Facts don't come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to

– Talking Heads, "Crosseyed and Painless"

Paradise Killer is truly captivating. From its opening sequence to the end credits, the game's stylish vaporwave aesthetic, chill pop tunes, distinctive characters and mysterious setting monopolized my thoughts. But most impressive to me was how canonical my experience felt despite the game refusing to hold my hand: The events of my playthrough seemed to unfold organically as a direct result of the paths I took and the threads I pursued. I can't say for certain how many of the choices I made were real or forced, but they all felt real enough to make the act of investigating the Crime to End All Crimes remarkably satisfying.

I do wish the game was more fun to control. It may be that Lady Love Dies' labored movement is an intentional choice, intended to mimic the feel of early narrative FPS mods and first-generation "walking simulators." Intentional or not, traversing these environments felt more like a chore to me than it did in What Remains of Edith Finch, Tacoma or Firewatch. I also felt the game's conclusion lacked a certain something: I didn't necessarily want some big twist, but I think I expected to take away more from the trial than I brought to it.

But those faults are far from dealbreakers. Paradise Killer's a unique and special experience, and an easy recommendation for fans of story-driven games. I predict its cult status will only increase over time.

Title pretty much says it all. You're an exiled "investigator freak" dropped back onto a vaporwave island full of alien elder gods and ritual blood sacrifice and psychic demon possession in order to find out who killed the ruling council with your freakish investigating powers.

The vaporwave-tinged aesthetic, from the 2D character designs, to the 3D world, to the menus and BANGING music is an unmitigated success. This game wins best style 2020 hands down, I don't think anything else could even be in consideration.

The ultimate mystery isn't as interesting as I would've liked it to be. The motivations and methods are fairly straightforward, though what adds some decent complexity is that there's two completely separate conspiracies each with their own mastermind and accomplices. The game doesn't really tell you if you got it "right" or not. You present your evidence to the judge and if there's enough evidence, the person is found guilty, but that doesn't necessarily mean you got it right. This is done for the main murder and several related crimes, and you get to accuse a character for each one. Ultimately you need to have confidence in your own evidence and interpretation of events, which I liked.

The "platforming," is the weakest part of the game. The 3D world is surprisingly vertical, but the tools the game gives you are ill suited to navigating it. Despite acquiring a double jump and an air dash, the player character's momentum is so extreme with such a lack of air control, that I would say this game contains both the worst double jump and worst air dash of all time. They are nearly useless and you will find yourself missing jumps on a damn near constant basis and it becomes incredibly frustrating.

Both the most interesting and most disappointing aspect of the game to me was the world-building. Paradise Killer presents a fascinating world that reminded me a LOT of China Mieville's New Crobuzon series. There's a lot of just weird shit. The syndicate your character and the suspects are part of "creates" new islands as previous ones "die" and you're currently at the end of island 24. Island 25 is reputed to finally be "perfect." There are pyramids dotting the sea around the island which are supposed to be homes for the gods you pray to but so far only one has made a house call. There are "citizens" which are people kidnapped from "the real world" whatever that means and forced to worship the gods to provide psychic energy or something. They're all slaughtered at the end of an island for some reason. There's a LOT going on, a ton of flavor text in the collectibles which I found a LOT of and read. But despite trying my damndest to pay attention and piece things together there's just not a satisfying answer as to who the hell you people are and what the nature of your reality/existence is.

The game seems to imply the islands are some kind of pocket reality, possibly created via psychic methods, in order for the syndicate members to live immortal lives? There are tons of references to "the real world," which I assume means our world, but who knows. Me not knowing isn't necessarily a black mark on the game, my favorite author is Gene Wolfe so I'm perfectly comfortable with ambiguity and confusion. My issue is that, whether or not this is true, it comes across like the creators didn't know either, like they just threw a bunch of shit at the wall. Nothing inspires confidence that there's method to the madness, even if the method isn't knowable to me as a player. The flavor text on the collectibles in particular seems like, well...a lot of random bullshit, some of which maybe had a very vague overall lore in mind and some of which clearly didn't at all. This is in contrast to Gene Wolfe who leaves zero doubt in the readers mind that HE knows exactly what's going on and that his books are not just hastily thrown together concepts for the reader to "interpret." If I'm going to be left floundering in a sea of ambiguity and personal interpretation I NEED to feel like the creators absolutely know what's going on and that there is a cohesive truth to be found, or I'm just going to drown, and this game didn't give me that lifesaver.

