If you like those fill-in-the-blank point-and-click mystery games like The Case of the Golden Idol or Duck Detective, then you’ll dig Mini Murder Mysteries! This is a no-frills set of eight self-contained mysteries plus a meta mystery to round it all off. Each mystery is presented as a dossier of files, including basic (and non-graphic) illustrations of key points on the deceased’s body, transcripts of emails, keypass logs, and written testimonies and alibis from four suspects.
There are no cluttered sets to scrutinize or enigmatic character portraits to scratch your head over. Everything is right there in the case file, and anything gritty and gruesome is written and never shown. So don’t worry about seeing something you don’t want to; however, depending on how your theater of the mind works, you can have a sanitized experience or a truly gnarly one.
This theater of the mind imagery can be a pro or a con, depending on the player. Each of the cases of Mini Murder Mysteries feels like it could have succeeded as one of those tabletop “escape room in a box” games. Part of what I like about this type of detective game is getting to scan the environment for clues and enjoying excellent art in the process, which this has in great supply. I also like interviewing suspects, even if the conversation is entirely on rails like it is here, and I appreciate some good voice acting, which unfortunately this game lacks.
Some people might struggle with identifying essential clues in the background or reading facial expressions, and if a game gives the important clues a big ol’ highlight, then there’s a risk that the player can feel patronized. Mini Murder Mysteries keeps the mystery and clues primarily in reading comprehension and a little bit of pattern recognition with abstract doodles. Each mystery is nice and bite-sized and easily legible.
Like most detective games, it’s also very accessible as a game. It’s all mouse clicks; nothing is timed, and you don’t have to worry about color blindness because everything that requires color to be known is labeled with the written word as well. There’s also a robust hint system that can be deployed at any time, with levels of hints from gentle nudges up to and including giving away the answer entirely. If you’re totally stumped, you won’t be stuck forever!
Something I do need to point out is that this is a game for adults. Let me lay out a sliding scale of cozy to grotesque for point-and-click detective games: many are geared towards the cozy community these days. Duck Detective and Little Problems come to mind as ones I have enjoyed and know to be comfortable while avoiding truly dark topics.
Others, like Darkside Detective and The Case of the Golden Idol, deal with death, affairs, and alcohol, so they are tailored more towards adults. Using this sliding scale, Mini Murder Mysteries is all the way down the scale and even a little bit past Golden Idol. Yes, I’m serious. Here is a sample list of content warnings to give an idea of mature content (but it is not the full list in order to remain spoiler-free): child abuse, severe alcoholism, lifestyle kink, and prostitution.
Minors should not play this game, and adults should have fair warning going into it. There were a few witness statements and commentary from the detective that caught me off guard in the first mystery. The writing is incredibly well-crafted and witty, but often dark and sometimes disturbing. If you’re ready for it, it’s quite tongue-in-cheek and funny. If you start the game thinking that it’ll be a more cozy mystery (and hey, the Steam page says the word “cozy” like four times, so that’s a very fair assumption), then you’re gonna have a bad time. The devs give this mature content disclaimer on the Steam page and also at the start of the game:
“While there’s no graphic imagery in this game, it does describe scenes of death, murder, violence, and all that business.”
This is a solid spoiler-free disclaimer, but I think it only covers half of it. I do think they need to note that there is also blatant (though not graphic) sexual content, as well as possible triggering content like descriptions of bruises on abuse victims. I didn’t think the adult content was excessive, but it was definitely there and notable. It’s the usual kind of thing you would expect in a thriller murder mystery story—so, I argue this is NOT a cozy game, even though it is advertised as one.
It doesn’t toe any lines or do anything especially exciting. Just nine good miniature detective stories, exactly as it says on the cover. I kind of hate to give it a star rating because it’s perfect for exactly the right person: you must love true crime podcasts, reading, and gallows humor—ok, I guess that’s a decent spread. So if you’re into detective games, this is a good one.
As for the other qualities, the visuals and audio are only practical, there’s no animation to speak of, and it’s not exactly a deep meta story. It truly is nothing more than a collection of mini murder mysteries shown through the case files. Not great, not bad, just solid. Worth your $5 if you like this genre, but nothing that’s going to inspire a new generation of detective games anytime soon.
