Get in loser, we're killing paradise

Fellow Traveler's 2020 masterpiece Paradise Killer bills itself as a "free form, open world first person exploration investigation game," which is a pretty wide ranging but specific word salad of genres that, at first glance, might seem like too much. Paradise Killer is a moreish game full to bursting with bombast, flair, and drama wrapped in a vaporwave aesthetic, all seasoned with a healthy dose of Lovecraftian gods and demons.

There's truly so much to love about this game that it stands out in my memory as one of the most creative and confident games I've ever played. I returned to it for the first time since my first post-release run, delighted by a new-to-me update that added a few new music tracks, some graphics enhancements, and Steam achievements to the mix. There's a new ghost fish that doles out a handful of fetch quests. But we'll get to that.

Controls and mechanics

Paradise Killer isn't a run-and-gun game, mostly a walk-and-talk. Conversations between characters progress in visual novel style dialogue segments, but there's a lot of commuting between points and people of interest. Island 24 is quite sizeable, meaning you'll have plenty of ground to cover if you want to find all the evidence or snag every pickup.

The open world is dripping with visual style, mixing 3D exploration and models with flat 2D sprites that turn toward you when you approach. Big banners throw themselves across the screen to signal interactions like conversations, pickups, and other points of interest in your investigation.

Accessibility options

There are a handful of accessibility options, including basic control remapping and a dyslexia-friendly font. To my joy, there are hold/toggle options for functions like sprint, AR mode, and meditation mode, as well as the ability to disable flickering lights, screenshake, rotating backgrounds. There are a handful of color correction options for colorblindness, too—definitely a blessing for colorblind players who want to be sure they're not missing any of Paradise Killer's constant bounty of Stuff To Look At.

Progress and saving

This game does not have an autosave, so you need to use save points in the form of save points that are scattered around the island. They're rather plentiful and also serve as respawn points if you take too deep a dive or just find yourself stuck—you can hold DOWN on the D-pad to force a manual respawn at the nearest pay phone.

Lady's friend and potential murder suspect Lydia Day Break can work like a fast travel system from the pay phones, but because the island is ending, the phone systems are deactivated. Getting more phones up and running is part of both exploration and unlocking points for Lydia to ferry you around. She'll charge you a Blood Crystal, the island's form of currency, for every pickup.

Narrative hardware

Setting: Vaporwave Lovecraft

The world of Paradise Killer takes place outside of reality. Island Sequence 24, where the game takes place, is a pocket reality situated within an alternate-future-history in which alien gods came to our real world and did battle with humans. One of these gods, the Silent Goat, was captured and used the last of his power to bestow blessings of immortality and reality-warping power upon his followers, now known as the Syndicate. They remain loyal followers in spite of the fact that many of these gods have been killed by humans—the Great Betrayal, as the Syndicate calls it. The gods' bodies remain in the real world, usually guarded by these anti-god humans as a sort of insurance policy: it's possible to revive or restore a god through worship, which is precisely what the Syndicate is trying to do.

The central governing body of the Island Sequences is known only as the Council, made up of members of the Syndicate who aim to use the Island Sequences to create Paradise and bring back the dead gods. The Council's chosen method of achieving this involves kidnapping people from the real world as "Citizens" (read: slaves) and forcing them to worship these gods by way of bloodletting, prayer energy, and—at the end of an island's life—human sacrifice.

The first ten minutes: Paradise has been killed!

The game begins with protagonist Lady Love Dies unexpectedly getting a reprieve from her eternal exile, where she's been for over 3 million days (that's on the order of 8,200 years!). The god Damned Harmony endangered the Syndicate by deceiving Lady Love Dies on the 13th Island Sequence, resulting in her permanent exile from the island. Deception by a god is an intriguing component of worldbuilding that the Syndicate describes as a crime and Lady herself later describes as a victimization: being deceived by a god means being brainwashed or psychically manipulated into thinking that doing a god's will is the right move.

In her gloriously decadent exile zone, a demon named Shinji shows up to tell Lady the good news. Shinji's appearance is itself a mystery, since demons are supposed to have been exterminated from the island. The Lovecraftian angle of Paradise Killer's mythos adds a layer of bitter dread to the otherwise colorful landscape. Gods and demons are uncomfortably close in presentation and purpose, and their influence over the people of the Syndicate (and the Island Sequences as a whole) is undeniable.

But never mind all that mythical nonsense, there's a murder to solve! Multiple murders, in fact! It's The Crime to End All Crimes! Touching down on the ground of Island 24 to talk to Lady's pal Lydia tells us more about the devastating event that forced Judge to break "the Investigation Freak's" millennia-long exile.

The 24th Island Sequence's entire Council had gotten together to create the new island (Perfect 25), which sounds like a gorgeous window of opportunity for anyone wanting a clean sweep. A demon-possessed Citizen by the name of Henry Division has already been apprehended, but any genre savvy player of investigation sims is likely to think as I did: Henry must be the fall guy, framed by someone else. Unfortunately, poor Henry was found with the knife in his hand and the blood of the Council in his stomach, so it's not looking great for him. But because the crime scene is locked up by Holy Seals openable only to the island's leaders, no one has been able to get in and assess the damage. No eyewitnesses. No other evidence. No corpses, even. This Island has no investigators, and hasn't since Lady's exile.

