Game of the Month #104 (September 2023) - Murder by Numbers

I'm still slowly slowly edging towards the end of the game.

The puzzles are doable, but I'm now on case 3 and there are just so many. I have to complete 5 or 6 to increase a rank which goes to show how many there will be in the whole case... I wish they would've continued the frequency of puzzles from case 1 and 2 because as I see on the forum quite a lot of people lose interest around case 3 (present company included).

I'm going to power on though. It's a relaxing way to start my work day to be honest.

I'm now rank D in case 3 (without hints and on normal difficulty), so I have quite a way to go in that particular case. The mystery is not really pulling me in and I don't necessarily like the characters but the puzzles are enjoyable enough.

I nominated this game and was playing it all last month, was chatting on the Discord about it but forgot to post my thoughts on the forums.

I enjoyed the game. I thought the story was somewhat bland, though the characters are very charming and there is some good writing for that.

I am not great at picross, so I am glad for the easy mode. I am able to make mistakes and still be able to finish the puzzles while having a lot of fun. The timed puzzles were a bit harder as easy mode does not remove the timer. I was able to complete all of them though, sometimes with less than 5 seconds remaining after the 4th try. These were probably my favorite type of puzzle in the game.

I didn't like how the pictures created by the puzzles were so obscure you could rarely figure out what the image was referring to.

But overall, I enjoyed my time and was glad I got to play it and complete it.

I just finished Murder by Numbers in 28h and 45m, ranking 3x S rank, 1x A rank.

I did 93% of all optional picross puzzles: 12/12 case 1, 17/17 case 2, 17/20 case 3 - because of hidden switch that I must have missed I was locked out of 3 and 18/20 case 4 - the last two I could only try after the end of the game and I tried them a few times, made mistakes and just threw in the towel. I'm done with the game.

This game is really huge. I wonder how many picross puzzles there are. Does anyone know? There are __69__ optional picross puzzels (the memory thingies) and they unlock whenever you reach a new rank. I assume you have to play at least 2 - but likely many more than that - before you reach a new rank. So that's __138__ picross puzzles AT LEAST to unlock all optional puzzles. Realistically I assume there's at least __180__ picross puzzles, plus the optional ones. Insane.

I didn't use any assists and found the difficulty alright. Although I had to reset quite a few puzzles because I made mistakes. An interesting thing about these puzzles is that you can make mistakes and never notice until the very end because everthing still seemingly falls perfectly into place and then you want to place the last 2-3 markers and realise that, yeah, reset it is.

The game was quite fun for me. It was the first time I did picross puzzles and I had a good time. The story was interesting to me but lost my interest during case 3 and during case 4 I just clicked the dialogues away as fast as I could.

I'm happy this got nominated, I would likely never have played Murder by Numbers otherwise (got it for free from EGS).

Now onto other games (this, sadly, is the forth (!) completion for me this year. Oh man)

Basically you can buy it on the IT expansion on PC Building Simulator. But its only a decoration for your office

Basically you can buy it on the IT expansion on PC Building Simulator. But its only a decoration for your office

When I first read your comment I thought this was unrelated spam (and almost reported you). But you are correct!