The Ratline

Probably the closest thing to be a perfect successor to Obra Dinn/Roottrees/Golden Idol alike deduction games at the moment. Pure joy for around 10 hours of gameplay. The later cases rely more and more on remembering details from the earlier ones, so it’s definetely better to play it consistently over a couple of days rather than taking long breaks.

Pretty solid game in a Rootrees-like fashion, I very much enjoyed the variety in how different cases are solved. Only advice would be to try and play through in 1 sitting and/or make notes, as the amount of call-backs to earlier events makes later cases difficult to solve without some reference to who was mentioned where.

A solid entry in the Owlskip Games line of investigation games. While the story failed to hook me initially (the protagonist is positioned in a weird way that I didn't care for), the interconnections between different cases were a pleasure and by the end of the game its cast of awful Nazis was well-embedded into my brain. Certain elements in the game felt a bit superfluous or underused, most notably the library search function, which would bring up different documents after inputting at least 2 characters but didn't have enough documents to search through. It seems like the library updates with new documents with each case and keeps the old ones, so I'd frequently accidentally discover documents relevant to the case while I was trying different queries. It feels like this could've worked if there were many more documents available, but as executed it feels like just an extra step towards gaining more documents and maybe the player should've gained access to them separately. Contrast that with the phone, which always has the same contacts available, of which there are many, and does something interesting: an entire conversation peppered with interesting clues. The conversations are a bit wonky, balancing more towards clue giving than decent narrative, but are a delight to sift through for hints at where to look next. The game's clues are also usually really good, with very few leaps of logic around. There were 1 or 2 clues where even after using the hint system I couldn't figure out where I would have found that information. Otherwise, though, it felt like each case and each set of clues just added more texture to the fiction till it feels rich in your mind, despite some of the hokey writing. All in all, if you like deduction games, and especially if you've played previous Owlskip Games entries, you'll probably like this.