It's up to Lady to figure out how the murderer got in. As she points out, how do you know the Council are dead if no one can get in there? It's a logical conclusion based on what little evidence was on Henry's person, but it's up to Lady to find—or create—the full truth.

As a seasoned Ace-Attorney-ologist and visual novel gamer, I'm already poking holes wherever I can. How are we determining the time of death? Do you really expect me to believe that Henry Division escaped from the far-off, isolated Desolation Cell and got into the Council chambers in 8 minutes, killed the entire Council, and was found by Grand Marshal Akiko 14 just 3 minutes later? I think not! My investigator's sense is tingling! And it will continue to tingle as more and more of the plot becomes clear.

The first hour: Story on-ramping

This is one of the most confidently presented games I've ever played. The on-ramp is short and fuels the player through the opening with a LOT of information, which is presented in less of an "as you know" style and more of a "come on, keep up" angle. It's clear Lady Love Dies knows who all these people are—her internal grasp of the power structures and social hierarchies at work on the island are rusty, but foundationally sound. We the players are hearing about Architect Carmelina Silence for the very first time when Lady asks Judge why Carmelina was given authority. Lady points out that the law would typically forbid Carmelina from serving on the Council, and Judge makes an oblique reference to something Carmelina's father did in the past. It's seeding something the player might want to find more information about, and at the same time establishing a world history that feels like it reaches farther back than the player can see.

There are similar instances of worldbuilding-in-casual-conversation throughout the game, all using Lady's preexisting knowledge of the world and repackaging it as exposition for unfamiliar readers. She can rekindle old relationships with her friends or remain standoffish as the player likes, which I found kneecapped my experience of the characters. They remain largely static and display only a little change between first meeting them and fully befriending them, should the player choose to do so. Since they all have to remain open to any of the many possibilities Lady can find for justice, I think it might have been too difficult to convey a specific story about any of them within the context of the investigation. Discussions with the Syndicate largely consist of reminiscing about the past, giving the story a feeling of being stuck in a vacuum. Which, to be fair, is actually true: these people haven't seen reality in millennia.

The full game is an exercise in dosing out exposition so as not to overwhelm players, aided by the fact that genre expectations for investigation games are generally pretty exposition-heavy. For my money, it feels like the on-ramp is a speedy one without feeling wholly overwhelming. Sure, it's a lot to hold, but I think the game is just trying to get you out into the open world as quickly as possible.

Gameplay

Navigation: Getting around Island 24

After finishing up with Judge, you're free to just... go. Wherever you want. As long as you can walk there, that is. The island itself will take a lot of time to thoroughly explore, given the verticality of zones like the Opulent Ziggurat and the apartment buildings in the Citizen Housing district. On top of that, there's all sorts of goodies to pick up and add to your collection, both relevant to your case and just for fun. Spotting pickups is easy, too, given their stark yellow highlights in the 3D world.

If there's something interesting to look at or pick up in my immediate vicinity in an open world game, you can reliably bet money on me blowing off my current task to wander over and check it out. I am easily led around because I have no sense of direction and love to explore, two aspects of adventuring that often contribute to me getting so lost that not even a guide can save me. Unfortunately, it's very easy to get lost in the early stages of Paradise Killer before you know your way around. If you know me, you know this means I was getting lost for roughly ten hours before I started recognizing how zones intersected.

It doesn't help that the map in Paradise Killer is, in my humble opinion, abysmal. The whole island is rendered as a bird's eye view of points of interest with no means of zooming in or picking out paths between them. Because there's significant amounts of vertical exploration involved in Paradise Killer (think jump puzzles and skyscrapers) I feel like this map is borderline useless, anyway. This was my biggest obstacle in my first run: I had no objective view of how areas intersected or how I could get from one place to the next. The HUD does not contain a compass, and neither does Starlight's AR mode. At least AR mode helpfully indicates the locations of NPCs in terms of distance, but that's only so helpful in the initial stage of the game when you're unsure of where anything is, relative to you or anything else.

There's no way to summon Lydia from the map or direct yourself to the nearest pay phone outside of respawning. If you don't remember where the closest phone is, your only choices are to wander until you find one or force a respawn. Not to mention, both the initial unlock and every subsequent trip at a pay phone costs a Blood Crystal. If you enjoy wandering, you'll be doing plenty of it. If you don't, you might grow to resent the commute as much as I did.

Traversal: Sniffing out clues will involve platforming

On the subject of travel, just getting around in the beginning is a huge pain. Fresh out of exile, Lady has a rather anemic jump, which makes true off-roading challenging even in a game without fall damage. There's no guarantee that you'll be able to get back where you were if you choose to leap off a staircase into the unpaved wilderness. But as any detective knows, all the good stuff a case can live or die on won't be on the beaten path, so there's a push and pull between fully, safely exploring a location and taking a leap of faith toward something interesting.

