The Painscreek Killings Review

There lies an empty town that hides secrets, the biggest of them is the death of Vivian Roberts. You are a journalist who has been sent to comb through the town to see if you can finally solve the mystery. You’ll have to collect clues, use your powers of deduction, and piece together not only the life of Vivian Roberts, but of almost all that lived in this now empty town.

The Painscreek Killing is the kind of game that if you can’t make intuitive leaps, you’re not going to get through. Some of the clues that you’re going to come across might seem plain in retrospect, but at the moment you find them they might not mean a thing to you. On the note of clues the game does recommend that you either keep notes for yourself or utilize the in-game camera to take pictures of things that you think might be important. I went the camera route through most of the game, but I will tell you that there definitely was some frustration over the fact that some of the things I took pictures of I would receive a notification that it has been added to a journal after I put that object down.

Speaking of objects you’ll be picking up the one object you will find in all the main locations is a flashlight (save yourself some trouble, don’t try to pick one up if you already have one). You’re also going to be spending the majority of the game going from location to location, and most of those locations are going to be places that you have previously been to. I honestly don’t know the minimum number of times you have to retrace your steps if you’re just going for the quick playthrough, but I will tell you that I definitely spent tons of time combing back through areas to see if I missed something. At the end of my playthrough, I achieved a 94% completion score and it took me about 6 hours to accomplish it.

This game definitely isn’t for everyone, and there’s definitely a level of frustration that will set in when you are DYING to figure out what to do next, but the number of twists and turns, and the deeper history of the town definitely kept me going. I have to admit that when it became abundantly obvious that there was MUCH more to this town than Vivian Roberts’ death, I had to see it to the end. I wanted everything to be wrapped up in a nice little bow. If you are looking for something a little bit different and in my opinion it pays out in the end (if you try to unravel the mysteries of the town and not just the murder), you should take this game out for a spin.