Love this game! The twist at the end caught me a little bit //too// off guard though, it didn't seem hinted at throughout. But I love the game. Good humor, fun puzzles, fun mystery. I can't wait for the new one hehe

For the record, I did play most recently on switch in Nederlands with English voice acting. I don't think the Dutch option had existed on release so I played in English text back then, on PC. Though it's very possible I just didn't see the option. Liked it a ton every time I've played though. Dutch TL is great, I think Sally and Detective's characters really show well in the Dutch language.

Straight up one of the best mystery games I've ever played. The production is ridiculous, and I mean that as praise—the music, voice acting, animation and witty dialogue all come together to form a delightful little game. Me and some friends streamed this one together, and had a grand old time trying to piece the mystery together as a group. The characters are all fun to talk to, and the sheer amount of flavor text with each one is such a treat. No bad puzzles, either, though the clock face one could be a bit agonizing.
The very final scene with the culprit fell a little flat for me, but the build to that moment is top-notch. I won't spoil it, but the "oh, shit" moment when it all comes together? Absolutely amazing.

To revisit Tangle Tower was event better than I could have imagined to be honest and works surprisingly well. I forgot big chunks of the mystery and was able to re-evaluate how well it tells it's story. The simple answer is: brilliant.

Tangle Tower is very well paced, very tested towards intuitive progression (which is surprisingly uncommon for most Point and Click Adventures). It manages to stay funny all the way through, with very snappy dialogue that is just excellently voiced. In my eyes, this even surpasses the mystery crafting of Thimbleweed Park, which I found to be one of the best the genre had to offer. Think of Tangle Tower of a mini Danganronpa Chapter, cut 90% of the horrible and weird and creepy gameplay and character-interactions and now pretend the case is actually graspable and not complete moon-logic bullshit. That's Tangle Tower. My appretiation for this only grew.

Esse jogo é muito bom!! Mas tem problemas que conto um pouco mais abaixo.

Os personagens são muito divertidos e únicos, a arte e a musica é linda, as animações são incríveis, a dublagem é muito boa e realmente ajuda a simpatizar com os personagens, e o mistério te deixa instigado até o final.

Mas esse jogo tem um problema muito grande no final dele, ele pareceu bem rushado, deixou muitas pontas soltas na resolução do mistério, eu diria graves furos de roteiro em relação ao assassinato, e teve uma cena de 20 minutos de dialogo expositivo sobre o porque de todo o mistério, de forma maçante, e metade das informações desse dialogo poderiam estar no decorrer do jogo mesmo, pro jogador ir descobrindo, e não tudo ser jogado no dialogo final (falei sem spoilers, mas a situação dessa cena é pior do que eu deixei escrito, evitei detalhes pra voce ver por si mesmo)

Recomendo o jogo? SIM!! O jogo é realmente muito bom, paguei 7 reais na promoção e não me arrependo, o jogo só se perde no final mesmo, mas foi extremamente divertido todas as 7 horas de jogo que tive, se o final fosse melhor o jogo poderia facilmente ser 5 estrelas pra mim!

The second Detective Grimoire game is a definite improvement on the first. The animation and character design is consistently, the music is better and more varied, the central mystery is more interesting and layered and the puzzles are a little more fleshed out. All that said, I can't deny that Tangle Tower still feels as though it lacks a certain something. That certain something might just be difficulty.

This is (aside from the first Grimoire game) possibly the easiest point and click/detective game I've ever played. But then, I do think it is aimed at younger players, so it's hard to really criticise it on that basis. If you have a child and want to show them a fairly toothless and fun whodunnit, then you can't really go wrong with Tangle Tower, but if you're coming off the back of Obra Dinn and Sherlock Holmes, you might struggle to enjoy it as much. All that aside, it's a very pretty game and the voice performances are great and surprisingly lengthy. It's also pretty short, clocking in at four, maybe five hours, so if you want a breezy afternoon game, then this might be a good sale pickup for you.

What I think I'll remember most about the Detective Grimoire trilogy is how each game acts as a benchmark for it's time period in independent development. The first game is a clear flash title, the second evokes the mobile game boom and early digital storefronts, while Tangle Tower feels like one of the high quality passion projects releasing today.

The art, animation, writing, music, and voice acting are all excellent. Truly top of their class. The simple interfaces of Secret of the Swamp have been replaced with full puzzles. The mystery is a good deal more involved in my opinion. If there's another game in this series currently in development, I'll be there day one.

Detective Grimoire is once again called to solve an elusive case: this time, they're taken to the eponymous Tangle Tower, a place in a mysterious island that houses the Fellow and Pointer families. Freya Fellow, one of the youngest in the former family, has been murdered, stabbed in the chest by... her own painting, found in the scene of the crime eerily holding a bloodied knife in front of her dead body.

A sequel to 2015's remarkable point-'n-click adventure Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp, Tangle Tower improves upon its prequel in almost every regard. The game is rendered in even sharper visuals, with beautiful 2D backgrounds and fluid hand-drawn character animations, thanks to which its scenes and characters brim with life. A gorgeous soundtrack completes the immersion, with tracks that reflect the personality of each character and the atmosphere of each moment. The experience is worth the price of admission for the vibes alone.

Despite the seriousness of the case at hand, the tone of the writing is mostly on the light side, with eccentric characters and humorous exchanges. The game's Teen rating, however, is well-earned, as there are some tense moments as well as a subtle darkness hiding behind the island and its inhabitants. There is a history to this place, what with the mysterious nature of the lake surrounding the island, multiple members of both families having left for unknown reasons and the people that remain on the island each harboring secrets to be uncovered. And uncover them we will, because this is a detective game.

