Marlon’s Mystery: The Darkside of Crime from Made in Mavis and Cooking and Publishing is a new detective adventure game on Switch. Check our Marlon’s Mystery: The Darkside of Crime review!
Marlon’s Mystery: The Darkside of Crime from Made in Mavis and Cooking and Publishing is a new detective adventure game on Switch. You’ll be playing as the titular Abby Marlon, who has been hired to investigate a murder case. She will be joined by her assistant Jared Evans as they try to find out what is going on. It seems that Eleanor, the family’s youngest daughter, has murdered her father, Edward, and got away with the inheritance money. Abby and Jared must trail Eleanor and find out what happened within the family that led to this.
Since this one is a point and click adventure game, you’ll move a cursor around the screen with the left analog stick as you seek any items or characters to interact with. Once you do, press the A button to do so. Interact with a character, and you’ll be able to talk to them so that you can hopefully obtain some valuable information or clues that can point you in the right direction. Select from the available dialogue options and see how things go. Interact with an object, and you might be able to obtain it.
All of the objects you collect are added to your bag. Some objects can be inspected to get a closer look, while others can be used for your deductions – more on this in a bit. You can open up your bag either by pressing up on the D-Pad or by moving the cursor over the bag icon on the upper left corner of the screen and pressing the A button. Once inside, you can check the objects you’ve managed to collect this far, review any notes taken about your current case and the situation at hand, or go over your deductions.
Pressing right on the D-Pad will open up the map. From there, you can choose which location to visit. Since you start at the detective agency, your first stop will be the Taylor Residence. It’s there that your detective skills will be put to the test. You’ll be asked to find which object in the room has gone missing. Your new client mentions that you must solve this particular puzzle to prove you’re the right duo for the job. If you fail… then you’ll have to leave!
It’s during this tutorial sequence that you will learn more about deductions and the board. Based on the information you obtain and the objects you find, you’ll be able to send objects to the board by dragging them. You will then be able to connect objects in order to make your deductions. Along with selecting and connecting objects, you can also cut said connections or erase objects from the board as needed. Notes taken by your assistant can also be sent to the board, so be sure to make good use of them!
Something that certainly feels odd in a point and click adventure game like Marlon’s Mystery: The Darkside of Crime is that you won’t be able to manually save your progress. The game will autosave at the end of your day once you’ve talked to Jared, which means you must do everything you can do at each location before you stop playing, or else you won’t be able to load a save that can leave you exactly where you left. This is not a deal-breaker thanks to the Nintendo Switch’s nature, but it is something that needs to be mentioned.
Marlon’s Mystery: The Darkside of Crime is a fun point and click adventure game that offers a story that you can end up completing in around 2-3 hours or so. This is hopefully the start of a new series since I enjoyed Abby and her assistant Jared’s work on this case, and I look forward to seeing what Made in Mavis does with them. Marlon’s Mystery: The Darkside of Crime is out on Nintendo Switch with a $9.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Marlon’s Mystery: The Darkside of Crime review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Cooking and Publishing.
