I am still on my murder mystery game kick. And for whatever reason, I was looking at Steam. Well, no. I know exacttly why. I wanted to look at mystery games precisely because I’m on this kick. I found a game that immediately intrigued me. I think I had heard of it before, but I shrugged it off. It’s Murders on the Yangtze River (OMEGAMES Studio), and it’s an Ace Attorney-like game, but set in China during the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle era (or thereabouts–meaning early twentieth century). The protag is a Chinese lawyer who went to law school in Boston (I think–definitely overseas). There was a demo for it on Steam, so I downloaded it to give it a go.
I thought it was going to be like the first chunk of the first case, but it was much more than that. The premise is that Shen Chung-ping, the aforementioned protagonist, is trying to find out what happened to his brother, who was found dead in his apartment in London (where he’s attending grad school and/or working on an opium cessation drug).
That’s the background for Shen Chung-ping journeying with his apprentice, Afu, to the home of a famous Chinese murder writer–the Chinese equivalent of Sherlock Holmes (who gets liberally mentioned in the demo). Afu is impetuous, but technically/mechanically savvy, and he’s obsessed with food. Shen Chung-ping is more diffident, reserved, and quite the thinker.
I have to say that I’m quite pleased that this was made by an independent Chinese studio. China is starting to become better known for game development, and while I have issues with this politically, I’m glad on a personal level that it’s just not Japan (as far as East Asian developers).
I really dig the aesthetics, too. It’s chibi but not exaggeratedly cute. I like when that the dialogue is in Mandarin, except when Chung-ping is in London–and then he speaks flawless English. A bit too well (he sounds like a native speaker, which he would not as he grew up in China), but I can forgive that.
One thing I appreciate is that the characters are not without flaws. This is a trap devs can fall into sometimes, and I am glad that this studio has sidestepped that. The main character is pretty archetypal of the strong, silent type, but he’s wracked with nightmares, anger, and fear about his family situation. I’ll get to that in a bit.
In the first case, he’s going to meet the famous Chinese mystery writer, Lo Pei, because the latter’s most recent book is identical to how Chung-ping’s brother was found dead. When he arrives, he eats a rice cake Lo Pei offers him and passes out. When he wakes up, Lo Pei is murdererd, and the cop in charge (Officer Ma Ta-wei) is brandishing a sword and shouting at him. Lo Pei’s nephew is also there, sobbing his heart out, as is the judge, Judge Chang.
The door was shut and locked, the latter had been done by Chung-ping himself at the behest of Lo Pei. There is no one else in the room, and it seems an open-and-shut case of Chung-ping being the murderer. Of course, that is not the case, so it’s up to Chung-ping (and later, his assistant, Afu) to figure out what happened.
First of all, despite the cartoon looks, there are dark themes that I wasn’t prepared for. I mean, yes, it’s a murder mystery, so of course it’s not going to be all sunshine and roses. However, I was expecting it to be of the cozy variety, and it was not. That’s not to say it was gory and brutal, but some of the effects of the murders are on-screen.
I didn’t have a problem with it. I actually liked the juxtaposition, and can’t wait to play more of the game. I have to say that after I finished the first chapter (which took–goddamn it. I just looked and I did not get any achievements or time recorded from playing the demo. Ugh. Fortunately, you can go back to each chapter after finishing the game. Anyway, it took about an hour), I fully expected that to be the end of the demo. It was already a generous amount of content, and it was more than enough to give a feel for the game.
In a nutshell, I had to go around the room, looking for evidence. In examining the corpse, there are a specific number of evidence you can find. And you can make deductions based on those findings. I appreciate that they tell you how many you have left, and you can get tips, too.
Side note: I am all about the tips. There is no reason not to have them because if the devs don’t include them, people are just going to look things up when they get stuck, anyawy. At least, I will. I play these games for fun, and, yes, I will try my best to figure it out on my own. However, at some point, I will get frustrated and just want to move on. That’s when I will ask for a tip. I like it when games have general tips first and then more specific ones if you want/need/ask for them.
At some point, you have to present your deductions to Judge Chang. You have five tries to get it right (over the whole investigation), but the only thing that happens if you use up all your tries is that you fail and have to do the presenting again. That’s it. No going back. No having to check for clues all over again. I’m sure there are some people who don’t like that it’s so painless, but I appreciate it.
After the first chapter was done, it went straight into the second chapter. I was very surprised by that, but it made sense because the second chapter is a continuation of the first.
I will say that some of the deductions are not intuitive. At least not for me. The game does sometimes fall into the trap of “let’s make this convoluted connection and pass it off as normal”, but it’s not too bad. And, as I said, I felt no guilt at using the tips, so I could usually glide past that. There was a tiny bit of pixel hunting t ofind the pieces of evidence on the body and to find the spots of interest around the crime scene.
I will say that when Afu arrived, I was irritated by him at first. He’s obsessed with food, and while he’s great with technical/repair things, he’s a bit of a buffoon. I get that he’s probably analogous to Watson (or, in my beloved Poirot, Hastings), but that’s never been my favorite kind of character. And Hastings isn’t socially awkward–at least not in British society (and as long as a comely woman with auburn hair isn’t around).
He did grow on me as he showed his competency. I just accepted his weird obsession with food as his quirk and moved on. I was quite proud of myself that I figured out who the second murderer was right off the rip. The first one was pretty obvious, but I didn’t mind because it was so well done. The unfolding of it, I mean.
After the two cases, there was a flashback to when Chung-ping was called about his brother. He went to London to talk to the very Scottish detective f rom Scotland Yard, and there, I found out a little bit about his family. His mother was not in the picture. I can’t remember if he talked about what happened to her, but she was not there. Chung-ping (John was his English name) and his older brother, Brian, were very close. There was a rift between the brothers and their father, but I have not found out why yet. This came up because Chung-ping found a picture of him and his brother in his brother’s room, with the other part of the picture (their father) folded backwards so it wasn’t showing.
This was all in the demo! I can’t wait to continue on. The story of Brian is the through story, but I gather there are individual cases as well. I will be cracking on tomorrow.