In a relatively stacked year of video game releases like 2024, a few inevitably slip through the cracks at first for me. I first heard about No Case Should Remain Unsolved near the end of the year after seeing it pop up a few times in year-end retrospectives, and decided I should see what it’s all about and crack this case for myself.
Old Wounds
No Case Should Remain Unsolved is a detective mystery game developed by Somi, a Korean indie solo developer. A playthrough will run you anywhere from about 2 to 3.5 hours, making for something completable in a single afternoon.
As the name might suggest, it is the story of an unsolved case, one that has been left cold for over a decade prior to the start of the narrative. A girl goes missing and a number of people involved give accounts of what happened, what they saw, and so on. One begs you not to pursue further, and another says the girl has been dead all along, immediately raising several integral questions for you to get to the bottom of. Your job is to piece together a series of jumbled memories and testimonies to complete the story and solve the mystery.
The problem is that the pieces you gather are not chronological in the order you receive them, and figuring out who said what and when is a big part of the game. Also throwing a spanner in the machine are a series of inconsistencies, lies, and oddities to throw you off.
Web of Lies
The core of the gameplay for No Case Should Remain Unsolved is simple, as you’re mainly looking over documents and testimonies and connecting the dots. Each statement or testimony has a picture attached, sometimes indicating who was present or who said it, and you can assign them to whoever you think it originated from as well as try to place it sequentially in terms of when it happened. Sometimes you need to find out key information such as dates or contradictions to point out inconsistencies in order to unlock new statements. The amount of sections you have to sort through can seem somewhat daunting at first, but the game is kept from being exceedingly complex by staying fairly small in overall scope and not overcomplicating its mechanics. There is also the option of brute forcing it via trial and error à la other mystery games like Ace Attorney or Return of the Obra Dinn, though I didn’t do this very frequently given the simplicity of the game and how it rewards being attentive.
For how simple it is, its use of non-linear information and bits of deception makes what would otherwise be a fairly simple detective game rather engaging even on the fairly basic details. You come to learn bits and pieces about each character through their own testimony and the accounts of the people around them, and there’s a surprising amount of emotional depth to them mixed in between the facts and accounts of the case for how little text there it in total across the game.
I’m personally not someone who engages with mystery stories by trying to guess or figure things out a whole lot before they happen, but I still felt rewarded for paying attention. There are a few oddities here and there that raise questions and make it clear that even some small details aren’t quite what they seem, which made it satisfying when I had a hunch about something and was later correct. My one bit of advice is that it does also help to know a bit about Korean naming conventions.
It’s hard to talk in too much detail about the actual story events without spoiling something, but what I found most compelling about No Case Should Remain Unsolved is the amount of emotional humanity behind its story and themes. Oftentimes detective mystery stories are about the satisfaction behind the “who” and “how” and giving the audience a sense of justice at the resolution, but this story ends up being engaging and gripping for reasons beyond that. It’s also worth piecing together everything, as there are a pair of endings, with one being dependent on how much of the timeline you correctly piece together.
Presentation
Most of the visuals end up just being text outside of a very small number of cutscenes. Sometimes text is colored to note keywords, and there are a few pixel art portraits as well. The minimalist presentation does enough to get you through the game, though it does leave a fair bit to the imagination, and it can get a bit tired of sorting through a bunch of text boxes on a dark-blue background for a couple of hours straight. The visual aspects and mechanics get the job done well enough for what it’s going for and is fairly easy to follow along, although I did wish the game had a Ctrl-F-esque “find” shortcut somewhere on top of the system it already has where clicking colored keywords just points to related unread text boxes.
The game is available in about a dozen languages. I didn’t find any particular standout issues with its English text, personally.
The music is simple and fitting enough to get the job done and provides a chill background noise to help you focus. Although it begins with a simple minimalist loop, the music gradually adds layers and bits of intensity as you get closer and closer to the end, providing an extra bit of audio-sensory feedback as you get further and further along.
Verdict
No Case Should Remain Unsolved makes for a nice game to scratch that mystery game itch that can be completed in a single afternoon, one that I felt was more than worth the $7 price of admission. While taking a rather minimalistic approach, it executes most everything it sets out to do within a reasonable scope. At the same time, it also feels surprisingly heartfelt and left me quite satisfied by the time the credits rolled.
NO CASE SHOULD REMAIN UNSOLVED IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another indie game with a detective story, you may enjoy our review of Staffer Case.
The writer played No Case Should Remain Unsolved on PC using a personal copy.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
