The Detective Reaper Invites

"The Detective Reaper Invites" is a puzzle roguelike that challenges players to solve randomly generated murder cases. As a detective reaper, your task is to gather testimonies from suspects, deduce the culprit, and execute them. The game is a unique blend of strategy and resource management. Cards can be used to acquire vital testimonies, but they come at a cost, so maintaining your finances is important. Money can be earned by successfully solving cases, and you can spend your earnings on items and cards at the shop, but beware of cursed items and detrimental cards. The board game layout adds a layer of depth to the gameplay. Players must navigate through various tiles, such as Crime Scenes, Shops, Treasures, and Random Events, to progress. With three levels of difficulty – Normal, Difficult, and Arduous – the game will test your deduction skills to the limit. Overall, this deduction game is ideal for players who enjoy logical puzzles and resource management. It draws inspiration from "Mimic Logic", that's available for less than half the price. However, I hesitate to recommend this game in its current state, due to the barely legible font. It's a puzzle in itself to read the…

Having heard about this game when it was first announced I was interested in checking it out as soon as it was released. Unfortunately the final product was nothing like the expectation I had in the lead up to release day. Cases can go from immediately solvable due in part to the opening statements (X: D is the culprit, D: X is the culprit, Y: D and myself are not the culprits) to a coinflip because of pointless testimonies causing you to waste cards thinking you can get helpful information out of some uncooperative suspects. The penalty system for executing the wrong person is also weirdly unbalanced, as you can have a max HP value of 80 but a wrong answer does 75 damage. You can find or buy cards that raise your max HP and reduce penalty damage but it's all still random. The cards you can pick up during a run either after successfully solving a case or purchasing in the shop don't offer much variety (you can have a choice between a 5-cost card that gets a testimony out of a suspect or a 3-cost card that does the same thing, or even another 5-cost card that has the same effect but with different artwork and name). At first you would think there would be plenty of cards that offe…

I was going to give this game a good review with happy smiles and good tips, but I'm mixed, now. The game does not understand what constitutes a "lie" when it comes to locations, specifically when time is not a factor (only 01). I've seen multiple culprits *honestly admit* their location in their opening message. I have to completely disregard location. Play Gnosia if you want an interesting puzzler type game like this but with more elements of social deduction and argumentation. If you still want to give this game a shot, here's how to break it: Max out on Culprit cards, SKIP everything else. The AI does not consider what has been said previously. If there is 1 killer, and they accuse 2 people? Murderer. If there is 1 innocent, and they say 2 people are innocent? Murderers. The AI is incapable of throwing its ally under the bus. This applies to ANY uneven group, but it is harder to pull off. Remember: if someone says someone else is innocent, they are always on a team with that person. If someone says someone is guilty, they are always the opposite alignment. The strategy is incredibly simple: Determine teams as fast as possible. When you're forced to kill someone, if you …

Decent idea, pretty bad execution. UI feels clunky, "map" is too small and different room names overlap. Some testimonies are pointless and don't make sense. I'm guessing it might improve in the future, but I'm not really willing to wait. Sorry, refunded.

I hate being negative on a small indie game, this has clear passion behind it and a very good idea under its belt, but this is a very flawed game on a fundamental level. Even if all the weird jank and bugs was fixed in its entirety, the foundation this game builds upon isn't engaging for a roguelike, this isn't the kind of game you want to replay and see how things change between runs, the only big difference between runs is how much you get screwed over by random chance, sometimes you get a case where 2 people say "X is the killer" and it's a sweep, other times you get no testimony at all and when you ask questions, they give you "I can't believe this" or "I'm Thirsty". This is where the cards are supposed to come into play, but there will be times when you try to use them optimally and because the witnesses just choose to not be helpful, you get stuck with barely any more info than before. This wouldn't be too bad if you could more easily opt out of runs and start again, but there's no reset mid run aside from dying or closing the game, so if your up a creek without a paddle, you just have to wait until you die or reopen the game, it makes a already slow experience feel slower. …

Nice little game. I hope the devs will continu to develop it and add cards and game mecanics. I got to the end of the run but [spoiler] sadly, in chapter two, innocent started lying and culprit started to tell the truth and I hope it will get patched quick. [/spoiler]