Tangle Tower

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Tangle Tower is a Graphic Adventure that is actually the third game in the Detective Grimoire series, which started with a simple Flash-based game in 2007, with this game seeing release on multiple platforms including the Nintendo Switch in 2019. Those who haven’t played the previous games needn’t worry, though, as there’s nothing in the plot of this game that relies on players having any knowledge of the contents of the prior games.

One of the things this game absolutely nails is its presentation, with memorable, stylized, well-animated characters and detailed, beautifully hand-painted backgrounds, its wonderful acoustic soundtrack that only further establishes each character’s unique personality, and with every line of spoken dialogue in the game very well voice-acted. One of this game’s great joys is getting to know its diverse cast of characters, and this is both due to this wonderful presentation as well as the game’s excellent writing.

As for that writing, I won’t spoil the game’s plot for you here aside from the setup, which is this – players take the role of a pair of detectives summoned to a strange island to investigate a mysterious murder. The victim, a young artist painting a portrait of the family’s matriarch, who cannot simply tell everyone what happened. All the detectives have to go on, other than a mansion full of suspects who all seem to be hiding secrets, is that the victim was stabbed, and the portrait she was painting now depicts the matriarch holding what looks to be a bloody knife, with the blood in the painting apparently real blood.

I will say that in addition to the wonderful characters in this game, one of the things that kept compelling me to continue was the many mysteries at its heart. This game does an amazing job building up the mysteries at the heart of its story to the point where I simply could not put it down because I kept wanting to learn more… although I have to say when I finally reached the end, I found myself disappointed. The game leaves multiple questions unanswered, character motivations poorly-explained, and overall it feels like the latter half of the game was a bit rushed compared to its first half.

At the very least I can say that this game does a great job making progression through the game fairly breezy. Rather than having to navigate a character around the large mansion, players simply select a room from the map to automatically travel there. When trying to work on a puzzle, players will be notified when they don’t have enough information to complete it, and will likewise be told when they have enough information to press a suspect further in their questioning. And while there are plenty of pieces of evidence for players to have to try to fit together so the answers aren’t always obvious, there’s no penalty for wrong guesses and the game even provides a nice help button to tell players at least what room they should be looking into next if they find they’re stuck. In so many ways, this game is one of the most user-friendly entries in the genre I have ever played.

In addition, at regular intervals through the game, players will be faced with one of various kinds of puzzles, and while these aren’t such a large part of the game that I felt like including Puzzle in the genre descriptor, they are nevertheless enjoyable and at least in a few cases fairly clever and original, and they definitely help to add some variety into the gameplay.

In many ways, Tangle Tower is a pretty ideal entry in the Graphic Adventure genre, one that gets the gameplay right, has great visuals, music, and voice acting, nails the characters, and has a compelling story… so it’s a shame that it fumbles the ending so badly. However, if you can enjoy the journey even if the destination isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Tangle Tower is definitely worth a look.

tl;dr – Tangle Tower is a Graphic Adventure about a pair of detectives summoned to a mansion on a strange island to investigate a mysterious murder, with a large lineup of unique and memorable characters as suspects. This game has a wonderful presentation with stylish visuals, great voice acting, nicely streamlined gameplay, and a story that is truly compelling… up until the game’s second half, when everything kinda’ just falls apart. Still, until that point this game is a pure joy that’s one of the best I’ve played in the genre, and I’d still recommend it to Graphic Adventure fans as long as they can enjoy the journey even if the destination fails to deliver on that potential.

Grade: B+

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