MZ - Techno Detective

Overall, I quite liked it. The premise is interesting and I liked the main mechanic requiring you to actually think things through. The puzzle unfolded in a very satisfying way, though it slightly let down by the solution becoming rather obvious at the end.

The investigation
It's the main mechanic, so I might as well start here. I definitely enjoyed the progression of having no idea what's happening at the start to gradually having more and more understanding as things unfolded. Having to alternate between talking to different characters as you learnt more things felt very natural.

What I didn't like as much is that I never really had to work for any of it - people would give me the same information regardless of whether I figured things out or not. It might be a good idea to add some more checks if the player is figuring things out during the investigation as well, instead of just one at the very end.

At the end I just learned that the Head of Security ordered the deletion of someone's memories and didn't want the operation to be logged, while not providing any kind of excuse for it, which was a bit of a smoking gun that made everything else irrelevant. While a lot of people did slightly suspicious things, they all had some reasons for it. The miscommunication of what to delete would have been plausible, but not wanting to log it didn't even have an excuse provided.

This was a bit of a let down, since I didn't really have to do anything to get this information, and getting it made everything else mostly irrelevant.

The ending
When the Higher Mind mentioned that good reasoning must be provided, I expected that I would need to provide a bit more answers than just who did it.

It's interesting that it turned out the Biochemist was an accomplice - I assumed that they were pressured into making the request with the same dirt the Head of Security had on the Researcher. If they were meant to be an accomplice, I think it would have been interesting to both add some evidence of them acting on their own and then to require the player to point them out at the end as well in order to fully solve the case.

I enjoyed the fact the "All of them" was an option. I was mildly tempted to select it just to see what would happen.

The moment the Head decided to just attack me was rather hilarious. I definitely did not expect that happening. The ridiculousness of the Higher Mind itself feeling the need to point this out to me, the presence of multiple security guards who decided to not do anything, the transition to a battle screen with plenty of empty space, even though we were standing in a rather crowded corridor, it was all rather surreal.


The minigames
They were neat, functioning as nice small breaks in the gameplay that didn't overstay their welcome.

For wires, I saw the solutions instantly, but that might be more because of me playing too many grid deduction puzzles.

For Wordle - you really need to describe what's going on there better. I did already know the rules, but anyone who hasn't will be very lost on what to do and what does each colour mean.
Also, in the original Wordle, if you use a letter twice (both in the wrong place), but it only appears in the word once, only one of them would be orange. I'd recommend sticking to this convention, it makes things less confusing.
It was also kind of funny not being restricted to only inputting valid words, since I could just test all vowels and most common consonants first as I wished.

For the final fight, I guessed that the "adapt" part might mean he'll always choose a counter to what I picked previously, and that guess was correct. I kept picking the next thing in the cycle and won without taking a hit - I guess he failed to adapt to that strategy :p
It might be worth it to make this a bit more of a puzzle - hint at there being some sort of a pattern with the weapons he chooses, but let the player figure out that pattern themselves.

Lore
I really like the setting! It reminds me of Paranoia, with a bit of Helldivers (with people using the word "Transhumanism" the same way they'd use "Democracy" over there).

One aspect I found a bit confusing is the ability to read people's memories. It seems like it's just a thing we can freely do? At least we do that with that one mute guard with no issues. So, why can't we just use it on everyone to figure out who did it? The game should probably provide an answer to that question, I can't be the only one wondering about it.

And speaking of that mute guard, couldn't they just... write down what they meant to communicate? If not, remarking on that might be neat (just a "It's a shame we don't teach guards how to write" would suffice).

Writing
The English translation is not very good. No typos, but there are a lot of really weird phrases that don't make sense (even within the context of a strange culture that's mean to speak somewhat unnaturally). Most notable examples being:

This choice.

I figured one of those options must be to see the tutorial, but I had no idea which one it is. Does "remember that basics" mean "I remember that basics (i.e. don't need a reminder)", or is it about an selecting an action to recall them? And "not to remember" doesn't quite make grammatical sense.

This dialogue, where each of the 3 sentences has something weird with it.

Detaining is an action that must be actively performed by a person. Unless the doors have robotic limbs capable of grabbing someone, they wouldn't be detaining anyone. The word you're looking for is probably "stop".

"My order is honey"? I'm guessing this must be a literal translation of some phrase that makes sense in Russian? None of the meaning of the word "honey" makes any sense in this sentence, so I have no idea what he meant.

The "module" in the third sentence doesn't seem to make sense either. Unless they were going to add a module to some machine that's meant to do it? From context you probably meant "order" or "plan", but the word "module" just doesn't make any sense here.

A lot of messages have these kind of problems - I hope this one is a good example of it.


Most characters don't talk the way regular people do. This is perfectly fine - it clearly shows what their culture is like as is a cool piece of worldbuilding. But you still probably want the player to actually understand what they mean to say. Using English words in an unusual way is fine, but using them incorrectly just causes confusion.

You might want to try running your translations through an LLM ask asking if they make sense. LLMs are quite good at this kind of thing. And speaking of AIs...

AI art
So, the 5-legged elephant in the room. Discussion of the morality of using AI art was banned by blue text above, but I'll still make a pragmatic argument that your game would do better if you didn't include it. For 3 reasons:
- A lot more people would be willing to try your game if it didn't have it
- It just looks rather ugly, especially when used as full screen images we get to look at for a while. You really get to admire all the ugly AI wobbliness about them.
- It's not really needed in the first place. You could have just evented all those situations shown in the pictures, and it would have been much stylistically more consistent. E.g. the woman in the first image looks completely different than the protagonist's portrait, spare for hair colour.
And the weird damaged-neuron thing has got to have a perfectly fine human-made alternative somewhere (though it was shown for such a short time nothing would have changed it you just didn't show it at all).

Synopsis
I'd highly recommend including information about what the mechanics of the game actually are in the synopsis. I had no idea I'd get to try to untangle a complex crime and have to actually think about it. I probably would have played this good sooner if I knew that.

Overall
While rather rough around the edges, I very much enjoyed your game! Thank you for making it (and for releasing it unencrypted!).
If you built a full game with more missions in this style and without AI art (and ideally a better English translation) I'd totally buy it.


Well, that feedback ended up being rather long. I hope you find it useful!

You can reach a verdict at any time after questioning the Senior Researcher. But if you don't collect all the information, it will be impossible to blame the real culprit. That's what was meant by that phrase.
The whole game is an exam in VR. Therefore, instead of "New game" it says "Run simulation" on the title screen. A Higher Intelligence controls the simulation, much like a DM in D&D. There are still small hints of this during the game. For example, the heroine says about the need to fix the device that the Higher Mind complicates her task.
At the same time, the simulation is based on a real incident from the main game, which I am currently working on.

"One aspect I found a bit confusing is the ability to read people's memories. It seems like it's just a thing we can freely do? At least we do that with that one mute guard with no issues. So, why can't we just use it on everyone to figure out who did it?"

The guards are cyborgs. Their memory is stored on implants, from which memories can be read using a special device. It is impossible to do this with humans without such body modifications. It seemed to me that this was quite clear from the dialogues and character designs, but apparently I was mistaken.

"And speaking of that mute guard, couldn't they just... write down what they meant to communicate?"

I suppose that since it was possible to view his memories directly, it was an easier and more reliable way than a written report.

About AI art. I would like to replace it with normal art in the future. Now there are difficulties with this: I can't draw, and real artists don't want to work for free)

"If you built a full game with more missions in this style and without AI art (and ideally a better English translation) I'd totally buy it."
This is the best feedback I could get)