Buddy, I see you out there. But it's gonna be so annoying to go there and try to get back to where I am.

Finding a footbath near the Moon Shrine in the Citizen Apartments unlocks an Air Dash, which I find equal parts clumsy and helpful. I accidentally threw myself off of more buildings than I care to count in pursuit of a devilishly placed pickup. Another footbath near the Mountain Gorge unlocks a Double Jump. A third isn't exactly move tech, but unlocks a Meditation ability that briefly highlights missed pickups, vending machines, Shinji conversations, and similar. These footbaths all cost 5 Blood Crystals each and don't give any indication of purpose until after you've paid for them. I completely skipped them for an embarrassing majority of my first playthrough because I was scared to spend money. On which note...

Economy: Blood (Crystals) from a stone

I'm one of those players that hoards stuff out of fear. I live in fear of not having "enough." Maybe that says something about how I was raised. Wherever it came from, it rears its head in every game with spendable currency or usable items. The fact that fast travel costs a Blood Crystal every time you want to move between unlocked pay phones means I did it a grand total of three times during my entire 16 hours of playtime (once to test it, once to get to the isolated Paradise Gates, and once more to get back to the mainland). Even though I spent the Blood Crystal every time I found a new pay phone to unlock, I was treating them more like an emergency exit than a piece of critical transport infrastructure. Since there's no way to "make" money in the game (Shinji has scattered a finite amount of crystals all around the island for you as pickups) I was terrified of running out. If I picked up all the pickups, there would be no "chop wood" part time job for me to pocket a couple more emergency crystals without having to personally find them.

My concerns are somewhat justified. My platinum playthrough, completed out of stubbornness, suggests that the total number of crystals on the island is significantly larger than the minimum number required to unlock all the secrets and buy all the upgrades. That said, Blood Crystals are sometimes hidden in weird places. If you don't want to explore, or forget about a crystal you saw but didn't pick up for whatever reason, it's totally possible to miss some. Outside of the Meditation ability, there's no tracking your progress with a "XX/YY Crystals Obtained" counter or similar. Meditation also doesn't distinguish between plot-related pickups and the various flavors of other pickups, which include Blood Crystals, bottles of whisky, vending machines you have yet to buy something from, and other miscellaneous items.

Y'know. Miscellany.

It's difficult to judge the push/pull of Paradise Killer's economy in terms of "mandatory" purchases because strictly speaking, nothing is mandatory. For example, there are three available upgrades for Starlight, each of which unlocks a new "language" of puzzle for you to solve. One of them is locked behind a small fetch quest puzzle and the other two are locked behind money, but you don't need any of them to get an ending. How much you want to explore is up to how hard you want to work as a player and an investigator. Personally, I don't find traversal and pickup hunting all that fun. For me, going off the beaten path is fun for investigation's sake, but not for moneymaking.

(That said, I did platinum the game and clear out all the pickups on my most recent run. It does get very finicky and I didn't enjoy it all. But if you're motivated by pickups, you'll find a lot to love.)

Pickups: Echolocate your next paycheck

While exploring the world, you may hear the grating noise of a scrambly cassette tape/audio snow, which you'll quickly realize means that a pickup is nearby. On top of that, there's a neat little mechanic in the form of a sort of cursor box that visually highlights pickups even from far away, just as they highlight characters when they talk in the VN-style screens. Interestingly, instead of individual sprites for every piece of evidence in the overworld, there are mosaic-blur-style squares that obscure what the item actually is. You have to grab it for Lady to examine and describe it, at which point the item is squirreled away in Starlight's borderline-omniscient notetaking.

The item's appearance generally doesn't really matter. You won't be examining things in 3D like in Ace Attorney or other games where finding a splotch of blood inside a shoe is critical to your case. No, it's what the evidence means that matters, which is why it's so important to grab everything you can and keep it organized.

You won't be pixel-hunting through every drawer and box in a room. Almost everything that can be interacted with or picked up will be very clearly indicated by the UI. If a piece of evidence is not a pickup, all you need to do is get close enough for the cursor box to pop up and let you take a closer look, which is enough for Starlight to dash off a new note for you.

Evidence isn't the only thing with audio cues. Shinji (hyena laughter), phones (ringtone), computers (startup noise), radio towers (radar waves), and other similar interactables have audio cues that can guide you closer. Wearing headphones or earbuds can help you triangulate them further. I've always loved games that let me follow a sound to a goal.

Quest log: Staying organized with Starlight

So, here's a neat bit of housekeeping that I think more games should have. Starlight's evidence assignment showing its path every time is a toggle—you can opt to only see it the first time you grab a piece of evidence, or every time—but personally, I turned it on for everything. Starlight shows you what is essentially the file path of where she categorizes evidence. Within Starlight, there are folders for each suspect as well as for each crime you come across, as well as a folder for evidence Starlight can't figure out how to categorize.

