A murder in a remote resort “town”. Bright grays clashed against red streaks of artificial lights. And a people with a lot of baggage. You are ‘Mindcop’, a detective whose game is aptly named, as he tracks down a murderer with his very tall but resourceful partner Linda. In solo developer Andre Gareis and publisher Dear Villagers’ newest point-n-click adventure game, players will be tasked to gather clues, interview and interrogate suspects, and dig through mounds of garbage to find the truth. You’re against the clock, you’ve only five days to figure out whodunnit…
Oh, but you’ve a very useful tool on hand—Mindcop can “Mindsurf”.
Mindcop, occasionally referred to as “MC” (insert chuckle here) is an eccentric fellow that’s only made more obvious by the company he keeps. Linda and MC are inseparable partners, and they are more than happy to air out their feelings and other bits of silly laundry during the car rides to the Merrilyn Crater Camp, a resort centre that sees good traffic during vacation season. These voiced conversations cover a variety of topics, such as bubble wrap, dreams, and shower thoughts that should’ve stayed in the shower. And I liked these voiced story segments quite a bit—the performances are amusing, and the cast fits the characters like a glove.
You’ll get to see these conversations play out every morning of your investigation of the camp. In Mindcop, the player arrives at the scene of the crime, a young woman dead and very little immediate evidence to work with. This death rocks the camp, whose people supposedly form a “tightly knit” community, but as you make the rounds through the camp and its inhabitants, MC will learn lots about the little town in very little time thanks to the tools we have on hand to help him do his job. As a 2D point ‘n click, players will examine their surroundings, talk to the people of the camp, present evidence, surf minds, and ultimately make the arrest they think is right.
Sounds simple, but like I said: you’re on the clock. See, over the course of five in-game days, players have seven hours to investigate the town. Every action you take will subtract a set number of minutes from your timer, which might not seem like a big deal… Until you realise just how much it all adds up. I am of the belief that one of the core tenants of every gamer involves examining every pixel on the screen, but Mindcop will have none of that and is ready to smack you across the face for looking at pointless stuff. Gumption is required if you want to extract as much as you can from the scenery and the townsfolk.
The Merrilyn Camp is a short stretch of land with homes and a forest entrance all plopped side by side. Unfortunately for the player, MC thinks he’s too cool for the concept of being able to run himself—which means when you push the sprint button, Linda will come running, grab you, and dash on the horizontal plane until you let go in which she throws MC a short distance. This is a mildly amusing little stint until you realise that MC is just too darn to walk over to the next house and running with Linda will usually have you thrown past the door you’re trying to get to. I suppose you can toss this onto their “eccentricities” pile, but it’s annoying enough that I was prompted to rant about it.
But I digress, entering a home is a big time investment, so ideally, you’ll want to split up your days walking into different abodes and speaking to the residents. There’s a handful of them, but they’ve all got things to say. Things to be worried and angry about. Things to be scared of. Talking to residents will give you an idea of the kind of character they are and the personalities of others—or what they say might just not be helpful at all. Mindcop is open-ended with its approach to achieving the game’s winning condition and that means you’re going to have to sift through the dirty laundry on your own to figure out truth from lies (and even a bit of the other way around).
Mindcop’s narrative is quite heavy. Besides the colour palette, don’t let the art style consisting of peak Newgrounds with some fishy influences fool you. The residents of the Merrilyn Camp have their struggles, many of which might hit close to home. And like real people, they aren’t willing to give away everything they’re thinking (or even realise they’re thinking about). Nope, this is where the patented Mindsurfing comes in. See, MC can surf the minds of every living being if he stares into their soul.
This loads up a short minigame where the player must match three colours of incoming bullets onto a square-shaped brain, rotating it when necessary to catch the required bullets and block incoming obstacles. Match the right sets and the timer goes up. You lose if you run out of time and you’re successful if MC makes it to the finish line. Upon completion, you’ll land on three doors in the ‘Sea of Thoughts’. These three doors tell you a truth, an uncertainty, and a lie about the Mindsurfed person. These thoughts, however, can be either beneficial to your case or just be outright unsettling. Make what you will of what you see.
