Confidential Killings Review – Killing In The Fame Of

Deduction puzzle games are my favourite style of detective game. While The Painscreek Killings offers a free-roaming exploration experience and L.A. Noire draws inspiration from iconic detective noir media to create a more cinematic offering, games such as The Case of the Golden Idol, Return of the Obra Dinn, and the more recent The Séance of Blake Manor actually make you feel like a detective by having you cross reference clues provided, usually in a static scene, in order to deduce what has happened and narrow down a culprit from a list of suspects. Confidential Killings from developers Brane and Lorenzo Boni, is the latest of these, having players take on the role of a detective uncovering a Hollywood conspiracy tied to a new drug circulating around its stars, along with a string of connected deaths.

Similar to the previously mentioned games, in each case players must review a static scene and look for clues. Clues will present key words which the player must collect so they can fill in the blanks when using the in-game notebook to reconstruct what happened, name each person on the scene, and solve other puzzles, such as which actor was playing which role in a play.

Confidential Killings offers a more traditional murder investigation story than The Case of the Golden Idol or Return of the Obra Dinn, starting with an investigation into a car crash. The driver is the son of a big movie producer, and seemed to be in the process of dealing a new drug that’s on the market. Little do we know that this car accident, which seems so rudimentary at first glance, will unveil a Hollywood web of corruption, lies, and betrayal as these stars step over each other and make deals with the devil to reach the top. While each case features a different death to investigate, they are all linked in some way and involve a returning cast of characters.

Unfortunately, while Confidential Killings has an interesting story that will delight most mystery fans and also looks the part, it lacks the ‘whodunnit’ aspect somewhat by… being too easy to solve. There’s an in-game notebook, which I was ecstatic about when I first saw it, as I’m an avid note-taker when playing puzzle games. But I ended up never having to use it, as the majority of the cases, bar one, I was able to solve pretty swiftly once I had found all the keywords. It doesn’t help that the solution is almost always the most obvious one when you start searching the scene; there’s no red herrings thrown at the player to really make them reconsider the case, and there’s usually one obvious suspect that no one else compares to. Not only did this dampen the experience of completing Confidential Killings as a puzzle game by removing the satisfaction of having solved the case, but it made the “reveals” less exciting, as there’s not exactly an abundance of twists and turns as you would expect from a mystery game.

Visually, Confidential Killings looks gorgeous, taking on a detective noir graphic novel aesthetic which suits the game and its story really well. I also loved the added touch of needing to turn on the lights in certain scenes or unlock doors or safes to see what’s beyond them, making each scene feel just a tad more interactable, as though we are actually searching the area for clues. Some of the levels are also fairly large which makes loading them up for the first time more exciting as you anticipate being able to peel back the events that have occurred in each room.

While Confidential Killings is a game that detective fans will no doubt be satisfied with, it also plays it too safe compared to other, more memorable games within the genre. Besides being somewhat easier than other comparable detective puzzle games, Confidential Killings doesn’t have any glaring faults, but there isn’t anything that makes it particularly standout either.

Jess reviewed Confidential Killings on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.