Now playing: of the Devil (cyberpunk noir mystery/thriller)
Just played through the demo/prologue (episode 0) of of the devil (free to play on Steam for Windows and Mac), a cyberpunk noir murder mystery game/visual novel with androids and modded humans. You play Morgan, a defense attorney who disdains the surveillance state that she exists in and its authorities. Your first homicide client is an engineer who has lost his right arm to Capitalism and has been struggling a lot because of the lack of access to proper care, and on top of that his girlfriend was murdered and the cops think he's a serial killer.
I had a pretty hard time focusing on the text and navigating the evidence panel (it's a vertical list rather than a gallery), but I think I might just struggle with playing on a desktop computer. The visuals are sleek and the writing sharp, and the gameplay heavily integrates the worldbuilding.
Most importantly, the MC (Morgan, our defense attorney) is a Bad Person, which I think is a really interesting spin on the genre! The prologue alone has a lot of replay value. And she has a rival, the genius prosecutor Emma. They are, in their own peculiar and amoral ways, obsessed with each other. The vibes are kind of like Ace Attorney meets Death Note, by which I mean it's very very gay and shippy.
