Murder by Numbers

If you poke around the internet for thoughts on Murder by Numbers, pretty much everyone who discusses it compares it to Phoenix Wright with Picross, to which I have just one thing to say... [XXXXXXXXX]!

Seriously, have these people actually played any Ace Attorney games, or are they just regurgitating the talking points served up by the developers?

I mean, I do get it, to a certain extent. There are similarities on the surface, and in tone and atmosphere. The two games are closer to each other than, say, Animal Crossing and Doom. But they're so different at heart (not that Murder by Numbers doesn't want to be Phoenix Wright with Picross) that it seems like a poor comparison, not to mention there's another franchise that serves as a much more useful point of reference.

Ace Attorney is a legitimate mystery game franchise. There are real mysteries, and you actually get to solve them through the cross-examination mechanic. Additionally, the fact that the core gameplay mechanic is based on the evidence at your disposal requires the game to pay attention to its details and be masterful in how it dispenses information.

In contrast, the plot of Murder by Numbers advances on its own, without player input. Your job is to solve the Picross puzzles the game relentlessly hurls at you; all the "crime-solving" (and I use that term loosely) is left to the characters. The construction of the mysteries is slapdash, because there's no reason for it not to be. Why bother making the crime clever and the clues engaging and the logic thread intelligible (all of which is difficult to do) when the characters just do everything themselves and it doesn't mater how ahead or behind the player is or how far the logic has to leap?

So, does this all remind you of anything, hm? A mystery game where there's a linear, non-interactive story that progresses without player input but is gated by a series of puzzles? That's right: the true model for Murder by Numbers isn't Ace Attorney but Professor Layton. Imagine Professor Layton if the plot was about murder mysteries and every single riddle was Picross, and that's basically Murder by Numbers.

Just because a plot is linear or non-interactive doesn't make it inherently bad (otherwise books wouldn't be a thing), but still, whether it was due to limitations on the writers' abilities or the constraints of the game mechanics, Murder by Numbers just isn't good as a mystery. Besides the fact that the criminals are obvious and the crimes simplistic, the core issue in my mind is that there are plot beats the story clearly wants to hit, and it just hits them—without earning its way there through the mystery. For instance, in first case, the game clearly wanted a "protagonist needs to defend themself" introduction, so Honor, our heroine, gets fired by the victim right before the murder (giving her a motive). After the body is discovered Honor desperately fights to prove her innocence... except she's never actually a major suspect. The game wants Honor to have to defend herself (and does have her do that), but doesn't put in the effort to actually create a situation where she she needs to defend herself (because crafting the mystery plot in a way that strongly implicates Honor but gives her a way to cleverly dispel the accusations while maintaining consistency with the true solution would be tough).

The entire game is full of moments like these, where the game will jump ahead to a new development just because it wants to, not because that's where the evidence leads. In fact, the whole plot is basically just a cycle of finding a sole piece of evidence that vaguely points towards a certain character, immediately jumping to accusing that character of the murder, having that theory immediately get disproven, and then finding a new piece of evidence. There are only a few locations per case, meaning the same locations get searched over and over again, but there's no explanation for why you find different evidence every time you search.

Alright, alright, this has been unduly harsh on the game. I stand by all the criticism, but there's plenty the game does right.

The art and music are spot-on. The sprites are high quality with interesting and varied character designs by... the creator of Hatoful Boyfriend?! All the sprites have a white outline, making them look like they're paper cut-outs, sort of like Hotel Dusk, but unlike Hotel Dusk they are just normal sprites rather than processed photos made to look like pencil drawings. The white outlines don't detract from anything, I just thought it was a bit interesting they were included. The sprites are static, unlike Ace Attorney, and while the characters in Murder by Numbers don't have the breadth of sprites like Danganronpa, the game manages to convey a fair amount of emotion by physically moving the sprites and adding sfx and little emote graphics.

The entire art direction, from the sprites and backgrounds to the UI, also perfectly captures the aesthetic of the 90s, the decade in which the game takes place. The music is composed by Masakazu Sugimori, composer of the first Ace Attorney game (seriously, how?!), so from the animated intro to the ending credits the music is catchy and fitting. There are a few leitmotifs which create a cohesive soundtrack, and the puzzle songs are perfect for staring a picross squares without getting grating or boring.

The cast is also great. There are a bunch of larger-than-life personalities that fit the wacky designs. Everyone has a strong voice, and the banter is witty and entertaining. The moment-to-moment writing is phenomenal, and the cast has fantastic chemistry. The game stars Honor Mizrahi, a television actress who is fired in the opening case. She soon meets SCOUT, an autonomous amnesiac robot, and they team up to solve the mystery of SCOUT's past and the murders Honor keeps running into. They form a great core, and develop both individually and as a pair over the course of the game. (There's no explanation for how they have a flying, talking, mobile, fully-functional sentient AI in the 90s, but whatever, I'm willing to concede that point.)

However, the quality of the mysteries drags down the characters. While the character writing is fantastic, the fact that these characters are presented in simplistic murder plots means we don't get much depth out of them. Ace Attorney is built around thoroughly digging into the witness' testimony, and exposing their lies often manages to advance the mystery plot while simultaneously giving us a deeper understanding of the character. In Murder by Numbers most characters get fifteen minutes of fame as the prime suspect and then fall to the wayside. It truly is unfortunate, because the writing really is fantastic, and gets held back by the plot so much.

The game also has some rough spots in how it's coded and put together. For instance the save and load screens have no "back" button; once you open up that menu, you must save/load, and can't just go back to where you were. The game works fine for the most part, but every once in a while you encounter an oddity like that and wonder how a game that is otherwise so polished let something like of that sort through.

Murder by Numbers successfully replicates the atmosphere and aesthetic of Ace Attorney, but not its heart; its plot is just too simple and its mysteries too slapdash to capture the beautiful "turnabout" moments at the core of Ace Attorney. As I already said, I think Professor Layton is a much better comparison point. If you like both picross and Professor Layton, you'll probably like Murder by Numbers. It took me about 30 hours to clear everything, so there's certainly no shortage of content. Just focus on the picross and characters, and don't expect too much from the plot and story.

There's no demo available for Murder by Numbers, but it's easy enough to recreate the experience: find a Picross book or website, start solving puzzles while watching early Law & Order episodes and playing an Ace Attorney soundtrack playlist in the background, and you've pretty much built your own Murder by Numbers.