Game: Oniria Crimes
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle
System: Nintendo Switch (also on PS4, Xbox One and PC)
Developer|Publisher: ckolomos entertainment | Badland Publishing
Age Rating: EU 7+ | US Teen
Price: UK £17.99 | EU €19,99 | US $19.99
Release Date: December 3rd, 2020
Review code provided with many thanks to Badland Publishing
The World of Dreams
Oniria Crimes is a point and click game where you solve crimes in Oniria the Land of Dreams. You play as a detective hopping from crime to crime attempting to solve various murders in a rather unique world of 3D pixel characters. The developers did a good job creating a world to become immersed in. There is a lot of dialogue between characters which provides plenty of back story to this interesting premise. But while the world has been well built the same can’t be said for its gameplay.
Scene of the Crime
The game will present you with a murder scene and your job per scenario is to attempt to solve the mystery by finding clues and identifying if suspects are innocent or guilty. To do this you have a little cursor which you need to point at several interactive objects in the crime scene. Each time you interact with an object the detectives will have a short discussion about the situation. If you gain a clue it will be added to a suspects file on the left of the screen. To solve the crime you need to click on basically everything you can to reveal all the potential clues. Then when you’re ready to solve the mystery you need to click on each suspect, choose two clues and deem if they are innocent or guilty.
It all seems quite easy but to find some of the more essential clues you will need to solve some mind-bending puzzles. Every crime scene has a puzzle where you need to open a box or safe by clicking in the right places or finding a code. But the solutions to these aren’t always clear. The game doesn’t do a good job of convincing you to solve the mystery yourself, instead you may feel more compelled to look online or just quit.
This feels like a game much more suited to playing on PC with a mouse. The curser controls awfully on Switch and tiny objects that can interact with are hard to see when playing the game in handheld mode. I respect game development is tricky but it’s a shame that touch controls weren’t added to handheld mode on Switch.
Guess What I’m Thinking
Oniria Crimes feels to me like the ultimate ‘guess what I’m thinking’ game. A design I’m not very fond of. Right from the first mystery the game does very little to guide you on how to play the game or select the correct clues to solve the mystery. When you finish a crime scene you will be given a results screen which will indicate if you found all the clues and tally how many clues you got correct with an overall rating. But it doesn’t give you any helpful feedback on how to learn and get things right next time. I understand by doing this the game may reveal the solution. But let’s just say I didn’t feel compelled to repeat crime scenes to try again. The overall experience just felt like a chore.
Bugs in Dream World
While the game generally ran OK I did encounter some irritating bugs. Sometimes when I solved a crime the game just would not proceed and sort of freeze. With the only fix appearing to be to back out and reload the save. When you do this though you have to repeat the previous crime you were on. A similar bug occurred even during the crime scenes when my curser just wouldn’t interact with objects in the environment. When this first happened I thought this was part of the games vague design.
Conclusion
While I have been harsh on Oniria Crimes I do feel there is a niche audience for this game. If you’re able to immerse yourself in the world and like the idea of a tough point and click game this might be for you.
In the games current state, I would still recommend waiting till it gets some much-needed patching. Not a game for me but I hope it finds some fans because of all my critique the idea here is at least different.
Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure
