If you enjoy a good Benoit Blanc or an Agatha Christie-type mystery, Mindcop is the indie game for you. I quickly grew obsessed with uncovering all the clues in the game, sinking in thirteen hours over four days, across six (or seven? I forget) play-throughs. Mindcop was mind-bendingly masterful, keeping me guessing until I cracked the case.
Created by solo developer Andre Gareis, this non-linear ‘whodunnit‘ sees you play as the titular Mindcop, charged with solving the murder of one Rebecca Goodman in the hamlet of Merrilyn Crater Camp. You have five days to crack the case and identify the killer out of the seemingly innocuous townsfolk.
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On The Clock
You have seven hours each day to investigate your surroundings and interact with the villagers. Each activity deducts from your daily time allowance, so you need to make sure you spend it wisely. This is one of the key challenges in the game, and after my first failed play-through, I realised that I needed to be much more efficient with how I managed my time.
There are three options to choose from when interacting with the townsfolk: ‘Question’, ‘Mindsurf’, or ‘Arrest’. Questioning characters triggers a stream of dialogue, often with branching paths. You can grill citizens about evidence you’ve found or the theories you’re developing, but the longer you chat, the more of your finite investigation time you’ll chew through.
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Running out of time effectively ends your day at the nearest police station. Here, you can request certain items that will help in your investigation, such as search warrants. You can also recap your day, practise mindsurfing, or ask your colleagues to help with the case. Mary in forensics can help you analyse evidence, but you’ll have to wait until you see her the next day for the lab results.
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Mindsurfing Magic
Mindcop has the ability to ‘surf’ within the minds of those he’s questioning, in the form of a little mini-game. Mindsurfing is fairly simple; you rotate a ‘brain square’ and catch coloured bullets, aiming to get three in a row. Each successful row of colour prolongs the timer, allowing Mindcop to reach the finish line.
You can also enjoy some nice jazzy elevator music while playing; it’s pretty dang catchy! ~playing games with my heeaaart~
Surfing to the finish line will bring you to the ‘Sea of Thoughts’. Here you’ll find three doors titled ‘Truth’, ‘Uncertainty’, and ‘Lie’. Behind their respective doors are truthful, uncertain, or deceitful memories for Mindcop to sort through. Uncertain memories can sometimes be true, but not necessarily real, something that you’ll have to decide for yourself. Encountering memories can sometimes unlock more topics, which in-turn feeds into the questioning of suspects.
The mindsurfing mini-game does wonders for breaking up the continuous dialogue and point-and-click elements of the game, which was refreshing.
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Good Cop, Bad Cop
Mindcop explores some pretty dark themes and ideas, which are thoughtfully outlined in a trigger warning at the start of the game. The cartoonish, hand-drawn world, also helps to keep things light and not too realistic.
The music in Mindcop brings a laid-back noir vibe to the game, and at times instils a particularly creepy vibe to the game, especially when things got quite… Intense. The text-based dialogue is accompanied by delightful ASMR typewriter sounds and expressive grunts from characters that brings a bit of flair to the simple text bubbles.
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Before you attempt to surf a characters mind, sometimes you’ll receive a warning that their mind could be challenging, hard, or even impossible to crack! You can reduce the difficulty if you’d like to get through the mini-games quicker, which I did in my later play-throughs. If your ‘Mindbullets’ are upgraded enough, you can bypass the mini-game entirely on Easy mode. However, it can be a bit of a risk, as you won’t know the level requirements until you attempt it, which could waste time.
Mindcop takes notes while working the case, which also includes a sketched map of the houses on the street. While it would’ve been helpful to be able to see my exact location on the map, it doesn’t take too long to familiarise yourself with the hamlet.
On subsequent play-throughs, there’s no way to skip the cutscenes you’ve already encountered, which reduced the enjoyment of replaying the game. As I was doing multiple run-throughs of the game to try to unlock everything, sitting through cutscenes for the fifth or sixth time got frustrating.
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Should you buy Mindcop?
Mindcop is a well-woven mystery, revealing enough nuggets, twists, and turns to keep me determined to solve the mystery. The game is designed to be difficult, with multiple runs intended before you can crack the case. It was a challenge I relished, leveraging newfound knowledge to view evidence from different angles, or deliberately ignore previously chosen paths to see what new discoveries I could make.
So should you buy it? After seven run-throughs to unlock all the achievements — the completionist in me won out — it’s a resounding yes from me.
Quest Daily scores Mindcop:
8/10
Mindcop is available now on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.
A copy of Mindcop was supplied to Quest Daily for the purpose of this review.
