CaseCracker

The good: - Engrossing story and worldbuilding - The rabbit holes you come across in these investigations are compelling and engaging. It almost feels like a wiki walk, in a good way. - It's immensely satisfying to find the one or two relevant video recordings in a sea of potential dates by applying logic and information gotten through other clues. - Using the car rental database from case 1 to solve a puzzle in case 3 was brilliant! - Side questions are cool and very rewarding. They also provide a reason to revisit old cases. - Almost every character in the game is connected, and so are the cases and the locations themselves. It makes the world of CaseCracker feel alive. - The case report system is a definite improvement over the traditional "pick one answer from a group of three/four" seen in most detective games. There are many more possibilities, and that forces the player to think and understand the case. - There were a lot of excellent and brilliant twists. - Interesting premises and obstacles. It's so cool to identify the victim of case 4. - The existence of Jiao Bin as a whole. I love this character. - Some out-of-game stuff is clever and very creative, like finding the HQ…

i like searching

CaseCracker is a super fun little detective game, with a perfectly simple gameplay and interface that encourages you to focus on the clues themselves and how they intertwine. For the most part, the individual mysteries are fairly quick to solve, especially if you’re taking thorough notes (I suggest on actual physical paper, the in-game note system isn’t great), but the way they all intertwine and the big mysteries is a genuinely satisfying conclusion. Sadly, one of the big final mysteries is based on an out-of-game website which I simply couldn’t access for whatever reason, which kind of spoiled the climax for me, but the in-game mysteries are still great. A better note system and a better way to sort and search clues would be better, but for what it is, this is a good experience.

I wanted to like this game, but I don't.

finished only for the sake of completion. Some puzzles are too pretentious. Plot is contrived. Poor UX when dealing with a ton of keyword tiles on the left panel. The shortcut is also unnecessary.

I do generally enjoy this kind of game and I liked the deduction factor. The fact it's almost purely text is appealing to me, because it actually means I can easily go back and check through to see if I've missed anything. I also like the idea of the main questions and the extended questions, and the fact that you can have hints of two types that cost different amounts. Definitely better off if you have a pen and paper to keep track of things from Case 1, though, especially as the cases get more complicated later on. If doing that is not your thing, then this is probably not for you. I used up several sheets of paper taking notes. Yes, there's a note function in the game, but it seems very clunky for English characters. I didn't find any issues with the translation, but I understand some retranslation was due anyway - so this is probably after said retranslation happened. Endgame spoiler: [spoiler]The new file was not at all visible. I saw somewhere that initially an icon was supposed to pop up, but it didn't. I had to check a walkthrough.[/spoiler]