Dahlia View

If you are looking for a game where you suspect everyone and feel like everyone is watching you, this is the one for you. Dahlia View is a detective narrative adventure game set in the 1950s, centered on a missing child in a very quiet and beautiful neighborhood. As a retired detective, Mr. Conway felt obliged to help find the little girl, even while the police were working on the case. His daughter Catherine warned him and begged him multiple times to leave it to the police, whom she was working with, but being stubborn and even confined in his wheelchair, Conway didn't stop. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3738969757 The gameplay has multiple sections. First, you need a lead, and of course, Conway can't walk around, so he'd use his camera to snoop on his neighbors by zooming in and taking photos of what they are doing. After that, he'd wheel himself down to have a chat with them or, well, break into their houses to look around. The questioning is fun. You have to listen carefully and use keywords that'd help you with your investigation board. Take photos of everything you think might be evidence against them. Concil your journal all the time to know what …

I really wanted to like this game because of all of the great reviews; however, I primarily play with a controller and this game was too difficult to move around with a controller. Even when I switched to keyboard, I had difficulty. I don't like that you can't move the view around to see your surroundings. I couldn't even get out of Conway's apartment building to go speak to the McKees. When I got to what I thought was the front door of the apartment complex, there wasn't an option to interact with the door so I was stuck in the lobby. Also, from just about an hour of gameplay, I find it odd how quick this retired PI is to jump to conclusions. For the first hour, all you do is take pictures, navigate your character, and listen to a bunch of dialog. You don't even get to make dialog decisions. I do enjoy the art style though, so there is that positive note. Overall, it turned out to just not be for me.

Usually when i have a neutral opinion on the game, I just plaster "recommended" there. However, this one is an exception. This is a beautiful-looking game with lovely sound design and great characters. Is it buggy? Well, it's Unreal Engine, so that should answer the question. Plenty of bugs. Some stall progress. Some are softlocks. Some are hardlocks. Way too many HUD locks. Way too often input won't work properly or at all. Way too often cameras don't switch as they should, leaving you to move your character while the camera faces a blurry wall/box/pot/curtain/car texture. However, despite the constant bug frustration, I would gladly look past them and post a good review if it was a good detective game. And a good detective game it was not. Where it fails miserably is at writing. This is not a detective story. It has detective elements, but a villain jumping like a Jack in the box in the literal last three minutes of the game (I am not exaggerating - not even the last chapter, it is in the very end of an epilogue) is just bad writing. A detective game should lead the player to uncover the mystery on their own, they should feel invested, they should feel smart, and th…

There isn't much of decision making to do, it's more of a linear game. But there is stuff that's missable. One thing I have to mention is the lockpicking mechanic: It's one of the best I've ever seen in a game. At least on keyboard it feels very immersive when you have to struggle with your hand to keep the keys pressed. I liked The Occupation more, but this is still a good game.

Puzzles - fab, Investigations - fab, everything else - a real frustration. The mechanics of the game are done well and the mobility aspect although it takes some getting used to is unique although unsure why you cannot control the camera to look around more. The ending was not worth the 11 hours of gameplay that I put in; very bland and a bit flat in my opinion.

fun