Crime and Math and Robot Gender Feelings
March 10, 2020 10:04 AM Subscribe
Murder by Numbers [YouTube] [Trailer] The game is essentially what would happen if you mashed the charm and style of Ace Attorney (previously?) with Nintendo’s venerable puzzle series Picross . (Previously.)
- In Murder by Numbers you solve crime with math [Verge]
For a certain type of player, this is an ideal scenario. The combination doesn’t make a whole lot of sense narratively, but as a fan of both Phoenix Wright and Picross, the experience felt custom-designed for me. But the shifts can be jarring. It’s always odd to be pulled out of a tense situation to spend 20 minutes ticking boxes in a giant grid. If you’re not really into the puzzles, it’s probably not worth the effort, as good as the story is. But if you’re smack in the middle of the venn diagram of “people who love numbers” and “people who want to solve fantastical anime murders” there’s really nothing else like Murder by Numbers.
- Shades of Picross and Phoenix Wright blend together in this unlikely but utterly lovable genre mash-up. [Eurogamer]
The cast itself is equally diverse and colourful. I'm still not sure what to make of K.C. and Fran, the latter being [the] drag queen bar owner, for while there are plenty of welcomed, positive messages about acceptance and LGBT issues here, a lot of it is tied up in teeth-clenching cliches and "thank STREISAND you weren't there"s, which tempers the positivity a little. There's also a not-so-subtle thread about power and emotional abuse woven throughout Honor's tale, too, so be warned; it's not just murder and mayhem you have to brace yourself for.
- Picross mystery puzzler Murder By Numbers is coming in March [Rock Paper Shotgun]
If it sounds like Ace Attorney and looks like Hatoful Boyfriend, well you’ve got sharp eyes and ears. Murder By Numbers boasts character designs by bird dating sim veteran Hato Moa and cheeky pre-aughts tunes by Ace Attorney’s composer, Masakazu Sugimori.
Happy Mar10 Day! This looks amazing, not really my type of game, but I'm glad it exists for those that are into this kind of puzzling.
posted by Fizz at 10:20 AM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Fizz at 10:20 AM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
Disclaimer: I am entirely obsessed with this game, and am astonished that something so perfectly tailored to my interests is somehow available commercially. Who knew there were other people out there that wanted this?
Anyway, the story and characters are a lot of fun, but the most pleasant surprise is that the nonogram component is really unusually good. I've played other nonograms-plus-other-genre games before (I will play any nonogram game) and the puzzles are usually not great. Oodles of time with 5x5 grids before they give you anything interesting, that sort of thing. The puzzles are satisfyingly constructed and so far (I'm maybe halfway through?) untimed except for the short hacking sequences. The only features I miss are a provisional marking option and a quick reset option, but with no penalties for mistakes, I can live without those.
posted by asperity at 10:21 AM on March 10, 2020
Anyway, the story and characters are a lot of fun, but the most pleasant surprise is that the nonogram component is really unusually good. I've played other nonograms-plus-other-genre games before (I will play any nonogram game) and the puzzles are usually not great. Oodles of time with 5x5 grids before they give you anything interesting, that sort of thing. The puzzles are satisfyingly constructed and so far (I'm maybe halfway through?) untimed except for the short hacking sequences. The only features I miss are a provisional marking option and a quick reset option, but with no penalties for mistakes, I can live without those.
posted by asperity at 10:21 AM on March 10, 2020
I am so into this. I've been tooling away dutifully at the latest Picross game on Switch for a while but something with a little more zazzle will be nice.
Years back I was deep in the weeds with nonogram stuff, doing some scrappy development on a solver engine for my own edification, and had the idea of taking that and ladling on some lightweight thematic game element, with solved puzzles being super-low-res graphical elements of some occult mystery, along with a short text that would be decoded incrementally as you solved each puzzle. As with most of my little game development ideas I ran out of steam before I got anywhere near a working implementation, but the idea never really left my head.
So I am delighted to see people actually competently executing the idea of marrying up nonograms and story/theme. It feels like both a quiet little vindication of that idea, and a huge relief and gift to be able to see it happen independent of some hair-tearing personal effort.
posted by cortex at 11:26 AM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
Years back I was deep in the weeds with nonogram stuff, doing some scrappy development on a solver engine for my own edification, and had the idea of taking that and ladling on some lightweight thematic game element, with solved puzzles being super-low-res graphical elements of some occult mystery, along with a short text that would be decoded incrementally as you solved each puzzle. As with most of my little game development ideas I ran out of steam before I got anywhere near a working implementation, but the idea never really left my head.
