Jenny LeClue: Detectivu (2019)

Game 2 style 3..... This game? Felt like a whole lotta "meh" with a sprinkle of "why am I still playing this?" Probably because it was so colorful. I'm one of those people that totally appreciate art with the misunderstood creator and all that. But this game, I can’t even explain what it was missing. a soul? And the cliff hanger. For me I was like yay .......it over . It was just Flat. But honestly, if the game was good. I wouldn’t even care about the ending.

And Jenny? Nope. The puzzles were very repetitive.

Anyway, maybe you’ll like it

*Side note This game one goal was to keep me calm during my freaking lab competencies week ! 🥺 I have one more to do I can not freaking wait. 🥲🫠. *

This puzzle detective game has a very enjoyable story. It has a well written Saturday morning cartoon feel to it. Near the end of the game, there is a lot of tiresome backtracking that hindered how much enjoyment I got. But overall, I quite liked this story of a young girl who refused to believe the experts and does her own research on a grand conspiracy. I enjoyed the frame story about the author forced to change his beloved character's story at his publisher's insistence. That felt very authentic. All a good story except for the WTF cliffhanger at the end that kind of pissed me off since there's no part 2..

The puzzles, on the other hand, weren't that great. Most of them didn't require a lot of deduction. It was mostly just walking, especially in the last few levels, where it got really tiresome since the game would just tell you "Press X here" when it was needed. Still, it wasn't all bad to not have to turn to a walkthrough when my idiot brain can't figure out a puzzle. If it weren't for all of the walking, it would have downright wonderful.

I played on Steam Deck and it ran quite well. No trouble finding where to click on the Deck's screen.

This game caught me off guard. I wasn’t interested in anything about this game except the art style initially. I read somewhere that if your from a small town then this game is one you should play. That piqued my interest enough I decided to give it a go, I do have Apple Arcade anyway so no harm trying!

I ended up really enjoying this little murder mystery. The voice acting is superb. The characters are fun! The dialogue is great. And somewhere along the line I became highly invested in the story.

The gameplay wasn’t a massive draw, filled mostly with puzzles that were simple. But it was mixed up enough that it never got annoying or to repetitive.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the game was watching the author struggle with writing his characters in a way that he doesn’t really want to. Jenny LeClue is his series and he has one last chance to revamp the series otherwise the Jenny LeClue series is done. Watching him wrestle with this was brilliantly done. I could feel his pain as he had to make decisions he didn’t want to.

The one big complaint I had with this game was the ending. You see, I didn’t realize this game ended on a cliffhanger…This was only part 1.

Part 2 can’t come soon enough.

5/5 for narrative and voice acting...

...As for the rest, I have to say right off the bat that it absolutely pales in comparison to Tangle Tower. The gameplay of Jenny LeClue was mostly tapping and tedium. Puzzles require more fiddling than thinking. The couple times I got stuck was not because I was stumped, but because I didn't realize or was unable to get certain prompts to appear.

This is more of a narrative game in which the mystery is solved for you, leaving you with no sense of reward. That being said, I was still motivated to stick through to the end because the writing really hooked me. Would play a sequel if it ever gets developed for story alone; that cliffhanger left everything unresolved just when it was all starting to come together...

Really enjoyed this, it's an adventure game with light puzzle elements but the real appeal is in the storytelling and the high production values, it looks great and the music and voice acting is superb. It has a "small town, big secrets" vibe that reminded me of Gravity Falls, with some occasional references to Twin Peaks in there too (always welcome) and maybe Lost too - but never so much that it stops being its own thing.

My only real complaint is the cliffhanger ending, I'm not sure why they didn't call it Jenny LeClue: Chapter One as this would clearly indicate that you're not going to get full closure at the end, and also remove the annoying "Detectivu" subtitle as a bonus 😉

These are small complaints though, I'll definitely be checking out the next chapter when it arrives.