The original game's investigation mechanics were iterated upon, but the gist of the sequel remains more or less the same: Grimoire and his assistant, Sally, both of which are controlled by the player, move between locations by selecting them on the map, and examine the scenes point-'n-click style to find clues. Sometimes, said clues are gated by puzzles which, intentionally or not, end up being one of the standout points of the experience, being of a similar caliber to the more high quality puzzles from the best Professor Layton games. Even the BGM used during puzzle-solving is somewhat like of those in that series games.

The closest parallel for the overall mechanics, however, would have to be the Ace Attorney series, what with the assembling of a case file full of clues, the gathering of statements from each witness and the presentation of evidence to those same witnesses in other to have them set their testimonies straight. Grimoire and Sally, however, have the freedom to explore the many rooms of the titular mansion in a non-linear fashion, giving the investigation in Tangle Tower a more player-guided, deliberate feel that sets it apart from its inspirations.

Of course, which such freedom comes an increased chance of the player missing a clue or otherwise getting stuck, and the game is especially careful not to let that happen: a hint button in the map screen, when pressed, mentions a room that would yield a clue if investigated; in addition, whenever the set of evidence needed to press one of the witnesses becomes available, the game is even more explicit, with the playable characters notifying the player that the option to press on a suspicion is now available via voice lines and an on-screen call to action. The hint button is for the better, but its when these prompts come up that Tangle Tower's biggest flaw becomes more evident.

Progression to the final sections of the game is gated behind finding the contradictions in each of the witnesses' testimony. Crucially, this must be done at once, which is why the game makes a point of notifying the player that the option to do so is available, but because it happens right after getting a crucial piece of evidence, the result is that the player must, all at once, make several conclusions about that witness that they might not have had time to digest. This takes them away from the driver's seat as they are tossed into a gauntlet of multiple choice questions that, due to their very nature, stop short of spelling out the answer to the suspicion in question.

It's an issue with the design: had dialogue options not been standardized, and instead, had there been multiple opportunities to, piece by piece, break down lies and/or answer questions about the witness, the player could have been eased into the conclusions the game expects them to take without losing the feeling of agency. The Ace Attorney series also sometimes uses testimony records as pieces of evidence, and something in that direction could have helped give players more freedom to solve the case by themselves, for instance, by having to choose what to press the witness on.

Potential improvements to the investigation mechanics aside, Tangle Tower is still a very satisfying experience: the relaxing vibes, approachable tone and exceptional voice acting alone are enough to justify the experience; the intriguing mystery, great brain-teasers and, despite its issues, still entertaining detective work seal the deal. I sure hope this is not the last we see of Detective Grimoire and Sally, and that SFB Games puts forth a new case for them to solve coming up some time in the future.

A short and charming little murder mystery game a la Professor Layton.

The characters are well written, acted, and full of personality. The game is a little too short however to show off an arc to most of them, or see any meaningful interaction, which I would have liked.

Puzzles are pretty easy for the most part, and the game gives you a lot of direction so you pretty much never get lost. The main gameplay is really just looking around in rooms and finding the right things to click, which I don't find awfully exciting.

Ultimately it's cute and I see why someone might love this, but the gameplay isn't engaging for me personally.

Un mini-Ace Attorney estupendo con una presentación magnífica, un reparto de personajes (¡y voces!) estupendo y una historia que, si bien acaba de forma algo abrupta, está llena de giritos y misterios interesantes y bien enlazados entre sí.

No es un juego difícil ni complejo en absoluto, pero hace muy bien todo lo que pretende hacer y al final eso es lo importante.

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A fantastic mini-Ace Attorney with an excellent presentation, a fantastic cast of characters (and voices!) and a story that, although finished a bit abruptly, is full of twists and interesting mysteries that are well tied together.

It's not a hard or complex game at all, but it does everything it tries to do really well and, at the end of the day, that's what matters.

I randomly came across this game during a sale and the art style and animation were the thing that first jumped out at me.
I downloaded the demo first to see what I thought of it and less than 10 minutes and the sheer fact that this game has full voice acting and interactions for you clicking 90% of what you can see made me plunge into the full version instead.
I wasn't disappointed at all, I played it in one long whole day session.
First things first is that the story has a really good starting pitch, with it being a murder mystery with seemingly impossible circumstances and very quickly the exploration of the crime scene and the characters you meet shortly after that are just lovely, also really well voice acted, the casting of every character felt perfect with all of them adding to how the characters pull you further into the story, all the while the visuals, animations and music stay consistently phenomenal too, each character has different ways they'll address you, from stuff like how a grandiose character who likes to inflate his background changing his entire background to a star filled space scene until getting rudely cut off and that makes the background change back as if he'd been brought down to earth, to another character offering her opinion about the other family's members via poems that cut off the music and make the background black while she recites them.
The main mystery solving and puzzles also have a good amount of variety while never feeling like you forgot something along the way or get overwhelmed, but the main appeal is I think being able to keep track of who has and hasn't been lying, with the main twists staying refreshing and pretty hard to guess all the way through, genuinely phenomenal gem of a game that put the devs into my radar.

Tangle Tower is definitely a GOTY-worthy game in my book, while I loved and enjoyed Detective Grimoire this game really took the breath out of me. They truly perfected everything from the previous game, continuing with high-quality art design, story and voice-acting.

It's a classic murder mystery with a kinda dysfunctional family and it brings my mind to an Agatha Christie novel despite Grimoire not being much of a Poirot. But it's also more than that, it's also uncovering the secrets of three families and the current family members staying in Tangle Tower. Each character is unique and has their own personality, which makes the game very enjoyable when interacting with them.

I can't express how much I enjoyed this game other than recommending it to everyone! It's a bonus if you played Detective Grimoire first, but it is not mandatory to do so. This game is more of a stand-alone sequel than anything. I can't wait for the third upcoming one!