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playingstory2020-06-30 11:37 pm
got_quiet) wrote in playingstory2020-06-30 11:37 pm
Entry tags:
Detective Hank and the Golden Sneeze
Name: Detective Hank and the Golden Sneeze
Status: Complete
Site: https://obsessive-science-games.itch.io/detective-hank-and-the-golden-sneeze
Rating: G
Pairing: Gen
Description: A straightforward sleuth game
One of the suspects.
I guess VNs are a good format for solving mysteries, because here's another detective game. The setting is kinda steampunkish (you have a mobile rotary phone) and the plot is straightforward. Someone stole The Golden Sneeze from a museum, and you've got to figure out who it was from a cast of 6 suspects. The style of the game is cartoony, with a short and dry sense of humor, and the writing is brisk and error free.
If you trust that the game isn't going to throw you for any loops it seems pretty easy to figure out. I always am tempted to over think things, but I reined in that compulsion and just went with the obvious option. If you manage to get two or three clues you should be able to guess the culprit.
There is a lot of interactivity with the narrative, which is divided into two sections. The first is the investigation. You ask questions of multiple people, and there are three or four scenes where you have to make choices that will lock you out of other options (where to go, who to talk to, etc.) It doesn't appear that you can hit a dead end. At some point the game tells you it's time to make a choice, and you can guess as wildly as you want. If you've picked the right suspect then when you arrest them they've got the Sneeze on them. The second section is a quick court scene. If you've unearthed enough clues you will be given some assistance during the trial to pick the right option, but again even if you didn't get the right answers a little bit of common sense will do the trick for you too.
The hero, Hank, his wife, and his in-laws.
One round is relatively quick. I got through it in a night. The interesting thing about the mechanics of the game is that it actually has 4 different solutions. You can pick 1 through 4 or let the game choose a random one. Each version is essentially the same case, but with a couple important clues changed so that the culprit is different each time. It's an interesting approach, but the problem is that for the majority of the game the content is completely the same, and if you've done one run through I can probably safely remove the culprit of that run from your list of suspects in the next one. The game autosaves at the end of chapters only, and doesn't let you save scum. It also locks you into your final suspect choice, so if you do choose that wrong I guess you've got to play the game again from the start after a fail. I'm not sure how I feel about that. You're also able to just fast forward to the next choice in the game, so replaying through all four versions isn't too odious, but I stopped at 2.
There's also a bonus side game where you can figure out who stole your cookie during a visit with the in laws. It's much shorter but the same basic idea.
This was an inoffensive, polished little game that didn't take much time to get through. It's entertaining and worth throwing the devs 5 bucks if you're into this sort of thing.
Status: Complete
Site: https://obsessive-science-games.itch.io/detective-hank-and-the-golden-sneeze
Rating: G
Pairing: Gen
Description: A straightforward sleuth game
One of the suspects.
I guess VNs are a good format for solving mysteries, because here's another detective game. The setting is kinda steampunkish (you have a mobile rotary phone) and the plot is straightforward. Someone stole The Golden Sneeze from a museum, and you've got to figure out who it was from a cast of 6 suspects. The style of the game is cartoony, with a short and dry sense of humor, and the writing is brisk and error free.
If you trust that the game isn't going to throw you for any loops it seems pretty easy to figure out. I always am tempted to over think things, but I reined in that compulsion and just went with the obvious option. If you manage to get two or three clues you should be able to guess the culprit.
There is a lot of interactivity with the narrative, which is divided into two sections. The first is the investigation. You ask questions of multiple people, and there are three or four scenes where you have to make choices that will lock you out of other options (where to go, who to talk to, etc.) It doesn't appear that you can hit a dead end. At some point the game tells you it's time to make a choice, and you can guess as wildly as you want. If you've picked the right suspect then when you arrest them they've got the Sneeze on them. The second section is a quick court scene. If you've unearthed enough clues you will be given some assistance during the trial to pick the right option, but again even if you didn't get the right answers a little bit of common sense will do the trick for you too.
The hero, Hank, his wife, and his in-laws.
One round is relatively quick. I got through it in a night. The interesting thing about the mechanics of the game is that it actually has 4 different solutions. You can pick 1 through 4 or let the game choose a random one. Each version is essentially the same case, but with a couple important clues changed so that the culprit is different each time. It's an interesting approach, but the problem is that for the majority of the game the content is completely the same, and if you've done one run through I can probably safely remove the culprit of that run from your list of suspects in the next one. The game autosaves at the end of chapters only, and doesn't let you save scum. It also locks you into your final suspect choice, so if you do choose that wrong I guess you've got to play the game again from the start after a fail. I'm not sure how I feel about that. You're also able to just fast forward to the next choice in the game, so replaying through all four versions isn't too odious, but I stopped at 2.
There's also a bonus side game where you can figure out who stole your cookie during a visit with the in laws. It's much shorter but the same basic idea.
This was an inoffensive, polished little game that didn't take much time to get through. It's entertaining and worth throwing the devs 5 bucks if you're into this sort of thing.