Mindcop – PS5 Review

Mindcop from German dev Andre Gareis, originally released on Steam in 2020 and ported to console by Pixel Ratio and published by Little Villagers is something we’d heard about by virtue of it being advertised on a YouTube channel we frequent. Mindcop is a whodunit set over five days where your titular detective tries to solve a murder.

Rather than the likes of video whodunit Murderous Muses where every playthrough is a randomised scrambling of the variables, Mindcop has a fixed storyline and remains vulnerable to the curse of older PC games everywhere, the readily available solution that’s easily found on the internet. We’d recommend you’d steer clear though, lest you get really stuck.

You see, you’re bound to get really stuck at some point. Not from the general gameplay as such, more the need to interact with all the townspeople of Merrylin Crater Camp. It’s an activity camp with a mascot called Bombo based on a lava bomb from a nearby ancient volcano. It makes sense in context, trust us.

The gameplay loop begins with yer man Mindcop encountering a suspect then asking them a few questions based on topics you’re initially given during the tutorial phase. As you interrogate people, you’ll gain new topics to ask others about. It’s after this point that the mind part comes to the fore.

Each day gives you seven hours of time for all activities, just entering a building, for example, will use a little time to enter the building. Every little interaction uses precious minutes. They’re the only currency that matters here. You can then search for clues in a detective mode of sorts, though more intensive searches will use a lot more time.

You’ll find items for the most part, as well as occasional topics. As well as topics, you can ask informants/suspects about any of the items in your inventory, our favourite being the pointless stick you find in a woodland clearing that you can grill people about, for no other reason than to unlock a trophy. The dialogue options are gently branching, though you can potentially end up sufficiently angering an interviewee by pursuing the wrong path.

Once you’ve carried out your initial questioning, you get to mindsurf, in effect a minigame where you rotate a three-by-three square of brain matter. It makes even less sense when you type it out, trust us. Practically you’re playing multicoloured noughts and crosses, with the added complication of an occasionally strict time limit.

After completing the minigame; that in itself, no mean feat on default difficulty; you’ll access the Sea of Thoughts, that being three doors that give you a glimpse of truth, uncertainty or outright falsehood. They are all rather plot sensitive, so we won’t share too much on the specifics. You can get extra conversation topics here, though you’re strictly an observer. It’s at this point that the mindsurf finishes, you get a daft flourish animation and in the event it’s your first playthrough, a handy trophy for completing the process with that respective NPC. You’ll also be able to power up one of your bullet colours, which will prove useful if you want to tackle the hardest mindsurfs that are on offer.

Then you can decide whether to arrest them or not, with a few exceptions. We shan’t tell you which as it’d ruin the fun. There is some fun to be had here, not just busywork though it can feel a bit like a chore playing through. Though arrest one potential suspect at your peril as you’ll make the rest of the townsfolk hate you for the remainder of that playthrough. Upon arresting someone, your day ends and any remaining time is bled off the clock, a bit like a ten second runoff at the end of a half in an NFL game.

At the end of each day, you’ll be at the police station, a hub of sorts where you can request search warrants for locations you’ve previously visited, task your partner to fulfil extra jobs for you or submit items for forensic examination. You can also talk to a suspect you’ve detained, releasing them if you’re having second thoughts about their respective level of guilt.

Afterwards you’ll go to your motel, trigger a short animation, then a car journey back to Merrylin to begin anew. The cycle continues, your task being to piece together more of the puzzle as to who did away with the unfortunate victim.

Once you hit the end of the final day, if you don’t have a suspect in custody or you’ve arrested the wrong person, you’ll unlock the bad ending and find yourself starting the game from scratch. The end credits prompt you to put into action that which you’ve already learned, but annoyingly you’ll have needed to be taking notes or have a photographic memory to remember all that which you’ve previously discovered, since all the previous notes are scrubbed upon starting a new playthrough. We’d not blame you for using an FAQ as a recap at this juncture, we were tempted to.

At any rate, you’ll need to be thorough to find all the conversation topics and items by the time you reach the end of your playthrough, some only showing under very specific circumstances. While the storyline is fairly well written, we struggled a little in terms of staying particularly engaged, generally opting to do a couple of interrogations and calling it for the evening. As opposed to spending an extended period playing, we found that Mindcop is a game best snacked on.

After two completed playthroughs and working on our third, while we’re beginning to suspect who actually did it, we’ve yet to actually arrest them due to our arresting the wrong person faux pas early on in our second playthrough. You’re looking at a minimum of three playthroughs as we see it, just to get most of the trophies here, only we’re not actually sure our goodwill extends that far.

In conclusion, Mindcop is a fairly well-done whodunit game, though we found it hard to play for extended periods, it being best suited to short sessions. Some of the attempts at humour are mildly amusing, but others simply sail wider of the mark than a Justin Tucker field goal try.  We can’t help feel it’d be served better if the murderer was randomised somehow, but the linear storyline is the same every playthrough. We expect we’ll go back to finally get our prime suspect behind bars, but for now, we’re good.