Starlight also keeps a running list of notes and leads, in case you'd like prompting about what to do or look for next and aren't content to simply blunder around like I am. Starlight and Lady collectively turn discovered evidence into questions: picking up a letter from K. HX adds a note under the "K. HX is Missing" header asking, "Does Crimson know anything about K. HX's whereabouts?" as well as points about the evidence itself.

(Why yes, Bear-Chan is my favorite Starlight skin!)

While Starlight's native folder system is helpful in terms of keeping all your information roughly grouped according to subject, Starlight doesn't go as far as solving any sort of Clue-style "Suspect + Evidence = Crime" equation for you. It's still on you to figure out how all of this evidence interweaves or what it means for an individual's responsibility in a given situation. Does K. HX's letter to Crimson Acid truly implicate her, or was there something else going on? Who's responsible for the drag marks outside K. HX's workshop?

I think this is a stylish way to keep Paradise Killer's veritable onslaught of information both digestible and organized. This game throws reams of information at you right from the start and, to put it lightly, it's not all that concerned with whether or not you know what to do with it. Paradise Killer wants you to work out the mystery for yourself by ensuring you have all the information about what you find. Having Starlight around to keep Lady organized is a godsend, to be sure.

Other pickups: Relics, tapes, and more

Backstory and worldbuilding sometimes come in the form of relics, which are indicated as pickups in the open world. They don't help you make progress toward solving the crimes, but they frequently give background on Lady, the islands, and other greater-scope problems than what Lady's focused on right now. I won't call it "elegant," since I think it's a shame that a lot of the worldbuilding post-intro comes through relics rather than storytelling, but I do think it's interesting. It's in keeping with the story's presentation as a continuation of Lady's story instead of the first book in a series. It feels much more like stepping into a segment of Lady's life that isn't her first rodeo, with enough on-ramping that players can still keep up. Sufficiently dedicated players can seek out these additional tidbits for fun and glory, given the handful of pickup-related achievements.

Of particular note are the whisky bottle pickups, which give the player a glimpse of conversations taking place between two unnamed characters who are already on Perfect 25. These snippets of conversation range from mundane musings about work to more pointed observations about Lady's case, making one wonder whether these discussions are happening alongside Lady's investigation or afterward, once she's made it to 25 herself and told the tale.

Another mechanic that I quite like is the diegetic method by which players unlock more of the actual soundtrack: tapes are scattered around the island in loudspeakers, which you can pick up to add to Starlight's music library. Paradise Killer's soundtrack is a truly, excellently produced vaporwave album by Barry "Epoch" Topping that I love to death. Both the original soundtrack and the post-release B-sides are worth buying for real. But if you're too cheap for that and/or love exploring for pickups, you can make your own playlists with songs you've found or just vibe with whatever the island radio serves up. I love that you can adjust the volume and track order to your liking. It feels so much like setting up your perfect little commute playlist while you're heading out to travel across the island and tackle all the leads Starlight has lined up for you.

Puzzles: Fetch questing with extra steps

There's a few puzzles for Lady to solve in the 24th island sequence. They're usually quite short and location-based: there's a crane puzzle in the warehouse zone that presents you with five switches and no indication of how they make the crane move, leaving you to figure out how to empty a boat by yourself. Other, broader questlines test your exploration skills or knowledge about the island: crests of various colors can be found scattered around the island and slotted in to statues that provide rewards after enough crests have been placed. The rewards are usually a relic or a blood crystal—so, lore or money.

There are no true quest markers for pickup-oriented puzzles like the color-based crests that are hidden around the environment. With the Meditation power, you can see locations where you've got something left to do, but there's no distinguishing between them. Everything is marked with the same heart icon, no matter what it is.

The game's subpar map system definitely added to my fetch questing frustration. Finding a location again was extremely difficult for me without an ability to place a waypoint or refer to a more detailed map. I knew a point of interest was on a skyscraper, but which one? If the game didn't see fit to put it on my AR overlay, it was all to easy to forget about it completely.

A particular favorite puzzle type of mine was the Nightmare Computer interface, which presents itself as a series of images assembled from distinct parts. Lady can use Starlight's interface to "hack" the Nightmare Computers by picking out the different parts that make up the whole.

Although most inhabitants of Island 24 have already left for Perfect 25 by the time Lady arrives on the scene, there are plenty of notable people to chat with. Shinji is a constant presence, sure, and you have no shortage of suspects to grill for info. But there is a hidden god somewhere on the island (click for a spoilery peek) who can give you critical information, and at the top of a skyscraper is a ghost fish named Mika who asks for specific memories or mementos as a sort of side quest. Their first quest asked Lady to tell them about where on the island people could play dominos, meaning I'd have to track down a specific domino memento. There's no way to fine-tune your Meditation or AR views to this level of specificity. I only completed the fish quests because I cleaned out every pickup and interactable that showed up in my Meditation mode.

Narrative software

Story: Where's the fun in following the rules every time?

Tip: We're entering mega-spoiler territory, and Paradise Killer is a mystery game. I've got spoiler tags on, but if you're interested in unraveling The Crime to End All Crimes yourself, your best bet to avoid serious plot spoilers is to dip out here and come back later. This post isn't going anywhere.

