Amideous: Murder of James Cole

My playtime: 00:28:26 (last save)

Intro
Amideous: Murder of James Cole is supposedly a short murder mystery game. "Supposedly", because the game is pretty much linear and feels like a visual novel. You'll talk to a lot of people over and over and interact with some objects for several times until you reach the ending.

Graphics
The first thing that I want to point out is that the title is hard to read. The game uses a plain black color as the title screen and it doesn't complement well with the dark background. It will be better to just change the color to white although I personally think that it will look better with some outline color.

The game takes place in a mansion and its surroundings. Some areas are not carefully planned though. The secret area is an empty room with only stairs in it, the first floor has this dining room that has nothing else except for a long table and 1 set of a small table, and the second floor has a lot of similar-looking rooms in it. There is also one tile that has a collision error.



Story
Despite it being a murder mystery game, you won't get much choice to choose from. Everything is mostly linear if you ignore the "easter egg" and most people that aren't close to the victim sounds apathetic throughout the game; some even talk about how drunk he is or how he has a lot of debts. There are also a lot of non sensible things like how unreasonable the motive is or how the main character knows the murder weapon even though the game never stated it in the game, but the wording makes the story to be easy to read.

The Game
Interactions
As I said before, this game is more of a visual novel rather than a murder mystery. You'll have to talk to people and inspect every object that you can find. However, some characters will only change their dialogue after you did a certain action, which is never told in the game. You end up having to talk to everyone over and over again just to get a new dialogue since there is only one part in the game where it clearly stated whom I should talk to next.

There is also this weird thing where the main character asked his assistant to take testimonies for everyone despite you having to do all the work. Strangely, there is only one character that you can ask multiple questions to; it's as if the game is signaling something.

Most objects are interactable. Some can help you to proceed with the story, some might even give you an instant game over screen. Saving is only done in a certain area and the game will only tell you about this after you progress a bit into the game, so there's a chance that you might have to start over the game from scratch if you messed up.



Selecting the perpetrator
To be honest, I had a problem in recognizing every name in this game. Heck, I only remembered the victim's name when I wrote this review. This might be caused by the lack of names in the characters' dialogue.

You'll get some clue about the victim from everyone. However, most of these clues are useless since there is only one clue that matters to solve the mystery. Also, there are only two murderer candidates that you can choose from even though there are more than two people in the room when the murder occurred. The perpetrator is also plainly obvious since the game is more leaned towards one person over the other.

Endings
The game has 2 endings although the only difference between both endings is whether you successfully solved the case or not. The result will be shown in a dialogue box and a black screen before it brings you to the main menu. To be honest, it doesn't feel rewarding at all even if you succeed because of it.

Pros:
- Most objects are interactable
- 2 endings

Cons:
- It's hard to know where to go next unless if you talk to everyone
- You can get a game over screen if you choose the wrong answer in a dialogue by accident
- Most clues are useless

Conclusion
It's a predictable "murder mystery" game that needs to be finished in 20+ minutes even though it can be finished faster than that since you have to talk to everyone to figure out where to go next.

Final Rating: 2/5
I was in a bind between giving it 2 or 3, but I ended up with 2 because I think that the game needs a lot of improvements for a murder mystery game.

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Typo
- When you read Earth Caller book: "The Provoco Terra, or Earth Caller, legend came into existance in 2067." should be "The Provoco Terra, or Earth Caller, a legend came into existence in 2067."
- When you read Colony 23 book: "The occurance has never been explained." should be "The occurence has never been explained."
- When you're inspecting James Cole: "Even though there are no external signs of trama, he is quite dead." should be "Even though there are no external signs of trauma, he is quite dead."
- When you talk to Peggy after you read the letter from his dad: "My mom had an orb pendent that my dad gave her that looks a lot like the moon." should be "My mom had an orb pendant that my dad gave her that looks a lot like the moon."
- When you talk to the wife afterward: "I understand from your daughter, Peggy, that you have a moon orb pendent." should be "I understand from your daughter, Peggy, that you have a moon orb pendant."
- When you inspect the jewelry box in the wife's room: "It is usually bad manners to look into a woman's jewlery box." should be "It is usually bad manners to look into a woman's jewelry box.".
- After you press Yes after the dialogue above: "You see a ring, an orb shaped pendent, and a necklace." should be "You see a ring, an orb-shaped pendant, and a necklace."
- When you inspect the bed in the wife's room: "You shouldn't sleepin other's beds." should be "You shouldn't sleeping on other people's beds."
- When you read the hand written book: (it should be handwritten btw) "I knew we had to distroy it." should be "I knew we had to destroy it."
- On the same text as above: "I kept the pages, unable to distroy them after all." should be "I kept the pages, unable to destroy them after all."
- When you talk to Professor Brown after going to James' secret working place: "Professor Brown, I hear you reciently hired James Cole to find something for you." should be "Professor Brown, I heard you recently hired James Cole to find something for you."