Knives Out

Harlan Thrombey, patriarch of the Thrombey family, is dead. The police have concluded his death was a suicide, but gentleman detective Benoit Blanc has been hired to investigate the possibility of foul play. This crime(?) is not wanting for suspects, as on the night of the incident the entire family had gathered at Harlan's semi-secluded mansion for his birthday, and Harlan conveniently gave pretty much every family member some sort of motive over the course of the party. And if the cozy mystery set-up wasn't obvious enough, Harlan had amassed his fortune through detective novels.

Tangle Tower

You wouldn’t be able to tell from the title, but Tangle Tower is the third game in the “Detective Grimoire” series—or, if you ask some people, perhaps the “second” game. Detective Grimoire started off as a free flash game way back in 2007. A full commercial game, Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp was released in 2014 with a completely new art style. Since Secret of the Swamp was a complete revamp, one could argue that that is the first game... but as someone who played the original flash game way back when, Tangle Tower is unquestionably the third game.

But enough pointless history, let’s talk about fun things—like murders!

Calamity Town

Ellery Queen arrives at Wrightsville, USA, in search of inspiration. However, the only available lodging is a building known as the Calamity House. It was built by the Wright family, the head of the town’s social food chain (and the descendants of the founder of Wrightsville), as a wedding present for their middle daughter. But the daughter went mad after she was left at the altar, and when the Wrights tried to sell the house the buyer suddenly dropped dead while touring the home—hence the “Calamity House” moniker. Sensing dark currents underneath the seeming idyllic Wrightsville and Wright family, Ellery happily takes up the abode, and waits.

Death Mark / 死印

Hey, hey... Have you heard the rumors about that weird review blog? It’s about some weirdo who keeps on writing about all sorts of obscure and gross murder stories. They say that if you read the intro to one of his posts, you’ll die just like the people in the story that post is about, unless you read the rest of the review as well...

The Monogram Murders

The glorious return of Hercule Poirot... or is it? It might be a bit difficult to tell from the cover, but The Monogram Murders was written not by Agatha Christie, but by Sophie Hannah. Hannah received permission from the Christie estate to write a Hercule Poirot novel, making this the first “official” Poirot novel since Christie’s passing. Does Hannah’s entry live up to the Queen of Crime’s legacy? Eeeh. The book is fun and well-written, but feels a bit too much like it’s clever just for the sake of being clever.

Steins;Gate / シュタインズ・ゲート

In my Raging Loop review, I said that one of the things that I thought made the game work so well was that the protagonist was intelligent and approached the situation in the same way the player would, creating a narrative flow that was engaging, natural, and aligned with what the actual player wanted to do even though there was very little direct control.

Steins;Gate is not like that.

A Mind to Murder

A Mind to Murder is P.D. James’s second novel, again starring Adam Dangliesh. While her first novel had fantastic writing and a lukewarm plot, A Mind to Murder is much more even on both accounts, which unfortunately just made the book plain and forgettable.

Raging Loop / レイジングループ

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’m back, and hopefully I’ll last longer this time!

A few weeks ago, I finished... “Raging Loop” is what the English version will be called, so I guess we'll go with that. (If you look at the Japanese title in the picture above, you can see that the Japanese version calls itself "REI-JIN-G-LU-P".) Anyway, I finished Raging Loop a few weeks ago. I thought it was a pretty neat game that would never see the light of day in America, since it was extremely, extremely Japanese, plus it had already been out for several years, so the time for a translation had passed.

Naturally, the English localization was announced the next week.

So here we are! Since the game is coming out in English, and it’s a pretty niche game that people probably don’t know much about, I figured I may as well get reviews going again and help people find out about this game. (Of course, I’m not the first person to review this, but I may certainly be the least-known person to do so! Also, since I'm basing this just on my experiences with the Japanese version, I may end up using different terms than the official localization ends up using.)

The Crow Trap

The only trap here is the cover and description, which made me want to read a book that ended up being a complete waste of time...