Noir Syndrome

Noir Syndrome is a procedural detective game. That's to say procedurally-generated rather than a police procedural - the game is designed to create a random mystery for you to solve with each new game, and puts you in the worn-out shoes of a down-at-heel private eye who must catch a serial murderer who is cutting a swathe through the inhabitants of a big city.

The game is rendered in a faux-retro 2D pixel art style and scored with a smoky jazz soundtrack that evokes just the right atmosphere for a gumshoe walking the mean streets. You have just two weeks to catch the murderer, and considering that simply entering and leaving a building can use up a whole day you need to get to work pronto and find that killer. You do this by travelling between locations on a city map - just tap the building you want to visit and you will appear in the building or structure you desire - and looking for clues.

Controls are very simple in Noir Syndrome - move left or right and hit an "investigate" button that will variously examine an object, buy an item from a shop or wandering black-marketeer, interrogate a witness or pick a lock. You basically have one button that does everything - apart from shoot one of your lethal but very few bullets, which you do with a button (terribly easy to press by mistake on mobile) on the left of the screen. There is also a notebook icon near the top of the screen that you can use to refer to your auto-generated notes concerning the case and whittle your way down to finding the killer.

Essentially, the game works like a single player version of Cluedo. By gathering clues and suspect names you can see that the killer might be a civilian or a cop, or perhaps a mobster. They might suggest a woman who is also an artist or a cop with a certain hobby and so on. When you think you have enough clues - easy to tally up on the notebook screen - you can accuse a suspect and then race to find and apprehend them. If you choose correctly you win the game. Pick the wrong guy (or gal) and you lose. You can also lose by running out of time or just by getting yourself killed by a stray bullet.

It's a nice idea but it doesn't quite work. The clues are scattered randomly around the city with no real logic - you might find a pocket watch in a bin or a bullet casing in a church pew but it's pure chance rather than clever sleuthing. People you meet suggest names but, again, they are just tokens to find so you can build up a list of suspects rather than anything you actually have to work to deduce.

Having a single "do stuff" button means that you end up just wandering around using it in various contexts - maybe there will be a clue in this chair! Or $17 in change! Or a lockpick! Maybe this person will suggest a suspect to me! Or not! It is possible to play and win the game just by wandering aimlessly around and using everything in sight. I never really felt a sense of achievement even when I nailed the killer.

The game seems to promise something sandboxy and open but it doesn't really deliver. You could track down the killer or maybe go rogue and steal from the mob. You could go on a killing spree or try to acquire enough lockpicks to crack open the bank vault and steal the loot but the tight time limit means that you can't do it all. Unlike in Grand Theft Auto, where you can go off piste and spend hours just exploring before knuckling down to the plot, you only get a nibble of the cherry with each playthrough of Noir Syndrome. Fine if you want to unlock the various badges and achievements but the tiny set of locations and actions means there is little motivation to do so other than completeness.

There are some positives. Each game is short and coffee break-sized. The pixel art is well done and the game has bags of atmosphere with succinct noirish descriptions and dialogue as well as an apt soundtrack. There are some interesting ideas and I hope the developer expands on them to make something with more depth, but for now Noir Syndrome feels more like a cute idea for a game jam entry than a full game.

• Noir Syndrome is available now on Windows, OSX, Linux and Android. Published by Glass Knuckle Games
  
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