Because this was my second true playthrough, I made a decent effort to try to break the game. If this was a truly open world, open ended, all-up-to-you murder mystery, what would happen if I found the murderer before even visiting the crime scene? Which I did! I picked up Sam's pile bunker gauntlets (a Plot Coupon to break into Carmelina's vault) and said hello to Dainonigate before such basic actions as checking out the crime scene (or trying to), investigating the bodies of the marshals guarding it, or even talking to Witness to the End. I found that investigation dialogue and text from Lady and Starlight were ready to meet me where I was by recontextualizing the crime scene and other critical clues in terms of what I already knew about these spoilery bits.

This is a game that assumes a level of proficiency and familiarity with the murder mystery genre. There's no explanation of what a "perfect knife" is or why a DNA sample from a given character would contain traces of their parents' DNA as well. Part of Paradise Killer's confidence is in you, the player: you're here for a novel experience in well-trodden genre territory. What would be the point in showing you every shrub along the way when there's a dead Killer Demon to be looked at?

I did find Starlight's categorization and auto-organization to be extremely helpful, making logical leaps for me based on information she already knew I had gathered. I'd actually forgotten that the Dead Zone's hidden bunker was locked to everyone but Witness and Carmelina, but finding Dead Zone residue on the killer demon's containment crate in the carnage of the Council chambers gave me—and Starlight—enough evidence to connect the crate to Witness.

It doesn't escape my notice that Starlight didn't throw any blame toward Carmelina or reserve judgment on who might be responsible. Was it that Lady had already assigned blame for Dainonigate to Carmelina and assumed that Witness's work with the demon was a separate conspiracy? And if so, I'm a little bummed that it did that. Untangling all the separate conspiracies and plans is part of the fun in Paradise Killer. I get that Starlight can only spin things so many ways in a game that is decidedly not omniscient, especially when it comes to what a player is thinking. But for a first-ish crack at a truly open murder mystery, it's stunningly capable. I'd bet money that Starlight's gentle nudges via categorization are more than enough to impress a player on their first run.

The dreaded saggy middle

Paradise Killer struggles with the same thing I think drags down Return of the Obra Dinn in the middle: there's a lot of hunting down small details, slowed down by the fact that you've got a commute between each one. With Paradise Killer, I found there came a point when I had more or less all the physical evidence, leaving little more than traveling in a loop around the island to constantly interview witnesses and suspects about new pieces of information I learned from other interviews. I found it frustrating that each suspect can be asked about the same information, even if it's blatantly clear they don't know anything. Even though the cast is on the small side, the tedium of clicking through a list of, "Do you know where [Character] was last night?" with every suspect wore me down after my twentieth response to the tune of, "I don't know, have you asked them?" On the one hand, this adds a sense of verisimilitude to the investigation: you've got to confirm what everyone knows (or says they know) before you can get down to the real bulk of it. On the other hand, it makes for a slightly frustrating gaming experience that feels more like ticking off checkboxes than actually interviewing suspects.

I found there wasn't much in the way of catharsis when catching someone in a lie, either. If you're expecting epic breakdowns, you'll need to wait for court (and even then, you may feel slightly let down: for all their epic personalities, there are no special sprites or animations for taking a character down). Suspects are far more likely to double down, deflect, or insist that Lady is wrong. Judging each character's... well, character, is on you as an investigator. Lady will sometimes offer feedback on whether she believes someone's story, but otherwise doesn't give much of an indicator of how she feels about people lying or being lied about. There are many ways to build a case, and it's clear that the game isn't interested in trying to influence you one way or another when it comes to what you ultimately present in the trials.

A rather significant portion of critical evidence can only be found by "hanging out" with the suspects. In addition to grilling them about alibis or rumors from other suspects, Lady can have normal, non-investigative conversations with the people she used to know. Growing closer to the Syndicate members makes them a bit more likely to tell you tasty tidbits that can help you make or break a case. Narratively, I was reveling in the petty drama and disputes between these entitled immortals all stabbing each other in the back by airing dirty secrets and spreading gossip. Mechanically, I started getting frustrated by the "come back later" message that follows up every hangout that prevents you from sprinting through the entire friendship in one go. My guess is that this is meant to encourage players to hang out, go off and do a bit of investigating, and truly come back later once they've found new reasons to talk to someone.

Your subjective experience with Paradise Killer is, really and truly, built of your own design. If you're so motivated by pickups that you ignore character interactions until the last possible moment, even when faced with evidence that Lady wants clarification about, you may find you've accidentally left yourself nothing to do in between grabbing drinks at the bar and going for drives. On the other hand, if you try to rush character interactions, you may find more obstacles that encourage you to broaden the scope of your investigation.

And of course, all of this is capped off by the fact that you can end the game at any time. Whenever you decide you're done, you can go to the Courthouse and just wrap it up, regardless of whether you've found it all. I was stubborn enough not to leave until I'd personally walked every inch of Island 24 and found everything there was to find. If you hit a wall of tedium or boredom, you may find yourself dipping out early. It's up to you to gauge how willing you are to push on with an investigation that may or may not have anything else to show you. How confident are you in the truths you've found? Are you ok with possibly missing a critical piece of damning or exonerating evidence by ditching the island now?