The feeling when you start playing a game and say 'wow this game was made for me', is amazing. Not just in theory, or on paper, but in practice. Like, I love detective games very much, but the murder mystery was actually the weakest part of the game. It was still really fun, but I was fascinated with the mystery of the island, of the world that the main character already knows about but we don't.

I played blind, and I reccommend playing blind so you uncover the world on your own time, starting out using only a few lines of text to keep you afloat in the ocean of unfamiliarity that you're thrown into. As you pick up relics and talk to people, more of the story is unfurled until you realize you're starting to understand it.

The best part of the gameplay is the complete freedom you have to explore the entire island. The game rewards you for exploring in every nook and cranny. You'll be finding new relics until the natural end of the game and beyond, if you don't end up using some tools to locate them easier. It's damn fun to explore, and beautiful too.

The art and the music really elevate the game as well. It's a vaporwave dream, inside and out. Play this game if you like Babbdi! It's like Babbdi but for 20 hours and it has a story!

First ever platinumed game !

Whilst I don't think it managed to land the killing blow for me, I'll be damned if I wasn't in paradise from start to finish.

Style executed.

Paradise Killer’s biggest achievement isn’t its detective mechanics or sheer style (although that’s a close second) but the quality of its writing. You initially think you’re entering a world so “other” as to be impenetrable. Within hours you’ll be able to explain the rules of “psychic pathways” and “god deception” such that you can catch out suspects based on arcane rules.

Paradise Killer in this way breathes life into the detective genre with a world of gods and demons, but then breathes life into those otherwise tired ideas with its intoxicating cosmic internal logic. Gods and demons are merely alien beings who can feel out psychic pathways. I’m a sucker for this kind of sci-fi.

This world-building elevates everything else around it. For much of the experience, you’re let loose upon an open world “paradise island number 24”. It’s just the perfect size as to be initially overwhelming with possibilities and then compact when you’ve become acquainted with it. Whilst suspects wait in their respective spots for questioning, you can absolutely ignore the case for hours on end by going down the collectable rabbit hole.

Meanwhile, Paradise Killer’s first-person platforming is… surprisingly good! An unlockable dash and double jump make traversal a joy. This is key to enjoying the hundreds of blood gem cash money lying around, new tracks to bop to, conversations with your favourite demon Shinji, and world-building relics. With this lack of direction, it’s easy to miss these traversal and door-hacking unlockables for a head-slappingly long time. But I wouldn’t change it. Paradise Killer’s free-form nature is one of its biggest strengths.

The relics are my favourite collectable by far since, unlike most games, they show that it’s not an empty enterprise. Given achievements are yet to be present, it’s these little nuggets of info that make Paradise Killer’s world so constantly entertaining and engaging. Did you know that “Carps were created by an alien race and their scales can be translated into an esoteric language if you have the correct cypher?” Did you know about the “area of space that can only be traversed by an ancient race of octopus-likes that harden into crystals to survive micro maelstroms?” It feels like writing absolutely let loose – almost to the point of risibility, but not quite. Simply amazing.

Not to engage overly in either/or nonsense, but Paradise Killer’s vaporwave aesthetic is a great argument against triple-A ray-tracing hegemony. It isn’t afraid of delivering whole-island views that expose its relative lack of modern VFX. But when Aurora night skies burst with colour and a gargantuan moon rises above the underclass complexes, I’ll be damned if I care. Indeed, one of Paradise Killer’s best tricks, that it presents in the first five minutes, is also an exposing one: a complete overview of the PS2/PS3-era textureless island before you launch yourself down and the opening credits roll. And do you know what? It’s breathtaking stuff.

