{"id":3294,"date":"2022-12-23T15:00:15","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T22:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=3294"},"modified":"2022-12-01T21:48:37","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T04:48:37","slug":"video-game-murder-by-numbers-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/23\/video-game-murder-by-numbers-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO GAME: Murder by Numbers (2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MurderMurder by Numbers<\/strong><\/span>
\nYear: 2020
\nRating: T
\nTime Played: 35+ hours<\/p>\n

I haven’t played many visual novel games, so it only figures that the first one I fully completed was also a nonogram (or picross) game. Murder by Numbers<\/em> mixes the point-and-click adventure of a visual novel mystery with the blocky puzzle styling of nonograms. Divided into several “episodes,” the player follows an actress who plays a detective on TV as she solves actual crimes with the help of a mysterious robot known as SCOUT. It’s cute and the characters are pretty fun; however, there are a few things I would change.<\/p>\n

The most frustrating part about this game was how close I came to completing it 100%, only to find that I could not go back and find one puzzle I missed in one of the episodes and instead had to go through the entire episode again. Since the game gives you an update of how close to “S Rank” you are for each episode, I was banging my head against the wall trying to find the missing puzzle, eventually resorting to a guide to help me. All the puzzles should<\/em> be discoverable at the end of each episode to prevent this gameplay flaw.<\/p>\n

Aside from this one weakness, I appreciated how the pixelated images that were used as clues in this game were merely the limitations of SCOUT’s visual processing. This helped explain the low-resolution picross puzzles you have to solve. I also liked how these common objects (which are usually the subjects of nonogram puzzles) had an actual context within each episode’s mystery instead of just being some random duck or palm tree puzzle. Finally, despite being part of the flaw I mentioned earlier, I liked searching for clues\/puzzles since it enhanced the mystery part of the game.<\/p>\n

A perfect blend of mystery visual novel and picross puzzler, I give Murder by Numbers<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Murder by Numbers Year: 2020 Rating: T Time Played: 35+ hours I haven’t played many visual novel games, so it only figures that the first one I fully completed was also a nonogram (or picross) game. Murder by Numbers mixes the point-and-click adventure of a visual novel mystery with the blocky puzzle styling of nonograms. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1900],"tags":[2282,135,3233,1496,3232,2601,2158,8,906,3234],"class_list":["post-3294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-video-game","tag-2282","tag-detective","tag-murder-by-numbers","tag-mystery","tag-nonogram","tag-picross","tag-puzzle","tag-review","tag-video-game","tag-visual-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3294"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3298,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3294\/revisions\/3298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}