A really fun and endearing little point & click that stands out for its narrative qualities. Unfortunately it is also very streamlined and easy, at least for anyone who has played the first game in the series and expects a bit of a sleuthing challenge.

Detective Grimoire's first appearance was several years back in a free browser game that you should go and play right now[armorgames.com] if you haven't already. As a browser game it was unique, interesting, well made (for a free game) and its best selling point was that you were actually required to do some detective work: The game expected you to collect clues, solve puzzles, interrogate people with a fun little lie detecting mechanic, and actually stop, think and make some deductions on your own before you could accuse someone of the crime. It was perfectly possible to make mistakes if you didn't think things through and that was exactly what made the game really interesting.

This is sadly not the case with its crowdfunded follow-up. You are asked to sit back and enjoy an easy ride, in which yes, you are interacting with the world and the story in interesting ways, but, no, you are not asked to do any real thinking of your own. And then when you have collected all the strands and are hyped about thinking through the mystery, the game will step in and hold your hand while it reveals its secrets. To me (with my previous high expectations) it felt dumbed down, and that was a disappointment.

That said, this is a really really good, if short, point & click. It is less the answer to the mystery at its core that makes it interesting and more the charming, intriguing characters whose motivations and backstories you're watching untangle. I have a special soft spot for well written dialogue and Detective Grimoire delivers that in spades, accompanied by fantastic voice acting that makes the characters come alive. Bonus points for a dialogue system that expects you to pay attention when interviewing suspects, allowing you to become even more immersed in the game world. In fact not only the characters but the whole "Boggy's Bog" you are walking around in feels alive, thanks to some adorable art and an atmospheric soundtrack. I thoroughly enjoyed the lovingly hand-painted backdrops and all the neat animation details.

My own expectations aside, the gameplay is not bad per se. The fact that it is so streamlined may make the game feel too easy (for me), but one could claim that it also helps in allowing you to become engrossed in the game's story. Still, the puzzles are simplistic and many gameplay elements feel like a missed opportunity. For example, having a suspect screen where you can look through various facts that you have uncovered and tag them as suspicious or not suspicious but then never being allowed to use this mechanic in any meaningful way felt like a real let down. On the other hand, combining your clues into logical claims in order to open up new interrogation opportunities is a much better utilised mechanic, and thus becomes one of the most entertaining gameplay elements. All in all, there are many original ideas here, most of which were sadly not allowed to shine. So come to it expecting to interact with an interesting little mystery, but not to be a real agent of change in this world.

So there you have it. I was disappointed by this game, and yet I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is no denying its charm. It is a polished and very entertaining experience but it is also less than 3 hours long with no replayability, so gauge your preferred price tag accordingly. I experienced no technical problems, those elsewhere cited bugs seem to have been patched out. And for any achievement hunters amongst you, it is a really easy game to 100%. It gets a full thumbs up from me, it's a good little game despite its flaws and I have not regretted my purchase. But whatever you do, definitely do yourself a favour and go play it's free predecessor.

7,5/10

+ nice presentation, great atmosphere, nice soundtrack, great voice acting, cool characters
+ gameplay wise, it's a mystery adventure game with point and click mechanics, where you are trying (as detective grimoire) to solve a murder case - what's really great is the way you progress, through dialogue with the various characters you meet, evidence and clues you collect mostly by playing mini games/puzzles and most of all by assembling and combining what you have learned so far to reach conclusions
+ interface is simple and intuitive, works great with mouse

- easy in general, if you follow the progress closely you will finish it fast (2-3 hours maybe)
- no replay value

really nice adventure/puzzle game, especially for this price it's highly recommended to everyone who enjoys a good mystery , waiting for more games from this indie developer

A short, but fun adventure game.

The story is fairly interesting and the dialogues are fun to read, especially some of Grimoire’s snarky lines. And very good voice acting definitely adds to enjoyment!

Gameplay isn’t one bit challenging, but finding pieces of evidence, questioning suspects and piecing together what has happened is still fun if you are looking for a more relaxing gameplay. Puzzles could use more complexity, though, even for a casual game.

If you are looking for a short casual game to pass a few hours with, Detective Grimoire has my full recommendation!

Detective Grimoire is one of the fun games I've played and enjoyed so much. When I started to play it, one of the characters at the beginning of the game asked if I remember them, I had to search if this game has a first part, and it turned out there was a previous game which has a separate story and it is not on steam since it was a flash game you can find here[armorgames.com] (It doesn't matter if you play that game first or this one)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=927832151

The game is short, has some nice variety of likable characters, I didn't dislike anyone to be honest. I liked the art style and the way you search for evidence, interrogate the suspect's characters and take notes. It is fully voiced and the puzzles were nice and simple.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=927832000
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=927831727

Pros:
+Great art.
+Good story.
+Amazing music.
+Fast travel map.
+Mystery/detective style.
+Good voice-over.
+Steam achievements.