If my overlords built a crystal statue next to my council block I might just ask them to fix my door.

It should be commended too that Paradise Killer uses the vaporwave aesthetic for the purpose it was intended: a damning criticism of the superficiality of capitalism. It achieves a genius knife-edge balance between a semblance of paradise with its upbeat tone and tropical white beaches, contrasted with oppressive brutalist structures and ritual sacrificial sites. This presentational incongruity that it executes so well never loses its intrigue. Paradise Killer is politically cutting in all the right ways.

Needless to say, its vaporwave snythy, saxy, funky tunes are worth buying in isolation. They’re a big part of why its atmosphere works. You could rob Paradise Killer of everything but a stroll on its beaches with its soundtrack and you would still have an excellent time.

Other than exploration and world-building, it’s the character conversations that are the game’s lifeblood. All entertaining; all memorable. In fact, my favourite is the aforementioned “collectable” scattered around the island. I find it heartening that one of the best relationships protagonist Lady Love Dies has is with a bona fide demon that should have been long ago exterminated. Tending towards antagonistic, maybe, but somehow there’s the illusion of development despite the random order you have the conversations. He’s great comic relief and also a good reminder that the syndicate you’re working for is a capitalism-mirroring overclass cult that kidnaps and slaughters people to feed their gods psychic energy (I love a good class ally. Who’s the real demon, here?).

The entire game is a free-form prelude to the much-hyped court trial you can activate at any time. This is where Paradise Killer’s mechanical detective fangs finally protract in earnest. Whilst dispensing justice is suitably thrilling in its no-holds-barred brutality – every conviction is an execution – I think the true solution is perhaps too unambiguous for my liking. Whilst it doesn’t present a results page, there’s outright fessing up to crimes. Find all the clues (and some of them are well hidden) and you really can’t go wrong. I wish perhaps that there was a way to remove the notes screen so that the player could be forced to fill in their own deductions. This would make it easier to miss certain clues and lead to more interesting court trials.

All the same, there are some very interesting aspects to the trials outside of playing them straight. There’s an element of overlooking the crimes of those you’re sympathetic to and have bonded with. If you’re inclined to have a clean slate, convinced as you are of Syndicate corruption, you could even manipulate the trial to wipe the syndicate out. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

If I had two extra arms that too would be their utility.

Whilst I wish Paradise Killer’s mechanical detective fangs were a little sharper, it oozes style and its writing and world-building are out of this world. It’s not a lie when I say I wanted to stay forever here in paradise where love dies. I already know as truth/fact that when it comes to this game my love will never die.

Also, there's a little crossover, but if you fancy seeing more of my favourite PK aspects on my Twitter thread, click away!

DETECTIVE VISUAL-NOVEL - You play as an investigator, Lady Love Dies, and you are tasked with unraveling the great mystery of the Councils' deaths.

PROS:

++ Captivating mystery. This was my first "detective" game and Paradise Killer whet my appetite and made me want to play more games in this genre. The longer I played, the more I became enthralled by this murder mystery. And the more I explored and talked to people, the more complex the scheme became. This kept me hooked during my playtime.

++ Memorable aesthetic and style. Game had tons of personality in its presentation (the designs of the characters were odd but memorable, the music was phenomenal, and the UI fit the aesthetic they were going for).

++ Surprisingly deep lore. It's evident that they put a lot of love on this project based on how much effort they put into the lore of this game.

++ Satisfying gameplay loop. It was fun exploring the map and finding more relevant clues and evidence. Very satisfying!

++ Final trial. I liked how the game handled the final trial. There is no "true" or "correct" ending, but it is up to the player to present their own truth of what happened. This makes our experience more memorable and unique, and gives more reason for us to revisit in the future and look at the cases from different perspectives.

CONS:

-- Limited budget. Not necessarily the studio's fault, but the lack of budget shows in the way the open-world looks, the sparse and often mismatching voice lines, and the very simplistic gameplay on offer.