So I am delighted to see people actually competently executing the idea of marrying up nonograms and story/theme. It feels like both a quiet little vindication of that idea, and a huge relief and gift to be able to see it happen independent of some hair-tearing personal effort.
posted by cortex at 11:26 AM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
This seems perfect for me and it's downloading on my Switch right now. I don't know if I otherwise would've heard about this game.
posted by darksong at 2:15 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by darksong at 2:15 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
This is so a game I should play. But I subscribe to the Humble Bundle monthly so I don't actually just buy games anymore. I hope it's weird like Hatoful BF.
posted by jclarkin at 2:27 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by jclarkin at 2:27 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
I picked this up immediately upon seeing what it was as I have a soft spot for genre mash-ups. It is very nicely produced and written, but is fairly behind the curve as a Picross game. There's no undo button (nor a restart/clear puzzle button), no touchscreen support on Switch, and no way to retry or even access completed puzzles apart from replaying the story (as far as I can tell).
That said, it's a perfectly good light-hearted murder mystery VN, which is the only kind I ever play. Good humor, characters, twists, etc. The puzzles are decent and there is a hint system to assist players with the Picross part. If it sounds like something you will enjoy, you probably will.
And it's 10% off at launch.
posted by subocoyne at 4:48 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
That said, it's a perfectly good light-hearted murder mystery VN, which is the only kind I ever play. Good humor, characters, twists, etc. The puzzles are decent and there is a hint system to assist players with the Picross part. If it sounds like something you will enjoy, you probably will.
And it's 10% off at launch.
posted by subocoyne at 4:48 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
I've been playing too! It's a fun, ridiculous thing and the price is right.
By the way, if you like picross/nonograms etc, the Konami "Pixel Puzzle Collection" is free on iOS and amazing. There are ads if you linger on the homescreen but it's really minimal and the puzzles are awesome and very numerous. I mainly got Murder by Numbers so I wouldn't run out of puzzles in this one!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:58 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
By the way, if you like picross/nonograms etc, the Konami "Pixel Puzzle Collection" is free on iOS and amazing. There are ads if you linger on the homescreen but it's really minimal and the puzzles are awesome and very numerous. I mainly got Murder by Numbers so I wouldn't run out of puzzles in this one!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:58 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
If you beat the konami thing in its entirety it unlocks a mode where you aren't allowed to mark the empty squares, which, while not really a big deal in the beginning 90% of the game, towards the very end is hard as hell imo.
posted by juv3nal at 7:07 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by juv3nal at 7:07 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
Oh and on topic, I've got MbN for the switch and the puzzles are nothing too difficult so far (though I'm not even through the first case yet so I expect that to ramp up), but the story makes it engaging enough.
posted by juv3nal at 7:10 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by juv3nal at 7:10 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
Robot Gender Feelings
did someone make a game for me
posted by curious nu at 7:17 PM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
did someone make a game for me
posted by curious nu at 7:17 PM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
Maybe! There is an adorable scene in which SCOUT asks why everyone seems to use he/him pronouns to refer to SCOUT. The response is good.
posted by asperity at 5:53 AM on March 11, 2020
posted by asperity at 5:53 AM on March 11, 2020
Oh a belated pro tip:
An S rank might not be possible playing on easy difficulty. Which you need to unlock these little extra vignettes for SCOUT, accessible from the menu (you get a dozen or so bonus puzzles with no story attached to them and doing them all gets you a bonus scene, one for each case it looks like).
posted by juv3nal at 5:47 PM on March 12, 2020
An S rank might not be possible playing on easy difficulty. Which you need to unlock these little extra vignettes for SCOUT, accessible from the menu (you get a dozen or so bonus puzzles with no story attached to them and doing them all gets you a bonus scene, one for each case it looks like).
posted by juv3nal at 5:47 PM on March 12, 2020
It's true, you cannot get an S rank on Easy. I made the mistake of starting on Easy since it to take advantage of the automatic marking of empty squares when filling in a row, but have since switched back, since Normal mode's bonus points are the only way to achieve an S-rank an thus unlock all the Scout's Memory puzzles.
