Let's talk about Murder by Numbers

I've said this before but, I love weird combinations in gaming. Taking two genres and mashing them together can lead to interesting results that you never knew you wanted. I never knew that sports and RPGs worked so well together until I played Mario golf and tennis on the Game Boy Advance. What about action RPGs like the Mana series and Kingdom Hearts? Or how about a platform RPG like Indivisible and Super Paper Mario? Now that I think about it combining gaming genres might be an excuse to add in RPG elements. But what if we combined genres that aren't RPGs? Let's see what happens when we combine a murder mystery visual novel a la Ace Attorney with Picross. Well, you get Murder by Numbers by Mediatonic. Is this combination like Peanut Butter and chocolate or is it like putting pineapple on pizza?

Normally I would talk about the story first in these reviews but I'm going to buck that trend and talk about the gameplay first since, in a game like this, the story is the most important part. How does this combination actually work? It basically just involves talking with witnesses and doing Picross puzzles to get evidence. No, really, that's it. You only have to do Picross puzzles in order to get items to progress the story. Now, I've never played Picross before this game so I don't have any reference as to how good or bad the puzzles are but I will say that I did enjoy them, at least at first. For those who have never played Picross before, it's basically a puzzle game where you fill in squares on a grid using provided clues in order to create an image. Given that this was my first introduction to Picross I found the game did a good job of teaching me how the puzzles worked and good strategies on how to solve them and while the puzzles do get harder it never felt like there was a huge spike in difficulty, it felt like a gradual growth. Even if you have trouble solving the puzzles you can always use one of three hints to help you and if you're playing on easy you can just have the puzzle complete itself. I never did this because I wanted to actually play the game but it's an option available if you just want to see the story and don't care for the puzzles. After every puzzle you gain points that go towards increasing the rank for each case with bonus points given if you do the puzzles on normal difficulty and without using any hints. Don't think you can cheese this by saving, using a hint and then reloading the game, I tried that and the game wouldn't let me complete the puzzle. I don't know if it's a glitch or intentional but you can't cheat. I didn't care much for the ranking system, the only way to get the highest rank is to do every puzzle while getting all the bonus points and the only reward for getting a higher ranking is unlocking additional puzzles in SCOUTS memory and doing those just unlocks some additional story sequences that don't seem that important. I would have probably done these but I didn't bother. By the end of the game, the puzzles were starting to wear out their welcome.

I want to make it clear that the gameplay itself is not bad. The murder mystery segments are shallow but functional and the Picross gameplay is still well done, though I do find the lack of ability to reset the puzzles without leaving the game to be an odd design decision, it's just that the game throws so many at you later on that it becomes tiring. Another issue is that neither gameplay style complements the other. The murder mystery segments aren't made better by adding in Picross elements if anything they're made worse by it and the opposite is true too. At no point does it feel like the two genres mesh together in any way. It's not like you can't add in puzzle elements to Ace Attorney and it wouldn't work, look at the crossover it did with the Professor Layton series, that worked great, but Professor Layton's logic puzzles were a good compliment to Ace Attorney's style of gameplay. In an attempt to combine two disparate gameplay genres, Mediatonic has created a game that doesn't please fans of either. The Picross puzzles aren't allowed to be very creative because the images have to match evidence used in the cases and the murder mystery segments lack depth because they have to make way for the Picross puzzles. It's a combination that just doesn't work.

So the gameplay is a bust but in a game like this, the story is often the main focus. The plot of Murder by Numbers focuses on Honor Mizrahi, an actress working on the fictional “Murder Miss Terri” television series. Honor is going through the aftermath of a divorce and is also fired from her job due to outside meddling and shortly thereafter her boss is murdered with her getting blamed for it. She's going through a bit of a rough patch. Honor also meets an amnesiac robot named SCOUT who offers to help clear her name so long as she helps him find out where he came from. The two then become partners and become embroiled in several more cases as Honor starts to find herself and SCOUT gets closer to remembering his past, even if he may not like what he finds.

