Homicipher

Genre: First-Person Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel / Horror

Players: 1

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Review:

Homicipher is a blend of First-Person Graphic Adventure and Visual Novel with Horror elements released in 2024 on PC and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2026. This game finds players suddenly awakening in a building filled with human-like “monster men” trying to survive, figure out what’s going on, and ideally finding a way to escape. To do so, they’ll need to work to decipher the monsters’ strange language.

As you progress through the game, you’ll find that most of the monsters speak, and their language is depicted as illegible gibberish words. However, you can always click on a word to enter what you believe its translation to be, with that translation displaying whenever the word shows up. At the onset of the game, you’re given the option to either enter in your own interpretations or to be given a multiple-choice option when clicking on a word, though I feel like the former is more fun, and is less likely to feel like you’re just being given the answer. In either case, gradually you’ll learn what these words are and gain a better understanding of the monsters’ language, giving you a better chance to survive.

Even though the monsters all appear dangerous, many are benign, and some are outright benevolent in their intentions, while others are seeking some sort of assistance or transaction. Many monsters seem to understand you don’t speak their language, and endeavor to try and help you learn, one word at a time, pointing to things and speaking the word with the intent that you’ll add it to your list of interpretations. At other times, your own character will speak, offering a suggestion about her own thoughts on a word’s interpretation.

And sometimes you just have to guess at words based on context – when a monster says “me ____ you” and then follows you continuing to say “me ____ you”, it seems like a good bet that “____” means “follow”. But could it mean “eat” or “kill” instead? Well, does it seem like it’s trying to harm you? In the moment it’s probably important to figure out, but it will surely become important again later on when that word is used again but without any context to figure it out.

“Hooked on Phonics with monsters” seems like an absurd idea, but it really, really works. The dangerous situation adds to the urgency of trying to learn the monster language as best you can. What’s more, it makes the text log, a standard feature of Visual Novels, into a great gameplay element in its own right, because new interpretations of words will send you back into the log now that you have a greater context of earlier conversations, and re-reading old exchanges might even lead to figuring out other words thanks to that added context, or helping you to correct a wrong interpretation you entered earlier – if you want to add or change a word’s interpretation, you can do it right from the log.

While you’re not given much of an introduction to your character or why they might be in this dangerous situation, the story still remains interesting thanks to the interesting personalities of the various monster people you encounter, which is quite a feat when the only intelligible language any of them has are the words you assign to their utterances. But when you encounter a severed head that seems to want you to pick it up and bring it with you, or a crawling monster whose vicious-looking smile hides a concern for your safety, it makes for some really memorable moments, especially when you’re never entirely sure whether a creature is trustworthy or a threat.

A part of this strange dichotomy is due to this game’s solid 2D art style, with various creepy-looking monsters in front of gritty, dingy-looking backgrounds, joined by occasional creepy noises that seem more like sound clips than anything grounded in the setting. It works, but the sound in particular seems a bit lazily slapped-together.

When it comes to complaints, I do have some. First, you often run into situations that only give you one chance to look at or interact with things, and frequently there will even be one-way passages that won’t let you go back, that aren’t clear they’re one-way passages until it’s too late. In a game where you’re always trying to find more information and recontextualize prior information you got, this is pretty frustrating. The lack of any kind of introduction, backstory, or characterization for the character you’re playing really detracts from the story here… and honestly makes me wonder if there even is a story or is this just a creepy location filled with monsters. Also, I have to point out an absurd case of “Switch tax” here, with the Nintendo Switch version of this game costing over twice the price of the PC version.

However, while Homicipher definitely has its flaws, this is one of the most surprising, unexpected, and inspired entries in the Visual Novel and Graphic Adventure genres that I’ve encountered in a while, one that adds a whole new element to this genre’s style of interactive storytelling by making the words themselves a puzzle that’s an integral part of the gameplay. I really want to see this style of language-learning gameplay pushed further in other games, and I could absolutely see this making for a delightful experience in an Educational game using a real-world language instead of this game’s fictional one. However, even putting aside my excitement for the potential this sort of game has in the future, even if we’re just looking at Homicipher, this is a superb take on the genre that’s absolutely worth playing.

tl;dr – Homicipher is a First-Person Graphic Adventure and Visual Novel with Horror elements where players find themselves in a building filled with creepy monsters who speak a language they have to gradually decipher. As bizarre as “Hooked on Phonics With Monsters” sounds as a concept, it really works here, making for a delightfully thrilling and unique experience that mostly makes up for the lack of a real story and somewhat amateurish elements of the presentation. Overall, this is a truly inspired take on the genre, and while it has some major flaws (including an absurdly bloated price on Nintendo Switch), this is nevertheless well worth playing.

Grade: B+

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