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Review
[This game describes violence and suicide.]
[Time to completion: 30-45 minutes]
In this noir-esque parser game, you are a private eye trying to find out what happened to Brian Timmons, and it's a case that will bring you through a mental institution to a creepy cabin.
The good: the game is clearly heavily invested in building atmosphere - flavour messages abound at every turn. Story-wise, the game is based on the Call of Cthulhu RPG and has a nice bit of Lovecraftian mystery at its heart, even if it's a bit predictable.
This game also features an efficient way of transporting the PC to various locations, splitting the story into regions a la Pilgrimage.
I'm playing what I assume is the comp version, and, surprisingly enough, it seems to lack in polish. Dialogue was delivered awkwardly; the cogs and gears of the dialogue system sometimes shows. The messages that ASK [character] ABOUT [topic] produces conflicts with dialogue delivered through cutscenes. There were some typos and punctuation errors; exit listings not always listed. State (i.e. changes in variables) was not remembered elegantly. (Spoiler - click to show)I tried to get past the guard without a pass, eliciting a “Hey, sizzle-chest, no one goes up to the patients’ rooms without a doctor’s pass.”, yet could get into the wards without a problem.
Design-wise, the in-universe stakes presented never seem high enough to deliver a sense of true tension, but I realise that this is a tricky design problem, balancing players' ease of use and creating tension.
One last point: the Lovecraftian legacy and noir atmosphere do not help, but this game pretty much demonises mental illness and sketches the flattest of stereotypes. The femme fatale character feels like she was shoved in without context, making the PC's remarks about her figure and appearance all the more jarring.
The Surprising Case of Brian Timmons treads a familiar path, in both the horror and the mystery-solving aspect - sometimes too familiar - so if you like a straightforward mystery story, and you don't mind cutscenes, you might like this.