The minigame isn’t difficult and every time you complete a Mindsurf, you can level up the efficacy of a bullet. I don’t really know if these level ups ever helped much and the only times I failed were simply because I got unlucky with the bullet patterns. I do like the concept though and just like with Mindcop’s setting, this surfing stuff fits so seamlessly with the world, even if the minigame itself isn’t very engaging. You can also outright turn these off, but keep in mind that some achievements are tied to successful completions of Mindsurfs and likely won’t unlock if you don’t play ’em.
Over the course of the five in-game days you’re given to investigate the camp, the townsfolk will be moving about and situations will change. I won’t go into detail about what happens, Mindcop being a heavy narrative-focused adventure, speaking beyond even the first day’s events can give things away. What I can say is that I found the game’s heavy noir-influenced setting and its characters to be well-executed. The camp feels downtrodden, and the people are evidently struggling a lot more than they care to admit. Even when I found a loose string that likely wouldn’t have helped MC find the killer, I felt compelled to pursue it anyway because I wanted to know about Merrilyn’s denizens and about their demons. The camp’s origins also piqued my interest as well.
Investigating anything notable will be added to the player’s notebook and the game encourages players to check out every possible avenue when possible. Items you pick up can be examined by forensics, Linda can look into specific details mentioned by the townsfolk, and the lady at the police station is willing to sign off on search warrants which will allow you to deeply comb through the homes in the camp. Be careful when doing this, however, as the residents of that home might not feel like talking to you anymore.
Timing is everything in Mindcop and it’s not just about the little clock on the bottom left corner of your screen—if you learn about something and want to discuss it with a person of interest, you’d be wise to gather as many other topics as possible before speaking to them and choose your words wisely lest you create problems for yourself. I like this approach in narrative design as it reinforces the idea of “keeping it simple” and only going for a lead when you’re confident in the fact.
But a problem I had with Mindcop is that time spent entering locales or speaking to the townspeople isn’t relative to what you’ve already accomplished with said people. Comb through a home, leave it, and realised you missed a spot? Entering the house again will cost the same amount of time as it did the first time. The same thing goes for conversations, where you might have forgotten to ask someone something but will have to pay the same time toll on top of the topic cost to continue, even if you’ve exhausted a number of conversation points prior.
I get why it’s set up this way, but I’d have preferred if the game removed or reduced the time cost for repeated actions as the MC spending 45 minutes just waltzing into a house they’ve already been into that day just to ask someone a question seems rather odd to me. No one talks again for that long unless you’re my mother running into a friend of hers at a shopping centre. Twice. And yes, MC does check with the player before leaving to make sure we have no unfinished business. But we’re only human and we forget things. Funny enough, he won’t ask players about leaving conversations and unfortunately, my clumsiness had ended talks prematurely more than once.
But one thing’s for sure, the murder at the Merrilyn Camp is a tough nut to crack. If you fail to find the killer, don’t fret! Your collected notes remain, and you can try again with the knowledge of what happened the first time. Topics and evidence will have to be recollected, however, but that isn’t a big deal. Your actions do a lot more than you think, so experimentation is key to solving this grand puzzle. Mindcop will tell you that you’re free to keep notes yourself, but I felt the cast and their key points were kept reasonably small and easy enough to remember. Though it wouldn’t hurt, seeing as how Linda won’t write everything down.
Mindcop is a great detective adventure that puts emphasis on creativity and critical thinking for the player to find the perpetrator. The tools you’re given are adequate for its open-ended approach to game design, and ultimately, it’s up to you to help Mindcop uphold his reputation against a townspeople who carry plenty of baggage. ∎
Mindcop
Played on
Windows 11 PC
PROS
- Characters and setting are well-executed.
- Branching paths within the narrative are cool!
- The game does its best to help you, but otherwise leaves you to your devices.
CONS
- Time cost isn't relative to the information you'll present or inspect.
