Inspector Waffles Review

Game: Inspector Waffles
Genre: Adventure, Point & Click
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, Windows & GOG)
Developers | Publishers: Goloso Games | Hitcents
Age Rating: US Teen| EU 12+
Price: US $13.99 | UK £ 11.99 | EU € 12,99
Release Date: October 14th, 2021

Review code used, with many thanks to Team Critical Hit

Inspector Waffles is a homage to the point and click adventure games of old. Developed by one-man studio Goloso Games and published by Hitcents.

Point and Click

The story in Inspector Waffles and the one you will be investigating centres around the murder of a respected cat business owner Fluffy of Fluffy Box Furniture. Playing as Inspector Waffles you have his handy notebook to jot down important clues throughout your investigation. In typical point and click style, you’ll hunt out the clues in each still story screen.

Find all the Clues

When you start the game you’ll have the choice to play the game with important clues highlighted in yellow to give you a hint, or you can play without a hint. While the game isn’t overly difficult it is nice to have the choice of having the hints to help.

It’s really all about paying attention to Inspector Waffles’ environment and clicking on everything until you find a clue. Using Waffles notebook you can also question suspects by asking them direct questions from his notebook. There’s no penalty if you put forward a clue that doesn’t fit, as Waffles will just remark on it, and you can simply try another.

Combining items that Inspector Waffles finds also comes into play, though this is one of those rare titles where combing the items actually makes sense. Before long, Waffles is getting warrants to search homes, travelling with an eager police dog and traversing the sewers in the hunt for the murderer of poor kitty Fluffy!

Phone Mum

One of the great ideas in the game is if you get really stuck you can always phone your Mum for help, not your own Mum but Waffles’ Mum as she used to be a detective herself. A quick phone call to Mum is usually enough to help send Waffles off in the right direction to find more clues, it is rather endearing chatting to Mum!

The game is littered with cat and dog jokes, dry humour and puns galore, and a very likeable cast of animal characters throughout. I really like the humour in the game which often, while playing the game, made me laugh. We could all do with a laugh now and then.

Visuals and Controls

The pixel visuals of Inspector Waffles are all bright and vivid. All the characters are brought to life well, even if no one moves. All the scenes in the game are hand-drawn, with little animation as Inspector Waffles doesn’t walk about from scene to scene, the only part of him that is aminated is his wagging tail.

There’s no voice-acting in the game, with conversations appearing as on-screen text but that doesn’t detract from the story. Controlling the game is done via the joy-cons and they work as they should. I did find that some of the pixel art in the game made spotting some of the clues a little hard.

Conclusion

Inspector Waffles is a fun game with lots of humour in it. It is worth checking out if point and click detective games are your jam as it has an enjoyable mystery murder to solve. It is not a long game, I finished it in roughly four hours. But what there is you’ll have a cattastic time with as you help Inspector Waffles solve the murder in Cat Town.

Final Verdict: I Like It a Lot