Aboutness

Where do you find justice?

Paradise Killer unexpectedly hits on themes of classism, corruption, and the relentless pursuit of perfection in ways that reverberate throughout this magenta-Lovecraft story. Citizens are kidnapped and forced into a hyper-religious society against their will. They have prayer quotas to fill. Their entire lives are spent working toward Syndicate and Council goals of resurrecting gods, up to and including total human sacrifice when the Island Sequences progress: Citizens don't get to move between islands. Why would the Syndicate spend the resources on them?

Class struggle is a bloody thing

I find the game's general approach toward power intriguing, especially when combined with the charismatic cast of characters. The Island Sequences are run by people who are don't seem like bad people on the surface—they're Lady's old friends and colleagues, people she's known for literal millennia. But these amiable personae make it easy to overlook the grim realities of the island: the pursuit of Paradise is only made possible by the Syndicate kidnapping thousands of people and using them as forced labor, prayer fodder, and human sacrifice.

Friendliness becomes an easy shortcut past the crime. Lady's friends are more than willing to lie to her face with a smile and play on their past friendship as a way to potentially deflect Lady's investigative instincts. Your best friend wouldn't kill a guy, would she? Your favorite bartender wouldn't topple a government, right?

This is even further exemplified by the character who has the most reason to hate the Syndicate: Henry Division, the man who's already been imprisoned for the crime. Henry has no such charm or nostalgia on his side. Moreover, he has nothing to lose, so his dialogue is usually peppered with a healthy dose of swears as he rails against the system the only way he can. It doesn't escape my notice that Henry is the only one who will tell you as much truth as he can, even if he insults Lady as he does it.

Henry's the outlier among those still on the 24th Island Sequence. He's a Citizen while everyone else Lady can speak to is an immortal Syndicate member. At the peak of the class hierarchy, they've got it all, complete with ivory towers and immortal youth. Henry, though, was born into a life of worshipping gods he has no loyalty to, working to build monuments he has no investment in, and an ultimate fate of being sacrificed at the whims of the higher ups. The only meaningful choices Lady can make for him boil down to whether or not she kills him before the island ends. Even fully exonerating Henry from the crimes does nothing to change his fate: as a Citizen, he can't move on to the next island. There is nothing waiting for him outside the Desolation Cell. While it's easy to root for Henry as a sort of underdog in Paradise Killer's high-stakes political shenaniganry, there's no redemption or peace. Is exonerating him the true form of justice?

Disorienting the player with a delicious array of liars, cheats, and people who are more than willing to stab others in the back is part and parcel of the Paradise Killer experience. Getting sucked in by a shirtless hottie, wistfully reminiscing about the good old days, and throwing the rude convict under the bus are all easy moves to make, especially in a game that, depending on your personal path, can run quite short on catharsis factor. And since befriending characters can lead to some tasty bits of gossip that sometimes turn into leads, you've got some incentive to grow closer to them. Can you stay impartial? Do you even want to? Are you a bad investigator if you don't, or if you do?

Acceptable losses in pursuit of perfection

The Syndicate, as is common with the millennia-old character archetype, appear to have lost touch with humanity in ways made all the more disturbing by their die-hard worship of the dead gods. They've tried to make a true paradise 25 times now by way of mass enslavement and suffering, but are still having a hard time understanding why it's not working. While they live in their beautiful towers of white marble and gold, they bicker amongst themselves over power and acceptable losses in pursuit of this hypothetical "perfect" place, glossing over the glaringly obvious cracks. Everyone's general willingness to let Henry go down hints at how they don't believe his life is of similar value to their own, but that's easy stuff. What if we dig deeper?

Take Sam and Lydia Day Break. They can come across as a tragic romance: two people who are still deeply in love after thousands of years together, one of whom even refused to die out of love and has spent his immortal life as a skeleton to stay with his beloved. The revelation that the Day Breaks are bored of eternal immortality and want to return to explore the real world, where there are risks and danger and newness, is one thing. The knowledge that they used to be career assassins whose final job before retirement was a total, violent regime change is another. As old friends of Lady's, the Day Breaks are perfectly positioned to lie to her face and remain loyal only to each other, regardless of their culpability. Whether or not they held the murder weapon or are directly responsible for murdering anyone in The Crime to End All Crimes, does it make it better or worse that they only want to leave because they're bored, not because they have any objection to what the Syndicate is doing?

The pursuit of perfection remains just out of reach for everyone. The Day Breaks will never get what they want from a Syndicate that still needs them around. Yuri is a Citizen class traitor who was blessed with screaming hotness and physical perfection practically overnight, but his dedication to recovering the body of his favored god still falls on deaf ears even now that he's become part of the Syndicate. Doctor Doom Jazz may be innocent of the most murdery crimes, but he's had a hand in covering up several illegal acts among the Syndicate purely in the name of friendship. The hyper-abrasive and foul-mouthed Grand Marshal Akiko 14 has a surprising depth of love in her illegal relationships with underlings, but she's powerless to do anything to stop their deaths at the end of every island. Carmelina's professional and occasionally affable nature smokescreens her decades-long plot to overthrow a government that shortchanges her for the sins of her father, all of which takes place in the context of how the Islands are made and who benefits the most from their continued creation. The Syndicate no longer sees the Citizens as people, if they ever did. They have firmly aligned themselves with a vision of utopia that is worth any and every means, even though they're no closer to achieving it than they were 24 cycles ago.

