No Case Should Remain Unsolved

This was a pleasant surprise of a game! It is a deductive mystery that's basically a text adventure with some small pixel art illustrations, but it's in a really unconventional format. You get everyone's dialog with one person and you have to sort the dialog snippets, both related to who said that and in what order. So it's like a grab bag of dialog that you put together like a puzzle, to solve the mystery related to the disappearance of a child in 2010s South Korea. Everyone lies at least once (the game says this upfront, it is not a spoiler). This sounds like a metroidbrainia, but I think it's better classified as a deductive mystery. it's not entirely made up of knowledge-based unlocks - in multiple places your progress to get specific dialog snippets is actually gated by having to find keys. But you get the keys in a nonlinear fashion by piecing together various other snippets, so I'd say it's metroidbrainia-adjacent and could potentially appeal to the same audience. You really do need to like deductive mysteries and text-focused gameplay though. The game is quite short and I recommend setting aside 2-3 hours to play it at a stretch. I tried it, and then set it aside for about two months (I was dealing with a very disruptive house repair and then move) and when I resumed it, I needed to reread everything because you're supposed to remember a lot of small details and keep them in mind. It took me overall 3.5 hours this way. The actual mystery is interesting and not what I expected! Without spoilers: I really liked the focus on family and children, and it was intriguing to find something with these themes that was not particularly cozy (I like cozy games too, but families shouldn't only be equated with cozy themes). I recommend 100%-ing the game because then you get an additional reveal. I also liked the art! The music started to annoy me after a while, so I eventually turned it off. I would love to play both more from the developer and also other mysteries in this exact format. There are three more games by the developer (Somi) and I think all of them are text-heavy investigation games with different formats, I hope to get to playing those eventually, too. Technical details: I played on the Steam Deck docked to the TV and with a PS4 controller. It worked well, but I'm not sure it would work so well on the Deck's own screen because it's just a lot of small text that you scroll around. It probably makes more sense to play it with a mouse than with a controller, but I prefer a controller (this one has a touchscreen too). __ Source of the game: Bought with my own money, in one of the big quarterly Steam sales. I think it's worth full price though, it's very unique, a good experience and just the right length for the gameplay.

The game grabs you from the literal start menu and does not let go.