Cons:
-Short game.

I wished it had multiple endings, it would have been more fun. I recommend this game to everyone who loves point & click games, detective, or adventure lovers! If you don't enjoy the story you'll at least enjoy the soundtrack or the funny puns and conversations!

Other Reviews:
Tangle Tower Review

𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑐𝘩𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑚𝑦 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝐹𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑎'𝑠 𝐶𝘩𝑜𝑖𝑐𝑒

Utterly gorgeous in every way. I played it through in one sitting because I just couldn't bear to leave it unfinished.

The mystery is solvable in around two hours, but the game doesnt seem too short; it's well planned and tightly executed resulting in a very dense, compact experience.

The art is beautiful, the voice acting and soundtrack are high quality and the storyline is captivating.

Definitely recommended and worth every penny.

Quick introduction
Skip to "Review" for the game review

To begin with, I'd like to mention that SFB Games have been part of my life years before I even knew what Steam was. It all happened the day I discovered the original free flash version of "Detective Grimoire" - a wonderful, beautiful, dark, moody and entertaining murder mystery solving game. It was good then, and it still is one of my all times favorite flash games. If you haven't played it yet, I highly recommend to - the newer game even references to the older game a couple of times.

After playing the original Detective Grimoire, I - as did many others, I'm sure - sought to find more great games by SFB Games. I was not disappointed to find other great games such as the "Blue Rabbit" games series (Climate Chaos was absolutely stunning, at the time anyway), and "Haunt the House" (which got a sequel on Steam as well, but that's for another review).

With that said, you can guess I was pretty hyped to try the brand new, shiny Detective Grimoire. When I saw it was 80% off for the Steam summer sale (2017, for future reference), I immediately bought and played it.

Review

So, what is Detective Grimoire? It's a "lightweight" and beautifully created detective game where you attempt to solve a murder under strange circumstances - a theme park in the middle of a swamp, themed around the sighting of a strange creature 60 years ago - which happens to be your primary suspect.

As you can tell by this short paragraph, the game is not extremely serious, and surely less so than the original Grimoire. The setting is much less dreary than the original, which is not exactly a bad thing. The characters are very memorable and likable, the voice acting and music is absolutely amazing. The game features many innovative ideas, such as combining clues with pieces of sentences to create a thought and progress through the game.

Now, while I did enjoy the game, two things annoyed me. First, the game is extremely short, which isn't the main problem - some games are better short. The second and biggest issue was, without a doubt, the confusing choice of audience the developers were going for. Allow me to explain my thoughts...

This is a murder mystery game, featuring a creepy swamp and a scary monster as the prime suspect. While this may depend on the parent (or the child, who knows), one could debate that this would hardly be considered a kids game. But then again, the puzzles were hardly puzzles - more like ideas that mostly focused on the game engine's abilities (lots of 2D physics involved there) but not much thoughts put into making it any challenging. Some of the puzzles didn't even make much sense at all (the chemistry set one, for those who played the game - you'll know what I'm talking about) and could have been skipped entirely, at this point. Most puzzles were great ideas, but so poorly implemented that it was more like an attempt at slowing down the player's progress by a moment than anything else. No puzzle took me more than seconds to crack, and I'll be very honest - I generally suck at solving simple puzzles. So the question is, were the puzzle (and the game in general) designed to be easy on purpose?

Another thing that was a bit irritating was the slightly annoying "move" implementation. When playing games like these, you need to move from one screen to another while looking for hints. The fact that you must select the move option to get anywhere, and at every new screen you need to select the option to move again, made me just use the map move feature more than anything else. And this caused problems, because I only found one of the characters wayyy too late into the game. Sure, I'm partially to blame, but honestly, I just really didn't like the way moving from one location to the other is designed - I think it's just personal preferences, though.

That aside, I have to admit I did enjoy the game. As I mentioned before, the characters design, voicing and animations make the game a very pleasant experience.

What could have been done better? Well, obviously the puzzles should be more challenging, the game should be longer, and the mystery a bit more "mysterious" rather than pretty obvious. The idea to combine hints was neat, but I would have loved to see it used a bit more often, with more "freedom" for lack of better words. The ability to take pretty much anything anyone said and combine it with any evidence or hints would have been extremely interesting, although I admit it would have its downside as well.