Facts, truth, and justice: How clean are you?

A recurring theme for Lady—and one that her voice lines will often touch on—is whether a fact is a truth. Wrapped up in this is the inherent question of justice. After all, Lady is effectively pulling double duty as a detective and a prosecutor: the trials at the end of the game are where she builds a case from what she's found. In the trials, you can spin a case almost any way you want. If you have sufficient evidence and if you're so inclined, you can be just as effective at framing people as the island's real conspirators are. It's not Judge's job to think, just to judge, and they can only judge what you see fit to present them.

The intriguing thing about Paradise Killer is that it's really, truly up to you how far down a particular rabbit hole you feel like going. You as the player are free to stop at any point, whether it's because you feel like you've found everything or because you feel like you've found enough. You can totally just throw Henry Division under the bus without investigating a single thing if you feel like it. There is, in fact, an achievement for doing just that: speedrun the game by touching down, completing the trial, and ditching what remains of the 24th Island Sequence in under 10 minutes for the "Accelerated Justice" Steam achievement.

This also means that, if you're particularly invested in a certain character's fate and want to make sure they survive/definitely don't survive unscathed, you can probably do that. You aren't the law—that's Judge—but you're the one presenting everything to them. If you wanted to make a case that depends on not bringing something up, that's your prerogative. If you wanted to skip parts of an investigation entirely, there's not a thing Judge can do to stop you. They can only pronounce judgment based on the facts you give. You decide what truths you pull from the facts you find, and weaving that story for Judge determines the fate of everyone remaining on the island.

You're told early on that all punishments for the crimes you investigate is death, which brings Paradise Killer squarely into a discussion of punitive justice and retribution. If You the Player know that all crimes will be punished with death, do you feel comfortable accusing anyone of a crime? Are there some crimes deserving of mercy? And if so, what's your next move? Are you willing to use a bloody system of justice to get rid of people you don't like? What about people you think don't deserve to go free, regardless of how guilty you can prove them to be? How you will frame them? How hard will you work to bring out all the facts? And if you find all the facts, will you share them all?

Paradise Killer is a largely open-ended murder mystery, but there is a "right" answer, regardless of whether or not you find it. There is plenty of evidence that can be logically connected to tell a full, complete story of what happened the night the Council was murdered. The method by which you carry out your investigation does nothing to change these material facts, so you're never going to hit on a story that exonerates everyone equally, and you're never given a chance to fabricate evidence or testimony. Most interestingly, if you build a strong enough case to frame certain characters of certain crimes that they did not actually commit, they may refuse to take the fall and instead throw the true culprit under the bus, leading to some rather interesting combinations of convictions (click these links for spoiler images).

This push and pull between being the final arbiter of truth and still being bound by the facts fascinates me. You have tremendous power to silence dissent, especially if you've got evidence to back yourself up. You can tell the stories of these crimes in many different ways. We've all heard the adage about history being written by the victors, right? What message is the Syndicate sending by letting Lady out of exile to not only close the book on The Crime to End All Crimes, but also retake her former position as the head investigator of the Paradise Psycho Unit after it's all said and done? Lady's the real winner here, no matter who comes out clean in the trial.

So, I'd describe the experience of Paradise Killer as less "tabletop improv" and more "escape room." It's the same experience every time, built out of the same components, but you can choose to focus on, use, and/or ignore whatever you choose in a given run. You can play Lady as a crusader for justice, a self-interested woman out for herself, a nostalgic protector of her old friends, a career investigator worn down by corruption, and everything in between. Your choices in dialogue shape Lady's attitude, but not her conclusions. Those are up to you, and even then, you may find yourself pulled back toward a truth you were trying to ignore.

What really kills me is that no one, not even Lady, ever meaningfully questions Judge. What justice is there in a system that is completely ready and willing to adhere to a caste system that privileges a select few at the cost of thousands of others? There's a sort of bitter truth to Judge's claim of true, ego-less impartiality: Lady can indeed influence them to think whatever she wants them to think. Judge will only ever know what you want them to know, and Judge trusts Lady to be just as impartial and objective in her observations. Using Judge like a tool toward your own ends is not only easy, it's encouraged by the design of the game. How are you going to execute justice?

Game taxonomy breakdowns

Tip: Not sure what this is? Check out my game taxonomy breakdown here.