Oddly, using hints, which highlight rows and columns in which one can currently deduce a square's status, do not impact one's final score.
posted by subocoyne at 5:52 PM on March 13, 2020
Oddly, using hints, which highlight rows and columns in which one can currently deduce a square's status, do not impact one's final score.
posted by subocoyne at 5:52 PM on March 13, 2020
I finished the game just now. I did not like it as much as I thought I would going in. For me, the most annoying thing in the story was how the protagonist makes foolish and rash decisions over and over and never suffers any consequences from them or learns to stop making them. For a minute in Case 3, I was hoping that she had finally learned her lessons about not putting herself in danger unnecessarily and not rushing to arrest the wrong person for the crime, but not only does she go right back to it in Case 4, all of the character development she supposedly had in the previous case isn't even mentioned, not even by the detective who lectured it into her in the first place.
There were a lot of little frustrations in the gameplay, too. I can't count how many times I read a dialog option three or more times in a row just because I accidentally pressed A again right after it ended. But the worst problem by far was how sticky the controls were during puzzle solving (at least for the Switch version). If you press A or B to mark a square, then move the cursor too quickly, the game thinks that you're still holding down the button, so it also marks the new square that your cursor moves to. It's very easy to not notice when this happens, and if in so doing you mark a square incorrectly, you may not notice the mistake until you're almost finished with the puzzle, and it's a crapshoot if you can correct the puzzle without having to start all over. I think this happened to me about a dozen times, though to be fair, it's impossible for me to be sure when my mistakes were my own fault and when they were caused by the bad controls.
Nevertheless, these problems are the sort of thing that reveals a lack of care in the game design. If they had realized that accidentally repeating dialog options was a problem, they could have added a button to skip dialog you've already read, or had a brief delay at the end of dialog before going back to a menu selection. Similarly, if they had realized that unintentionally marking squares was a problem, they could have added a dedicated button to use for consecutively marking squares, or added a delay before starting to mark squares consecutively. In the scope of making an entire game, these are relatively easy things to do, so I can only assume that they just didn't do enough testing to realize that these were problems.
So, unfortunately, I can't really recommend this game unless you're really super into nonograms. If you want a polished nonograms game with lots of puzzles, more challenge, interesting mechanics, and tight controls, and you happen to have a 3DS, I highly recommend getting Pokemon Picross instead.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:09 PM on March 23, 2020
There were a lot of little frustrations in the gameplay, too. I can't count how many times I read a dialog option three or more times in a row just because I accidentally pressed A again right after it ended. But the worst problem by far was how sticky the controls were during puzzle solving (at least for the Switch version). If you press A or B to mark a square, then move the cursor too quickly, the game thinks that you're still holding down the button, so it also marks the new square that your cursor moves to. It's very easy to not notice when this happens, and if in so doing you mark a square incorrectly, you may not notice the mistake until you're almost finished with the puzzle, and it's a crapshoot if you can correct the puzzle without having to start all over. I think this happened to me about a dozen times, though to be fair, it's impossible for me to be sure when my mistakes were my own fault and when they were caused by the bad controls.
Nevertheless, these problems are the sort of thing that reveals a lack of care in the game design. If they had realized that accidentally repeating dialog options was a problem, they could have added a button to skip dialog you've already read, or had a brief delay at the end of dialog before going back to a menu selection. Similarly, if they had realized that unintentionally marking squares was a problem, they could have added a dedicated button to use for consecutively marking squares, or added a delay before starting to mark squares consecutively. In the scope of making an entire game, these are relatively easy things to do, so I can only assume that they just didn't do enough testing to realize that these were problems.
So, unfortunately, I can't really recommend this game unless you're really super into nonograms. If you want a polished nonograms game with lots of puzzles, more challenge, interesting mechanics, and tight controls, and you happen to have a 3DS, I highly recommend getting Pokemon Picross instead.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:09 PM on March 23, 2020
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It’s always odd to be pulled out of a tense situation to spend 20 minutes ticking boxes in a giant grid.
You'll have to get more than 8,000 rainbow gems to beat me!
posted by J.K. Seazer at 10:20 AM on March 10, 2020 [8 favorites]