Midnight Files: THE NOIR CUT

Having played 3/4 cases so far, not included the add-on bonus case, I am thoroughly unimpressed and let down by the premise. Case 1 failed to establish effective motive, leaving it to a guess. Case 2 established motive but was ultimately a guessing game between multiple valid suspects. Case 3 was not an investigation at all. Would've been a sub 20min level if not for my trying desperately to investigate where the dev failed to include anything. Finally, half the issue in cases 1 and 2 was due to the game outright giving the wrong message in the tutorial itself. The directive of "Predict the next crime location" actually means "Where does the suspect live", fully setting you up to failure and frustration if you take the game at its word and attempt to engage in motive and prediction. The game has a fairly strong start with a well detailed small space investigation that establishes far more intrigue than the writer was ever interested in providing. Subsequent investigations continued the downward trend and provided no divergent suspects or motives, as well as much larger and less detailed scenes to investigate. By the time you complete the first investigation, you will likely have m…

4/16 Update: Dev said on the discussion boards that he is planning a patch to remove AI assets, among other changes. Changing review to Recommend for that reason. I’ll add more detail when I get a chance to play. ====== Uses AI assets.

Midnight Files presents itself as a deliberate, slow-burning detective experience that prioritizes logic and observation over spectacle, and that focus defines nearly every aspect of its design. Developed and published by Paper Lynx Games, it places players in the role of an investigator working through a series of cases, each built around reconstructing events from fragments rather than following a linear narrative path. From the outset, the game makes it clear that it will not guide you gently toward answers; instead, it expects careful attention, patience, and a willingness to think critically about every detail in front of you. The core gameplay loop revolves around examining crime scenes and documenting them through photography, which becomes the foundation of the entire investigative process. Moving through each location in first-person, players are encouraged to scrutinize their surroundings with a methodical eye, capturing anything that could potentially serve as evidence. The brilliance of this system lies in how it transforms something as simple as taking pictures into an active form of deduction. Each photograph is not just a record but a clue that must later be interpr…

It's just bad. There is no difference between difficulty levels, except for the fact that on easy you get 24 photos and on normal and hard you get 20. I thought there would be some help as to framing the photos, but no. I thought you need a lot of evidence, but no. It's just annoying, boring, and it frankly feels like AI slop. Voiceovers are AI, some stuff is generated by AI, and I personally do not buy the "I'm a poor dev I cannot afford to hire artists" excuse. Then don't. Plenty of great games out there do not have voice acting. Plenty of great games aren't (badly) translated by AI into other languages. I was streaming this game to my friend and they also became annoyed with this game. Don't waste your money. Even this little of it.

Meh.

I like deduction games and I'm all up for no handholding but this ain't it. The mechanics and cases of this game aren't really intuative at all. When playing the first case it was, to me, unclear that you have to both point out the suspect and the place they will strike next. There are no witness statements or anything even though your notebook does point out "Talking to the neighbors" and "Find out who lives in the appartment." Confusing and not fun to play.