Review: MURDER BY NUMBERS Is Prime Puzzle Solving

NOTE: This game was released on PC and Nintendo Switch last year. This review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy and current updates. It was just released on Google Stadia on March 23rd of this year.

Some games are built for all and any players, while others have a very targeted audience. Murder By Numbers is a smartly designed visual novel that includes nono-gram style logic puzzles to find clues to the murder mystery aspects. That being said, this game is obviously targeted towards a specific audience, but it does have a level of approachability that other games of this genre lacks. While it may not revolutionize or add innovations to either genre, it stands as a fantastic puzzle game and enthralling story.

Let’s talk about the primary gameplay, the puzzles. While we’ve seen these kinds of puzzles in a variety of different apps and other games, the smoothness of Murder By Numbers and the incremental build up in difficulty is practically perfect. I do wish there was a way to access other puzzles that you’ve already finished. After a bit of playing the main story, you can access a bunch of other puzzles in general that’ll fill your desire to fill in spaces and mark those “x”s. It’s safe to say that this aspect of the game is fun, difficult and meticulously put together.

The next major aspect of this game is it’s story. I’ll be blunt, I am not one for murder mysteries, in a game setting, I find them to usually be relatively boring and filled with pointless amounts of conversations where I just have to click through every single conversation option. While Murder By Numbers doesn’t change the formula too much for a visual novel or mystery game, the characters are surprisingly interesting, the story gets moving pretty quickly and it kept me well engaged. While this style of game is definitely not for everybody, this game in particular does a fantastic job of telling a story that might even be engaging enough to pull in haters of the genre.

Another major aspect of the game is it’s visuals and style overall. While the generic sounds and complete lack of voice acting lower the experience a bit, I understand that companies have limited budgets and might not be able to get to such things. But the bright visuals, wonderful character design and energy popping from the screen is impossible to ignore and even make up for the lackluster sound design.

I only found a few minor issues here. As I mentioned above, it would be excellent if there was an easier way to access all the puzzles. You can access a slew of puzzles directly from the main menu, but I wish there were previews and ways to tell what difficulty the puzzles are. They are laid out in an organized fashion but I found no good indicators of what to expect when clicking on a certain puzzle. The developers might as well have put a button saying “play random puzzle.” Another problem that I had with the game, which might be an issue that I personally have with the genre, is that I often found myself having to talk to every person and go through every conversation option in order to find out what to do next. I never felt like my choices in conversations really unlocked anything in particular or allowed me access to new cluse or areas. As this stands as a visual novel, I understand why it is this way, but it didn’t feel all that interesting to just talk to everybody about everything when I eventually just sat there and read it all anyways. This never ruined the experience, it only made it drag a bit.

There is a lot to really appreciate in this game. The puzzle solving is nearly perfect, and the story and visuals were surprisingly entertaining. Personally, there would be a couple of things that I would change to make the game a bit more accessible and better focused. But overall, it stands a fantastic game for anybody who enjoys logic puzzles and visual novels and may be the game for those who never were interested in either of those genres.