A short detective game that breaks the fourth wall | Full Review - Detective Mimo

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Detective Mimo is a delightful and entertaining game that combines classic point-and-click detective gameplay with a charming and whimsical visual style. The game's use of fourth-wall breaking elements adds an extra layer of intrigue and keeps players on their toes, always expecting the unexpected.

🟩Pros

+Mind-bending twists and fourth wall breaks

+Puzzles require heavy thinking outside the box

+Lighthearted whimsical visuals

🟥Cons

-Short game

-Heavily reuses scenes / locations

-Feels like a demo of a larger game

Detective Mimo is a charming and self-aware detective game that's perfect for fans of mystery and adventure games with a nice touch of fourth wall breaking. The game follows the titular detective cat Mimo as she solves crimes around town, and it's up to the player to help him piece together the clues and catch the culprit.

The visuals and presentation overall are lighthearted, whimsical, with hand painted art-style and charming music. The whole vibe feels like something that came out of a children's book. From time to time, the story is told in comic-books like moving panels and visual novel style dialogue between characters, but most of the time in this game is spent by solving puzzles and playing point-and-click detective.

The gameplay in Detective Mimo is a classic point-and-click adventure style in touch format, with players tapping on different areas of the screen to investigate crime scenes, gather and use objects, and solving puzzles. You can talk to some NPCs to give you some information and interact with the environment using a variety of novel ways not only involving the touch screen, but also involving many aspects of your mobile phones like using its gyro sensors, light detection, charging, and even gameplay elements literally outside the game.

The puzzles are challenging enough to be satisfying, but sometimes the logic used is so ridiculous and unrealistic that it requires heavy thinking out of the box, or just using brute force and trial and error. The logic still checks out though as the world is not our world but a weird world to begin with populated by anthropomorphic cats.

The game starts off in a usual classic adventure, with the player taking on the role of cat Mimo, who is a police detective. She is tasked to capture a notorious robber, a cat named ‘Cat Rogue’, Cat Rogue’ has announced his next heist and Mimo is sent to the Bank to investigate. The first hour or so functions like a normal classic adventure detective game, but suddenly shifts in tone towards a fourth-wall breaking, somewhat creepy game, and that kind of reminds me of Doki Doki Literature Club!, for those that are familiar.

Eventually, the game becomes self-aware, full of fourth wall breaks and genius ways of toying with the player. The puzzles become increasingly out of the box, and requires the players’ attention to detail not only to the in-world elements but also to the UI, menus, and even outside the game itself and inside your phone.

The experience is fun and constantly subverts the players’ expectations with regards to the gameplay and the plot. The actual puzzle gameplay which is the main highlight of the game, is challenging enough and gives players a varied number of unique puzzles to complete. As said earlier, it may require out of the box thinking. You may need to actually visit a website or two to progress in the game, or perhaps use your phones in ways you didn’t really expect. Of course, finding these things out and discovering them for yourself is part of the fun.

Unfortunately, the game is too short, only clocking in about 3-4 hours of content even with the 2 endings and hidden segments. Scratching only the surface of what seems to be a demo for a much larger game that doesn’t exist. The game kind of sets us up for the whole city by showing us a map with different locations in it and the potential for a detective puzzle game that spans different locations. But it never really follows through with that element and instead just doubles down on the fourth-wall aspect, constantly reusing scenes or rooms as part of the gameplay and story instead of taking players to new areas and locations.

Conclusion:

Detective Mimo is a point-and-click detective game that challenges traditional forms of storytelling and invites the players to participate in the narrative in a unique and memorable way. It's a decent choice for fans of mystery games, adventure games, or just anyone who wants to help a lovable cat detective solve some crimes, sprinkled with some mind-bending twists.

The game's self-awareness and fourth-wall breaking elements provide a unique and memorable experience that subverts players' expectations. While the game is on the short side, it is still a entertaining experience that will leave players wanting more.