Mindcop review

I’ve played a ton of detective games over the years, and there’s nothing more disappointing than when a game meant to engage your brain holds your hand and tells you the solution to a problem. I want to use my own little grey cells to figure out whodunnit, but with so many mystery filled games, you just have to watch the protagonist fill in the blanks hours after you already have. Well Mindcop is the exact opposite of those games, giving you free reign to investigate a murder however you see fit – albeit with limited time.

In Mindcop you play as the titular Mindcop, who has been sent with his partner Linda to solve a murder case at Merrylin Crater Camp. This rural tourist destination is currently in the off-season, with only a close knit community of staff who could’ve killed poor Rebecca. With your legendary powers of deduction and supernatural mind reading abilities you have all the tools needed to catch the criminal at large, just don’t expect it to be a cakewalk.

Mindcop begins with a short tutorial investigation of the crime scene, where you’ll learn all about how to investigate objects and talk to suspects. It’s all fairly straightforward until you realise that absolutely everything you do in Mindcop takes in-game time, and with only five days (each featuring only seven hours of investigation time) to solve the case it all adds up. At first I was pretty sure that spending two minutes to look at a poster wouldn’t waste enough time to matter, but as those days draw to a close and you’re looking for every shred of information you can get, you’ll regret any poor decision making.

As well as examining all sorts of bits and bobs at the crime scene in this tutorial section, you’ll also get a chance to interact with your first suspect – the officer on the scene. Any conversation topics or pieces of evidence you have access to can be discussed with anyone you meet, but you’d better believe that every time you do this you lose a chunk of investigation time. Once you’ve rinsed them of all the information you can manage the only way to find out more juicy details about them and the case is a bit of mind surfing, which features a huge gameplay shift.

To successfully complete a mind surf you’ll need to make it through a puzzle mini game, which features mind bullets you need to line into rows of three by rotating the brain they’re firing into. This seems pretty easy at first, but with a strict timer ticking away and some nasty mechanics that are added deeper into the game it can be pretty tricky. It’s worth it though to reveal more information about a suspect.

Once you’ve surfed your way into the brain of a witness, you’ll be greeted by three doors in their Sea of Thoughts. These doors are marked Truth, Lie and Uncertainty, and contain often very vague scenes that point towards some sort of evidence. Watching someone cry about losing a friend through the truth door will probably give you an idea that someone is likely innocent, but watching someone else have a conversation with a magical rock about feeding it from behind the uncertainty door will probably leave you more confused than ever. There are some particular dark scenes hidden in the Sea of Thoughts too, so if domestic abuse and suicidal thoughts are little heavy for you then Mindcop might not be your jam.

Perhaps what impressed and overwhelmed me most about Mindcop, is that after the tutorial section of the game you are just let loose to explore the town entirely on your own. Whichever house you’d like to visit first you can, and that decision will influence what evidence you find first and thus what path to the killer you take. It’s so refreshing to play a detective game so open, and you’re almost always rewarded heavily for putting the pieces of the murder puzzle together and making a new discovery.

Mindcop has so many clever elements that are as impressive as they are intimidating. For example: at the end of each day you can arrest someone you suspect is the killer (or in some way a criminal) but if you do then the people they’re close to will likely refuse to talk to you for the rest of the game. Similarly you can get warrants to search houses each day, but it’ll definitely piss off the owners when you do. It’s all in aid of solving the crime though, which if you don’t manage in five days you’ll lose the game entirely and have to start another playthrough. This might feel a bit punishing, but replaying the game with more knowledge and finally uncovering the truth was one of my most satisfying gaming moments of the year.

This is a hugely creative and impressive game, but it won’t appeal to everyone. By design the game is a little overwhelming, and will not appeal to those just looking to watch a story play out. There are also a few janky elements like “running”, which is actually just being carried by your partner Linda and is almost impossibly fast. The puzzle sections are a bit jarring too, and definitely won’t be enjoyed by some.

Mindcop is an incredibly refreshing detective game, which refuses to hold your hand in the best possible way. It can be overwhelming, but actually managing to engage your brain to uncover nuggets of truth feels amazing and makes all the effort worth it. Few games are as clever, funny, and tragic as Mindcop, and the fact that it was made by a solo developer is frankly baffling.