78) Paradise Killer (2020)

As the debut title for studio Kaizen Game Works, Paradise Killer is a first person adventure mystery game that draws heavy inspiration from the works of Franz Kafka, HP Lovecraft, and the Danganronpa series to name a few. Having played and loved the studios second game, Promise Mascot Agency, I was interested to see if the studio had played it safe and made a more traditional experience for their first outing. To my utter delight, they did not, with Paradise Killer being even more bizarre and hard to explain than its successor. Where Promise Mascot Agency took a mostly real world and introduced zaniness into it, Paradise Killer fully leans into the surreal, creating a truly unique experience.

We play as Lady Love Dies, a detective who's been exiled for over 3,000,000 days, as she's brought out of retirement in order to solve the ultimate murder mystery. The leading governmental body has been brutally murdered just before the end of the current paradise, and while it seems to be an open and shut case on the surface with a suspect already in custody, there's far more at play than meets the eye. The entire council was murdered within their chambers, behind several layers of impossible locks that seemingly no one person knows how to circumvent, least of all the man accused of the crime.

As we explore the island and interview the few remaining people, past relationships and motivations begin to surface, making everyone a suspect. It's up to us to interview everyone while also searching for clues, all of which lead us further down the rabbit hole and further add to the mystery. As we explore, we learn more about the goals of the individuals involved as well as the murdered council, finding that corruption and deception run deep on the island. The people we interact with are all eccentric and suitably odd, but with clear ambitions and goals that help make them feel more like people and not just like broad caricatures.

It's hard to describe Paradise Killer without raising more questions or spoiling large swaths of the story. The island and its inhabitants are equally familiar and alien, and you learn to just accept some of the oddities of life on the island as being an established norm. There is no combat and not even a lose state for the game, so you're free to explore and investigate to your hearts content. While the option to immediately go to trial and end things is ever present from the outset, I found myself drawn into the bizarre world, wanting to spend more time in it. The characters are generally either fun or fun to hate, and it was always fun tryingto catch them in a lie or contradicting themselves.

The visuals are a mixed bag, with much of the island having a surreal beauty that is both haunting and familiar, though they won't be to everyone's tastes. The characters, represented with 2D artwork, are all beautifully designed, adding their own charm to the world. A true standout of the game is the amazing soundtrack, which is mostly city pop and vaporwave, making it seem both alien and nostalgic. The writing is equal parts clever and hilarious, with the true answers to the myriad mysteries being both fun and interesting to uncover.

I greatly enjoyed my time with the game, often finding myself lost in just exploring the island in search of every secret and collectible I could find. At its core, it's an incredibly fun and interesting take on the classic locked room mystery that offers plenty of clues and leads that, while never truly being false, rarely paint a complete picture in and of themselves. The cast is fun and memorable, even if there are a couple of characters that fall into the fun to hate category, and even when the plot twists come seemingly out of nowhere, they're always fun and smartly written. It's fun, it's funny, and it's the right amount of weird that makes uncovering each new secret more than worthwhile.