Mindcop Review

Gameplay

Graphics

Audio

Value

Summary: A marvellous mind bending murder mystery that puts your deductive reasoning skills to the test.

4

Once you eliminate the impossible...

Mindcop is a clever whodunnit that in a rare twist has players actually do the detective work by following clues and figuring out who the culprit is rather than following a single strand of logic to its conclusion.

Tasked with solving a murder at a rural tourist hot spot, players step into the mind-surfing shoes of Mindcop, a psychic detective who can dive into the minds of suspects and witnesses to uncover their deepest secrets and innermost fears.

After arriving at the Merrylin Crater Camp with his partner Linda, the game opens with a brief tutorial that sees Mindcop investigate the crime scene, quiz the settlement’s bumbling sheriff, and flex his psychic powers.

You’re then left with five days to crack the case and figure out which member of this seemingly sleepy corporate community killed Rebecca.

The first thing you’ll notice is that every action you take whether it’s rummaging in a cupboard, questioning a resident, or diving into a suspect’s mind takes a set amount of time.

Each day you have seven hours to carry out your investigation and it’s impossible to do everything in the time you have, so you need to carefully consider your actions and who you’re going to quiz on any given day.

Questioning suspects takes time (15 minutes minimum). You can also discuss a slowly expanding range of topics as well as any evidence Linda has stashed in her sizable trenchcoat (at the cost of two minutes per item or topic).

Moreover, you can waste time by asking the wrong questions, making the topics discussed just as important as whatever scrap of paper or broken glass fragment you send to the lab for analysis.

Once you’ve finished questioning a suspect you can choose to mindsurf them. At this point, the action shifts to a fairly simplistic match-three puzzle game that sees Mindcop surf along the bottom of the screen as mind bullets burrow into the brain of the unsuspecting perp whose psyche you’re trying to reach the shores of before the timer runs out and you are booted out of their brain.

Successfully breaching a brain leads Mindcop to three doors that reveal a truth, a lie the subject tells themselves, and a fear. Sometimes these are as straightforward as lying about being the killer, or a conversation they may have had with another camp worker, and other times they’re more surreal and need a bit of critical thinking to decipher what they mean.

Some brains are better defended than others though, so you’ll need to target those who are more easily swayed at first to build up your mind-surfing powers. However, if you get lucky and break one of the more difficult brains earlier in the case, you’ll be rewarded with vital information that could crack the whole mystery wide open… Or lead to even more questions. No one said solving a murder would be easy.

It’s also entirely possible for you not to find the killer and get the game’s bad ending. Admittedly I managed to catch the killer on my first playthrough, but I will admit that it was just as much a matter of luck as judgment on my behalf based on what evidence I had managed to recover and piecing together previous events by mind surfing every last member of the community.

What’s most impressive though is the route you take to catch the killer is completely non-linear, all the information and evidence you need, and even more besides, is there for you to uncover. So while I took one route to figuring out the mystery, it’s entirely possible to come to the same conclusion while taking a completely different tact.

At the end of every day, you’ll travel to the nearest police station where you can have evidence examined by forensics to get more information, send Linda off on useful errands, get a search warrant, or arrest a suspect and have them locked up in jail while you continue your investigation. Just don’t expect anyone you arrested or rooted through their homes to talk to you afterward. However, how they react to a search can confirm your suspicions.

It’s also worth noting that despite its cartoony visuals (reminiscent of Gravity Falls) and mostly idiosyncratic tone, Mindcop, like the hamlet it’s set in, has a dark underbelly. So if you’re likely to be triggered by scenes of elder abuse and domestic violence you’ll probably want to skip it.

I’m not knocking the presentation though. It brings a little levity to some very dark themes, and the use of black and white tinged with red whenever danger is close by gives it a Sin City by way of Twin Peaks tone that I loved.

Kevin Mauser’s Noir-tinged score, and the theme that bookends every day’s detecting in particular, is superb.

Final Thoughts

Mindcop is one of the cleverest murder mysteries I’ve played in a while, as comical as it is tragic at times. Its myriad systems work wonderfully to help the player feel some seriously satisfying eureka moments as they build a case and slowly uncover the truth by piecing together a tapestry of testimony and evidence rather than just following a single narrative thread.

About the Author

Gareth Newnham

Mindcop Review