PC Gamer's Best Adventure Game of 2020 is Paradise Killer

Clout

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Dec 22, 2020

#1

Andy Kelly: Paradise Killer came outta nowhere and single-handedly reinvented the detective genre. The first project from indie studio Kaizen Gameworks, this is a detective game that lets you actually detect. You’re presented with a crime, a densely detailed island full of clues and suspects, and you can go to court and present your case whenever you like. This freeform structure is bold, but it pays off. A single, well-hidden clue can completely transform the version of events you’ve built up in your head, and it’s even possible to pin the crime on the wrong person if you missed something. The game won’t even tell you if you got it wrong; you just have to live with it, like a real detective would.

As well as being a great detective game, Paradise Killer is also an audio/visual feast. The vivid art style, outlandish character designs, idiosyncratic writing, and superb soundtrack—inspired by ‘90s videogames and Japanese city pop—combine to create one of the most visually and aurally stimulating games I’ve played in years. It’s also deeply, deeply weird. This is a mythical fantasy world of gods and demons, but also blandly contemporary, with convenience stores and apartment blocks sitting alongside immense crystal statues of goat-headed deities. Like the soundtrack, it’s a dazzling fusion of styles that gives the game a completely unique—and impossibly cool—identity.