Flinn's Star Points Chart: Paradise Killer

Narrative: 7.5/10. It may not feel like it, but I've barely scratched the surface here. I didn't even mention the drama with Lady's exes or wax poetic about the hot goat lady. There's SO much to untangle in this game, but I found that the story gets a tiny bit lost in commuting between points of interest and pickup hunting. The freedom to decide your truth and the ending you believe in is quite robust and novel. For players invested in tracking down every last piece of evidence, a layered experience of mystery and conspiracy awaits. What intrigues me is that just as much of the narrative is left for the player to experience independent of the game—you're meant to draw conclusions and make connections about some pieces of evidence on your own, with no input or guidance from the game. I do think the many branches and possibilities come at the cost of more detailed or meaningful character growth and interactions, though. It's difficult to tell a specific narrative about characters who grow and change when you're also trying to create an open-ended experience that players can shape independently.

Gameplay: 7/10. The bulk of the actual time spent playing the game is tied to the exploration. You're walking around, picking up/looking at objects, and talking to people. You can make some dialogue choices that add some flavor to Lady's character in the moment, but not so much that there is noticeable growth in her as a person. In something of a departure for the genre, you don't personally present evidence to contradict claims directly to people, except during the trial at the end—Lady and Starlight pretty much take over from the moment you launch an accusation, but it's up to you whether or not you want to present something specific or ignore it. All the experiences of mystery-solving are on rails—it's just a matter of which rails, which I think detracts a bit from the experience. There are few, if any, last-minute revelations that force you to think on your feet. In terms of gameplay and story integration, it's very straightforward and perfectly cromulent: Someone makes a claim. You go to a location or another person to confirm it, or learn that you've been lied to. You chase down these leads by walking to places and interacting.

Style: 10/10. This game oozes with confidence and flair. This is a game that knows what it is. Its presentation will drown you in vaporwave and it is incandescently clear that this game knows it has succeeded in achieving its aesthetic. I have a particular soft spot for the word-salad naming conventions that LLMs can only choke on, creating a world where names like Lady Love Dies, Witness to the End, Crying Grudge, and Eyes Kiwami all coexist. The character art features a diverse cast of equal opportunity eye candy who seem to have wildly different understandings of clothing's true purpose or function. Not to mention, the soundtrack is so good, I put the title song on my wedding playlist. Definitely don't sleep on this if you're looking for flair.

Innovation: 6/10. The attempt at a truly open-world murder mystery is extremely admirable. The freedom to bail your faves out of harm's way, murder the entire island and escape alone, or stick as closely as you think you can to an "objective" truth makes for interesting ways to spin the same pieces of evidence toward different conclusions. The evidence, though, is always the same, and the story never strays too far from these rails. If you can't back up a claim, you can't land a "guilty" verdict, and sometimes your chosen accused will simply throw the true (or truer) culprit under the bus, taking that power out of your hands anyway. While I think Paradise Killer doesn't fully achieve what it set out to do, what it did achieve is a damn fine game that pushes the boundaries of what an investigation-oriented game can do.

Satisfaction: 9/10. Outside of the commute becoming a bit of a slog in the back half of the playtime, the story is exciting and the feel of unraveling it for yourself is a brilliantly fun time. I think the game's replay value sits in a sweet spot of years rather than months. Give yourself time to forget the twists of the tale and come back purely because you remember the flavor of the experience.

Tetris-Higurashi Rating Scale: Paradise Killer

I give Paradise Killer a +3 on the Tetris-Higurashi scale. While I think the story is far and away the primary selling point, it's hard to ignore just how much time is spent traveling between locations. The novel gameplay mechanics of building a case your own way and swaying the outcome of the trial in whatever way you think is best makes for a captivating gameplay experience that encourages replaying, if only to see how different stories and accusations change the final outcome. Come to the 24th Island Sequence to unravel the secrets of an impossible mass murder, but stay to track down every last drink on the map, vibe to the incredible soundtrack, and replay the trial a dozen different ways to see how far Lady Love Dies can stretch the definition of "executing justice."

Flinn's Faves: Rapid-Fire Roundup

Favorite character: Shinji, my beloved anarcho-chaos bean who can be neither contained nor understood. I will miss seeing him flipping birds in the distance and cackling like a maniac.

Favorite music track: Unlimited∞Luv, added by the update alongside a few other B-side tracks by the original composer. I filled my playlist solely with this song's eminently danceable beats and sexy saxophone during the back half of my playtime in this run.

Favorite location: Witness's apartment. Not only is it full of plants, it's a great bit of high ground from which you can see most of the map and leap fearlessly toward your next destination.

Favorite item: The Elusive Chocolate. Totally worth it, especially since it ended up being the very last drink I needed to complete my collection.

Favorite trial outcome: Getting everyone a guilty verdict, but managing to secure the dead Killer Demon an all-clear for release. The character in question is already dead, so it's not like anyone's getting away with anything (click for a spoiler image).

Flinn played Paradise Killer on PC via Steam. The game is also available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox One/X/S.

Paradise Killer on Steam

Paradise Island, a world outside reality. There’s been a murder that only "investigation freak" Lady Love Dies can solve. Gather evidence and interrogate suspects in this open world adventure. You can accuse anyone, but you’ll have to prove your case in trial. It’s up to you to decide who’s guilty.

STEAM