Having spent my teenage years glued to a Nintendo DS, it might not come as a complete shock that I’m a huge fan of adventure games and visual novels. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy all types of games, but where others were clamoring for the latest AAA shooter or open-world adventure, I was waiting to get my next crime-crushing and puzzle-solving fix with the next Ace Attorney or Professor Layton game. Sadly, in the decades since, the adventure genre has been on a decline, at least if you look at the output from established publishers.
Thankfully, indie developers from all over have been picking up the slack. To be fair, you might have to dig around a few forums or subreddits at first, but it doesn’t take long to find smaller, bite-sized games that pay homage to the genre giants that came before. Enter Feline Forensics and the Meowseum Mystery, a soft-boiled detective puzzler that isn’t afraid to wear its influences right on its fur-covered sleeve.
If its name didn’t clue you in, Feline Forensics basks in its own irreverence, and regularly doles out animal puns and cultural references in short order. Sure, the stakes are somewhat high. After all, you take on the role of a crime-solving tabby detective who’s tasked with solving a murder and heist at a local museum (or rather, meowseum). But, there’s enough breathing room here that you’ll never feel all that pressured. Unlike other games in this space that treat crime with a bit more gravitas, getting to the bottom of things is a fairly low-stakes affair; you won’t have to worry about an interrogation going awry, running out of time, or pointing the finger at the wrong suspect. Rather, Feline Forensics lets you tackle things at your own pace, emphasizing knowledge gathering and peeling back its central mystery one layer at a time.
In practice, this largely boils down to good old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground police work, i.e., talking to witnesses and hunting for clues. To be fair, our veteran feline detective has a bit of an uphill battle, seeing as how there are nearly a dozen potential suspects to narrow down and eliminate. As you chat with other characters and comb the environment, you’ll slowly fill out your binder with witness testimony, keep track of any potential contradictions (that you can use to squeeze the truth out of any dishonest suspects), and amass physical evidence that you can examine up close for any potential clues. Once you’ve made enough progress, the game prompts you to fill in the blanks (literally) of your investigator’s journal; a sort of mandatory skillcheck that can best be described as a Mad Libs-style fill-in-the-blanks (except, you know, without all the silliness).
As a puzzle fan and mystery junkie, there’s a lot to like here. With every interview you conduct and piece of evidence you examine, you feel a tangible sense of progression as you get one step closer to tying a lot of loose ends together. It also helps that the developers love to cram in small jokes whenever they can, and the smooth jazz soundtrack and (mostly) black and white visuals ooze charm from every corner.
Still, there might be such a thing as being too laid back. All of the note-taking and evidence gathering is fairly automated, and the game will outright inform you when you have a new lead, or potential contradiction to chase down. That being said, there’s very little in the way of failure or making mistakes, and by extension, player agency. Instead of letting you connect the dots yourself, Feline Forensics insists on doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Rather than piecing everything together on your own, your focus is on doing the legwork — running back and forth between characters, conducting interrogations, and sorting through evidence.
Speaking of, while it’s far from a dealbreaker, the game’s menus and dialogue systems do leave something to be desired, and could really benefit from streamlining. While its contemporaries might have spread evidence, clues, and leads across two or three different menus, Feline Forensics is a bit heavy-handed with its user interface. Instead of condensing all the information you’ve gathered into a single notebook, there are separate screens for your leads, evidence, witness testimony, and your investigator’s journal. Worse yet, when talking with witnesses and suspects, dialogue options and conversation topics are often nested, sometimes multiple times. This makes navigating through each one a bit of a pain, especially since the game tends to kick you back to the first submenu after each line of questioning is exhausted.
Final Word: As the debut title from developer Nobody Crown, there’s a lot to like with Feline Forensics and the Meowseum Mystery. Sure, its bloated menus and decidedly uncomplicated approach to crime solving might not scratch the itch of the most diehard genre fans, but its laid-back atmosphere and cozy aesthetic help to smooth out the rough patches, even if they don’t completely eliminate them.
Fair
The Final Word
As the debut title from developer Nobody Crown, there’s a lot to like with Feline Forensics and the Meowseum Mystery. Sure, its bloated menus and decidedly uncomplicated approach to crime solving might not scratch the itch of the most diehard genre fans, but its laid-back atmosphere and cozy aesthetic help to smooth out the rough patches, even if they don’t completely eliminate them.