-- Lack of choice during conversations. There were no repercussions to saying the "wrong" things during discussion. Even if you anger one of the characters, you can keep talking to them as if nothing happened. This gave me the feeling that I had no impact on a character's disposition towards me and there was no need to try and "butter up" characters in order to receive better info.

-- Backtracking. Backtracking was tedious (fast traveling accounted for) and it didn't help that the general movement felt unsatisfying, even with the movement upgrades. I feel the game would've been better if the game world was more condensed.

-- World map was confusing. The game could have really used the option to set custom objective markers.

-- Anticlimactic ending.

I think that paradise killer is a good game, but know that there are some big things that can either make you love the game or get frustrated with it. At a basic level it is a detective game where you are walking around an island and collecting evidence through a combination of exploration and interviewing suspects. Lets start with the good:

This game has VIBES. Everything about it feels so unique. The killer soundtrack, the environmental design, character design, and even the UI are dripping with creativity. On top of that, the world building is phenomenal. It's like 80's funk vaporwave meets cosmic horror, and there was a lot of effort that went into sprinkling interesting details throughout the game.

The investigation as a whole is... OK. Initially it was really fun exploring the island and looking for clues, but eventually a couple tedious things started to take over, mainly the character dialogues and collectathon. I have issues with the character dialogues. Why are you able to ask characters so many questions about things they know nothing about? I swear 2/3 of options are, "Hey, do you know about X?" -> "No". Additionally, whenever you actually find evidence against someone, asking them about it is pretty uninteresting. You give them clear evidence of their crime then they just say, "NUH UH that's a lie". The character designs are so cool, but they end up being pretty unlikable since they are all so mean to you. I guess that's just the antagonistic relationship of investigator and suspect. But that makes a weird juxtaposition with the hangout conversation that you have 2 seconds later being all buddy buddy again. Hangout conversations are decent world building material, but eventually my gameplay became just fast traveling between characters to go through hangout conversations and get the "probe" dialogues that actually contain interesting and relevant stuff.

Another issue was the blood shard collectathon. Maybe it's for some people, but I just felt like the game was wasting my time. I know it's technically optional past a certain point, but you need a minimum amount to do many things in the game. I liked the items that you would pickup that had a picture and wacky flavor text, though. Also it was very annoying to complete some extended puzzle sections only to get... a single blood shard. Woop. Overall I felt like the inclusion of blood shards distracted me from the environments instead of the intended goal of getting me to explore more. The nightmare computer puzzles were also very uninteresting.

In summary I think the game is a good detective game with so many creative elements being weighed down by some tedious design. It could have trimmed a few hours of playing trash collector and clicking through meaningless dialogues to get to the good ones. It is no Obra Dinn or Outer Wilds, but it has its place.

Good:

• I was surprised by the format of the game - I might have just half-arsed my research but I was kinda expecting an Ace Attorney-like visual novel/trial game. It does pretty much end up there but it starts by dropping you into a surprisingly large and open world and giving you pretty much total freedom. I think this freedom to discover the world and put the pieces together at your own pace was the game's biggest strength.

• The world of the game grows on you. I was initially worried that it was trying too hard to be strange and different at the expense of building an engaging world, but as things get fleshed out and the internal logic of the world becomes apparent it does a good job of sucking you in. You can get lost in it if you choose to explore every corner and read every piece of flavour text. It probably does outstay its welcome a little - by the end I was just clicking through descriptions and conversations to get to the trial.

Bad:

• The controls and platforming are not great and I found myself accidentally falling a long way at times. It does feel like a game from the early 2000s at times; unclear if this was intended.
• Probably just a personal gripe but I find first-person games with these kind of controls very nauseating, thankfully increasing the field of view helps a lot. The voice acting triggers at seemingly random times and doesn't match the words on the screen, I turned it off pretty early on.
• It would be more fun with a functional map and a better sense of direction in the open world, even if only just a compass.
• The door "puzzles" are a disaster but thankfully there aren't too many.

Overall a fun and unique experience that sticks with you.