The story in Murder by Numbers is, ok. It's not bad by any means but it has some problems. First the good, the main characters. Honor is a woman who is still struggling to get over a very toxic relationship, the dude she was married was a controlling asshole and even after they split he still finds ways to manipulate her. A lot of Honor's character arc is trying to move on and regain her independence and it's done very well. A story arc like that could have easily devolved into “girl power” pandering bullshit but the game's writing is good enough that it never comes across that way. Then there's SCOUT, he's adorable. His arc isn't as good as Honor's since it's kind of cliché, but SCOUT is such a lovable little guy I can forgive that. A lot of the games funnier moments come from SCOUT who slowly becomes a bit of a wisecracker as the game goes on. If there's one thing Murder by Numbers nails it's the humour. Granted a lot of it relies too heavily on references but when it's funny, it's funny. You can definitely see the Ace Attorney influences in this regard, especially when it comes to the puns. Like in Ace Attorney, the characters often have names that are a clear pun, Gerry Cross, Roz Mosis, Fran Tasia, if you hate puns you probably will hate this game but I've got a taste for shit like this so I personally loved them. My only complaint with the puns is that they didn't fit the characters personality or profession like in Ace Attorney but that's a minor nitpick.

The individual cases have pretty interesting setups. Like in Ace Attorney, the cases often involve a very bizarre scenario. Take the third case which is a hit and run case involving a shoe-shaped pride parade float and a drag club, you don't see that shit in Law and Order do ya. The characters you'll meet are just as bizarre but they each have their own quirky charm to them. Most of them are pretty one-note but that's something I expect, even Ace Attorney had this problem. Unfortunately, while the cases have an interesting setup, they're often predictable. There are very few twists and the villains are way too obvious. If you can't tell who the main villain is the moment you see him you are far too trusting for your own good. You combine that with the lack of player involvement in actually solving the cases and this can result in the individual cases feeling hollow. This isn't helped by the games pacing. The overarching story is fine but the game will often throw in moments that tie into it right in the middle of a case, disrupting the flow of whatever it is you're doing. Some character arcs also abruptly end at arbitrary points, Honor's entire subplot with her ex-husband is resolved right in the middle of the third case, which follows Ace Attorney conventions in that it is a filler case, despite it being built up as a major part in the plot.

The game also lacks a compelling supporting cast. The main characters are good but the others are a mixed bag. Detective Cross is the best of the bunch, just a good man trying to do his job. He's a hardass but that makes him a good foil for Honor and he serves the role of mentor very well. The rest of the cast I could take or leave, Honor's co-star Becky vanishes after the second case and her best friend K.C is one of the most blatant gay stereotypes I've ever seen. The game tries very hard to be progressive but every progressive character comes across as a cliché. If your going to be progressive at least don't be a hack.

I suppose the last thing to talk about is presentation. Murder by Numbers has some nicely drawn character portraits and backgrounds. Not sure why the characters have a thick white outline over them but it does make them stand out. But, for as well-drawn as the portraits are, there is one fatal flaw with them. They didn't draw them for each side. Unlike Ace Attorney, which has one portrait face the camera at any given time to give the idea of looking at them from the first person, Murder by Numbers will display all portraits on screen facing each other. Not a bad idea but they messed it up. See, they didn't draw two sets of portraits for when the character is facing left or right, instead they just mirrored them and it's painfully obvious. It wouldn't be that bad but the characters aren't designed in a way that compliments this, resulting in items switching sides whenever a character turns to the other side. I get the game didn't have a large budget but this is just lazy. Another problem is that there aren't that many portraits and a lot of them aren't very expressive. It makes dialogue sections feel a little flat. Then there's the music. The music was done by Masakazu Sugimori who also composed the music for the very first Ace Attorney game so he has a good track record that shows here. The music is pretty good, but there isn't enough of it which results in it getting very repetitive, especially during the puzzles which can take up to a half an hour to complete. The music has been stuck in my head but for all the wrong reason.

Murder by Numbers is a disappointingly average game. The attempt to marry picross with a murder mystery visual novel was an honest but ultimately futile one. Neither genre compliments the other and the poor pacing makes the game a tiring playthrough. The story and writing are enjoyable enough that I would recommend it based on that but considering the lack of any player involvement, if I were going to recommend it as a visual novel it would still have to compete with several, far better options on the Switch alone. Murder by Numbers isn't a bad game but it does nothing spectacular. If you want a good murder mystery game on the Switch, get the Ace Attorney trilogy, it's more expensive but it offers more content and engaging gameplay. I suppose if you like both genres I could recommend it but I would wait for it to go on sale. Murder by Numbers had potential but it was ultimately wasted. Case closed.