lock with the "unlock" action -- you will never open it. This helpes to identify some locations that are relevant to the story, but also is kinda annoying, because there is mostly no other indication to which doors can't be open. So you need to aim an every lock to figure in out), turning every rock on the map to find a single document. The thing in the spoiler is understandable for what the game is, and i do not really consider it a flaw -- just something that i dont really enjoy.

I had to play the game using a guide. I didn't use it to solve the mystery (didn't need to, really), but to get all achievements and to find all the necessary things, because some of them are very missable. Which is, again, in line with the game's premise -- but not something i like. I gues i'm just not observant enough :)

Over all, i did not like playing this game blind, but enjoyed it with some help. The story is pretty interesting.

a very good quest game with a shocking epilogue. never seen anything like this

These liminal games always unnerve me. I don't have alot to say about the game's investigation itself. But I got so paranoid/anxious I stopped playing. The final straw was that weird little girl that showed up after leaving the burned house. It didn't jump scare me but it told me I wasn't alone. I'll play horror games but not these creepy liminal stuff, fuck that.

I loooved this game. Very well put together. The graphics and puzzles are great, the story is fantastic, and I thoroughly enjoyed the vibe of exploring an abandoned town.

Imagine if someone put you in an empty room, gave you a really messed up, obnoxious knot and asked you to untie it while haunted house music constantly played.
That is this game.
Its a chore.
A tedious, patience-grinding chore.

I found myself very bored very quickly.
The walking around is tedious.

Not only did this game give me the worst motion sickness of my life (even with all settings typically adjusted) but the writing is just awful - the diary entries, letters, etc - no one writes like that it's just subpar.
Furthermore, it doesn't look great and the controls are extremely janky.
Overall, not fun to navigate and the writing will leave you far from immersed.

Gameplay is basically,
"Hey you need to get in here, but to do that you need a key which is over here, but to get in there you'll need a key which may be hidden over here, but to get in there, you'll need a code, but to learn the code, you'll have to get in here which you'll need another key to open, and the key is hidden in this safe which you'll learn the combination by combining clues you'll find here and here, but you'll need the keys hidden over there to get them, etc, etc, etc"

This is a nightmare, and I'd sooner arrest the whole town for being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Why can't I just break down doors?
Its a ghost town.
Everyone is gone and no-one is coming back.
Just break whatever gets in the way. Most of the "detective" work is just finding keys so you can search for actual clues.
Graphically, its cheap. I don't mean low-poly cheap, I'm fine with that.
I mean sometimes a tree won't have its branches attached correctly, or a chain blocking your path will have one of its ends floating mid-air.
The kind of work that should have taken two seconds to make right in a game that is already *only* its environment.

Other reviews have been fairly clear on the story.
Its good in the first half, but seems to lose its restraint and becomes too eager to share the answers in the second half.
The ending where they ask you to name the murderer and the weapon are a joke because you just had a direct confrontation with the murderer following a blatant confession.
I don't need to to deduce anything, I just need to get all of the keys necessary to reach the ending and the game will tell me the answer.

Really great story with the right amount of twists and puzzle solving. Loved every second of it!

Excellent atmosphere, I had a lot of fun with this. Play time was probably more like 8-10 hours since I left it on over night a couple of times, but it was a good time!