Tails Noir
Apr. 22nd, 2025 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catnessTails Noir is a point&click adventure game by EggNut. It starts as a noir detective story set in a city of anthropomorphic animals. Howard Lotor, a raccoon PI, is (true to genre) cynical, drinks too much and struggles to make ends meet. With a new case, things start to look promising, but then everything goes completely off the rails.
Good:
* Beautiful, incredibly detailed pixel art graphics, capturing the ambience of a dystopian urban environment.
* Tough, cynical, and suffering PIs are my favourite in games, even though in books I usually prefer geeky puzzle-solvers whose main, and often only, weapon is their intellect.
* All the characters are furries <3
* The first couple of chapters are exciting, with a real sense of urgency. Conversations aren't repetitive and replayable - if you say the wrong thing, that's it. But it's nice to discover that you can still solve every puzzle in alternative ways. I didn't need a walkthrough.
* There's a button that lets you switch between 2 languages instantly! Without going to the settings, changing the language and restarting the game. I didn't use it much, but it's super neat. I might replay the game someday for language immersion, at least the first half.
Bad:
* The game begins as a solid detective mystery, but changes the direction midway and evolves into some weird philosophical existential parable. I'm fine with deep philosophical themes, but here the shift is too abrupt, and the two halves don't really fit together.
* The 2nd half is tedious, almost no puzzles, just a lot of click-to-continue dialogue, visual novel-like. Some conversations seem to go on forever. The ending is vague and unsatisfying.
* Howard develops a condition that makes it very uncomfortable to keep looking at him on screen.
Overall:
3/5. Ironically, it could be 5/5 if it was unfinished... But the 2nd half just spoils the impression too much.
Good:
* Beautiful, incredibly detailed pixel art graphics, capturing the ambience of a dystopian urban environment.
* Tough, cynical, and suffering PIs are my favourite in games, even though in books I usually prefer geeky puzzle-solvers whose main, and often only, weapon is their intellect.
* All the characters are furries <3
* The first couple of chapters are exciting, with a real sense of urgency. Conversations aren't repetitive and replayable - if you say the wrong thing, that's it. But it's nice to discover that you can still solve every puzzle in alternative ways. I didn't need a walkthrough.
* There's a button that lets you switch between 2 languages instantly! Without going to the settings, changing the language and restarting the game. I didn't use it much, but it's super neat. I might replay the game someday for language immersion, at least the first half.
Bad:
* The game begins as a solid detective mystery, but changes the direction midway and evolves into some weird philosophical existential parable. I'm fine with deep philosophical themes, but here the shift is too abrupt, and the two halves don't really fit together.
* The 2nd half is tedious, almost no puzzles, just a lot of click-to-continue dialogue, visual novel-like. Some conversations seem to go on forever. The ending is vague and unsatisfying.
* Howard develops a condition that makes it very uncomfortable to keep looking at him on screen.
Overall:
3/5. Ironically, it could be 5/5 if it was unfinished... But the 2nd half just spoils the impression too much.
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