Overall, I feel that the "new" Grimoire series is off to a good start, although I'd like to see a bit more of the old game in the new one. As for the pricing, I think it is slightly steep for such a short game. I finished it within roughly 2-3 hours, and would have been pretty disappointed if I hadn't bought it during a sale. But honestly, this is one of these opinions that change from person to person, or, more likely, wallet to wallet. Heh.

Well, that was longer than expected.
Thanks for reading, if you managed to get all the way down here.

This game was amazing!
The character designs were creative and different, comical dialog and fun to play.
Soundtrack was wonderful to listen to while playing.
Gameplay was very interactive with the one playing the game and is fun for younger audience and adults alike.
Puzzles weren't that hard to figure out but could have been just a slight bit more challenging but that's alright, The comedy, characters, and story makes up for the small differences.
So I don't have any complaints about this game.

10/10

Would play again.

c:

Quite a delightful adventure game about storybook detective and his quest to solve a murder perpetrated by a cartoon monster of all things. A must try for anyone who likes a game with a distinct personality and vibe.

A very enjoyable point-and-click adventure in which you play the role of a detective investigating a murder case. The story is exciting and it simply keeps you captivated throughout the 2-3h of gameplay.

All the characters are well designed, interesting and full of surprises. Some of the dialogues are funny and witty, adding an extra flavor to this already nice game.

The few puzzles that you need to solve in order to progress through the story are rather basic (each can be solved in less than 1 minute), but the cute cartoonish graphics and the decent voice acting easily compensate for this.

More reviews on the Lilly's Corner Curator page

Detective Grimoire is a point & click adventure game based around a whodunit story. You play a detective who's sent to a tourist attraction in a swamp to investigate a murder that took place there. You need to talk to the suspects, gather clues and then piece together the clues and the statements from the suspects to find out what happened and who's the murderer.


In most point & click adventure games you collect items and use those items on objects in the game world, sometimes after combining them with other items in your inventory first. In Detective Grimoire, you just gather clues. Clues can be items or they can be statements made by the seven suspects. You don't use your items on objects in the game world to advance, you only collect them to puzzle together the whole story behind the murder.

To gather clues, you investigate objects in the swamp and talk to suspects by simply clicking on them. Sometimes, investigating an object leads to a puzzle you need to solve in order to advance. The puzzles are very easy though.

When you're talking to a suspect, you have a plethora of topics to bring up: there are a few basic conversational options, you can bring up an overview of all the items you collected and ask the NPC about any of them, you can ask their opinion on each of the other suspects and finally, you can unlock one conversational 'challenge' with each suspect, which is a conversation during which you deduce an essential clue.


Richard Remington was the owner of a small tourist attraction that revolves around a mysterious creature known affectionately as Boggy. When Remington is found dead and it appears none other than Boggy is the culprit, detective Grimoire is sent to the swamp to investigate.

The story plays out as a typical whodunit. Everyone is a suspect and clues are everywhere, waiting to be found and pieced together.

Detective Grimoire is a short game, about three hours playtime, so the story and its people don't get described in great detail but you do get a very decent narrative for your money. The swamp has a whole history that revolves around Boggy, the mythical creature that supposedly lives in the swamp. Each of the suspects has a distinct personality and has a personal view on the story of Boggy and on recent events.

Somehow, despite showing some flaws, this game managed to get me invested in the story and its people. Important note, though: don't skip the credits that roll after you pieced together the mystery, as a final scene is shown that wraps up the story. And still the developer found it necessary to tease the player by ending the game with a 'To be continued' message. I looked into it a bit. In december 2015, the developer was awarded some funding for making Detective Grimoire 2 and promised more news 'soon'. But there has been nothing but silence since then. So it's not clear if the sequel will ever be made. Again, it doesn't really matter as the story of Detective Grimoire is perfectly wrapped up at the end, provided you keep watching while the end credits are rolling.


The graphics are crude and artsy, so whether or not you like that style of graphics is an entirely subjective matter.

The voice acting ranges from okay to good. It's never bad but unfortunately it's never great either. Most of the times, what you hear is a voice actor delivering lines skillfully, but you don't hear the character come to life because of the voice acting, which is of course what's desired. In my opinion, there was only one voice actor who managed to rise above that level.

The music is atmospheric and sounds very nice. Combined with the ambient sounds of the swamp, at times it even sounded genuinely soothing and relaxing.


Detective Grimoire has 10 Steam Trading Cards. You get 5 while running the game.

Of the 9 Steam Achievements only two are unmissable. The remaining seven are awarded for doing a little more investigating than what is strictly required to finish the game.