Ratings and Reviews by jakomo

If you've played Ryan Veeder's previous "adaptations" of existing work (The Lurking Horror 2, The Little Match Girl) it won't be a surprise that this only connects to the original murder-mystery in the loosest sense. Yes, there is a murder, yes, you're the great Belgian detective, yes you start on the Orient Express. Beyond that, anything goes: Poirot can exit and enter the train at will, it stops at Calais, the great pyramids are now in Morocco, Vienna is famous for its canals. Poirot's personality is hilariously dialled up to 11, a fearless, hyper-competent egotist eager to tell other characters (and the player) how great he is. Gameplay-wise, there is no mystery to solve, just "clues" (i.e. points) to collect by exploring, examining everything, and talking to everyone thoroughly. A small number of inventory puzzles and locked doors are sprinkled about to keep traditionalists happy. You can eventually "accuse" any character in the game to get one of dozens of unique, lengthy, very well-written endings.

Totally goofy short Odyssey-themed puzzle fest in the classic Scott Adams mould, using the engine created by the author of Draculand. And tonally, that's the game this most closely resembles. A proper parser game with inventory puzzles and a world map, but with no typing required, so plays great on a phone or tablet. It's often hilarious and the difficulty feels just right. Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, the Cyclops, the giants and the lotus eaters are all here, for fans of "historical accuracy", but they're all stuck together on one island, so classicist Emily Wilson can probably sleep easy knowing her translation remains "definitive". Christopher Nolan in shambles.

This commercial remake of Type Help doesn't make changes for changes sake: fans of the original will experience the same story, with the same dialogue, with the additions of illustrations and voice acting (plus one new mechanic: matching portrait pictures to characters, but it's a minor detail). It takes on the tone of a BBC radio drama, which does feel like what the original was going for. The most interesting part will be the post-game playable epilogue with all-new content answering some of the game's many mysteries.

An earlier work from the author of The Red Pearls of Borneo. Visually and mechanically, it feels like a prototype: lacking any of the beautiful UI elements of the later game, or any graphics or sound at all (it's pure command-line, just like Type Help). Initial impressions make it easy to dismiss as a serviceable rip-off ("it's Type Help in Space!") with a very formulaic sci-fi horror story, but the point you reach the natural conclusion turns out to be barely the half-way mark! Suddenly, the story shifts up a gear, and everything gets much more interesting as it gets re-contextualised with new information. Like Blue Prince, the first half of the game turns out to be the tutorial for the second as the deductions get much trickier and the player begins to be tested in all-new ways.

In the constellation of database/ research/ Obradinnlike games, this falls somewhere between Type Help's compelling gameplay (reveal a non-linear story by deducing/ guessing/ bruteforcing four-character filenames) and Her Story's multimedia excellence (audio clips and text rather than video). The files you reveal are also accompanied by comments from the archivists which adds a neat layer of extra personality to the proceedings, reminiscent of Analogue: A Hate Story.

Despite ostensibly being about a piece of 1940 analog tech, the story hits the 2026 zeitgeist, with subtle analogies to LLMs, fake/manipulated news, christofascism, and even women's autonomy (see also the current hit horror film Obsession). The writing is often deliberately obtuse, filled with weird esoterica and philosophy that will likely reward theory-crafting to fill in the many gaps.