The Murderer is not Me review: There is only one truth

"There is only one truth!" This is perhaps the most famous line in Detective Conan, and it is a very iconic line that Conan will say whenever he finds hard evidence. However, in this game, there is only one truth, and it is not me.

Our Grim Reaper pupil Conan has been with us for more than 20 years. But if you ask me who my favorite character in the anime is, it has to be Conan's "official" rival singer, Kid the Thief.

In "It's Not Me," we're about to play not tacky decent detectives or finger-fingering defense lawyers, but the opposite of justice, murderers who use various means to kill their targets and hide the means to frame others, evade police investigation, and manipulate them.

Open murder game

The Killer is Not Me, a criminal investigation RPG co-developed by Skeleton and GuGong. Compared to similar games, this game has a very novel gameplay. There is no popular small game puzzle solving, no traditional props piecing together, what the production team wants to do is to put all the elements of a case into a big scene, all the clues have to be dug by players, and the game encourages players to play the game multiple times, killing is not the only way, players can choose their favorite way to complete the goal. The core system is similar to the Hitman 47 series.

This open model is a bold choice, and this model has high requirements for level design. We know that openness means freedom, and the more freedom there is, the more interaction points there are. The selection and integration of a large number of elements become the basis of whether the game is fun and balanced. People who play these mind-burning games. Awesome. Whoever made this brain-burning game has to be better.

Multiple inference elements

Open the game, a criminal investigation of the game breath. Here to name and praise the background music of the game, really very fit the temperament of the game, very feel. The minimalist interface style and silent melancholy background music instantly put us in the state.

A system complex game, its teaching part will not be too good to do. The instructional level of the Killer is simple and straightforward to guide the player through a separate case that contains all the elements, the player will be prompted to complete the level, and the conditions are relatively simple to achieve. However, after completing the level, the player may still be in a state of confusion about the gameplay, and we can only gradually explore the core gameplay of the game through infinite replays. The sudden influx of huge amounts of information in the game is also a common problem of this type of game - not friendly enough for novices and difficult to get started.

There's a lot of information in the profile alone

Only when you know yourself and your enemy can you win every battle. After watching the beginning of the story, the game officially begins. At this point the game doesn't prompt us to do anything, we need to run the map on our own. Talking to NPCS, getting familiar with map scenes, checking item details, investigating interpersonal relationships, planning time and motive for crimes, etc., are all worked out through running maps. Put all this information together, create a chain reaction, and you're bound to find the most suitable method for your crime. Through the reasonable planning of their own actions to complete the goal, the greatest source of fun of the game is from this.

The acquisition of a large amount of information in the scene is the main factor that determines the success of the crime

Of course, extreme things must be reversed, too much content at the same time, it is the lack of details of the game. As a criminal investigation and reasoning game, information must exist as the main element. Whether various information is logically related and whether it is self-consistent are the main factors that produce immersion. The details of "The Killer is Not Me" are slightly underdone. It brings the player into a cold and solid scripted story, but at the same time, some small logical holes make people crazy.

For example, in the teaching section of the story, a lawyer tries to get rid of his lover by killing her and framing his classmate. In the specific process of the game, the protagonist kills someone with the knife given to him by the classmate and throws it in front of the classmate, and then the classmate puts the knife away while wondering why his knife fell here. When I got here, I was like WTF.

A knife that's fresh and bloody

What logic is that?

This happens in many RPGS, and we don't have a problem with it. But in a game that focuses on logical reasoning, it really affects the atmosphere and the sense of engagement.

"I know how to kill him!" And immediately pick up the ashtray on the table and deliver a fatal blow to the target? It's impossible. And don't forget our dear people's police.

After we've planned our modus operandi, we can't just execute it. In the game, 24 hours after the death of the target, the body will be found, the police will arrive at the scene to investigate the case, and our negligence in every detail will lead to your suspicion level. We need to kill our target while minimizing our own footprint.

In the whole investigation process, the police's handling of the case was a little rigid, only mechanical investigation of all suspects suspected points, every time an unreasonable phenomenon was found, the suspect value would be increased accordingly, and finally the suspect with the highest degree of suspicion was directly accused of being the murderer. If this were put in real life, if it was so easy to frame a person, it would really cause chaos.

Someone gave me a bad review for that

There are many ways in the game to cover up the traces of their crime, such as eliminating the fingerprints left on the crime tool, adjusting the watch time of the parties, leaving an alibi in the appropriate position and so on.

Speaking of this, we have to mention the "pressure" set in the game, when we cover up the traces of the above crime traces, will correspondingly let the protagonist produce pressure, when the pressure value is too high, it will force back home to relieve the pressure. In the setting, the appearance of pressure is very bright. I can understand that the authors of the game wanted to control the overall pace of the game in a way that increased strategy and difficulty. However, in this way of implementation in the current game, it slightly affects the game experience. Imagine that you were so stressed out during the implementation of an idea or gathering of information that you went home and the action plan had to be canceled and delayed by a day. Is it hard?

The operation feel of this work also makes me difficult to compliment, especially in the main character's walking operation. For character movement, the author adopted two sets of controls - mouse or keyboard. I don't know if the author deliberately, the mouse operation is fine, the keyboard operation experience is not so good. At the end of the player's input, the character still "glides" forward some distance. Many games will have this setting, but in this game, with the character's relatively stiff action, it will give people a very "meat" feeling, and the game needs to spend a lot of time on the road, it is easy to make people irritable. In addition, basically all the interactions have no sound effects, and in the sense of operational feedback, it always feels so bad.

Double-clicking on the door won't make you run through it

Of course, this work is still worthy of praise, regardless of whether the logic is reasonable, the game's script performance is still good. It is said that the production team of the game in order to bring the most authentic game experience to the players, and even specifically consulted the relevant materials of the police academy. The police investigation transcripts we see in the game are almost identical to those we see in real life. The production team really did their best to help the player restore the real action and investigation process. However, the real case handling process in real life is complex and full of uncertain factors. After all, the game is a game, and too much realism will affect the entertainment.

Level editor

In addition to the main line and individual cases, the game also provides a level editor. After completing the main story, players can also experience the joy of creating cases. To its credit, the level simulator is surprisingly powerful and can be used to implement almost any idea, even the import of background music and item images, so that players can create their own unique work.

The second video on the Steam store page is an image import tutorial

At the same time, the editor also supports multi-line plot editing, you can completely restore a variety of criminal investigation episodes, and give them completely different endings. If you like the detective mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, you can definitely make a mystery level. If you like the Hitman series, you can make an elegant and gorgeous killing game.

Conclusion

"The Killer is not Me" is a unique game, the complexity of its core gameplay and the emergence of the level simulator are expressed the ambition of the production team, the framework of the game is not bad, but there are still a lot of bugs and logical unreasonable situation. The problem with most indie games is that the gameplay design is very creative, but the details are not polished.

In the end, killing people is hard, so I'm just gonna be the good guy.