Marlon’s Mystery: The darkside of crime

This game wouldn't be too bad if ya'll would please fix minor bugs. I tried to put an item onto the board and it won't show. Which means I can't progress with deductions. Please fix this! When it says move to board it makes the sound only.

This game have some kind of bug, that it seems you can encounter at any time in the game. And there is no way to contact the developers to get help. So just dont waste your money and time on this game...

I try to cut indie developers some slack when it comes to imperfections, so when I realized within the first five seconds that the English translation was going to be.... Rough... I didn't much mind as long as I could understand what the sentence was supposed to have been (and I could). What I was less forgiving of was running into a game-breaking bug that locks you out of progressing in the first fifteen minutes, then going to the steam forums and seeing that the most recent thread on the forums is from December 2023 and involves the poster and several other people encountering the exact same bug. In short, the game is currently in a broken, unplayable state past a certain point and given that it was last updated almost a year ago, that doesn't seem likely to change. And so I can't recommend it.

There are lots of text that give the player little to no choice at all. The two main characters are not relatiable and even their dynamic together misses something, fails to be interesting. There is a serious bug very early, that forces you to uninstal and reinstall, and can still reappear, you never know when - which is going to require uninstalling again... and, the killer problem: there is no Steam Cloud support. So, everytime you will try to play this game, you will have to start from scratch, and hope/gamble your time - until the end - that the bug won't corrupt the progression. So you have to backup your saves manually and be ready to guess when it's you who are stock in mystery solving, and when the game is actually secretly bugging.

❗️There's a bug at the very beginning of the game where [spoiler]you can't move the swing photo onto the board[/spoiler], preventing any further progress. I was able to fix it by deleting the game and restarting from scratch. Apparently, it hasn't been fixed in all these three years, and the devs have gone radio silent. Not cool. That aside, it's a nice short game (about 3 hours long). The visual style is adorable, each of the characters has their own well-written personality, and I liked investigating the evidence using the deduction board. There were some minor flaws, like the dialogue text advancing a bit slowly, but you can see that the devs put their hearts into this game.

Marlon’s Mystery: The darkside of crime is a detective adventure game developed and published by Made in Mavis that combines investigation, deduction, hidden-object gameplay, and narrative-driven storytelling into a compelling crime-solving experience. Drawing inspiration from classic detective fiction while incorporating modern adventure game mechanics, the title places players in the role of Abby Marlon, a determined investigator tasked with unraveling a complex mystery filled with deception, secrets, and unexpected twists. What begins as a seemingly straightforward case gradually transforms into a far more intricate narrative, rewarding players who pay attention to details and enjoy piecing together clues. The story serves as the foundation of the entire experience. Abby Marlon and her partner Jared Evans are hired to investigate a wealthy family's troubling situation involving a missing woman who has been accused of murder and theft. As the investigation progresses, the case becomes increasingly complicated, revealing hidden motives, conflicting testimonies, and long-buried secrets. The narrative constantly evolves as new information emerges, making it difficult to predict whe…