Mindcop is an adventure-puzzle game wrapped in a murder mystery. This unique take on the whodunnit genre puts you in the shoes of a mind-reading detective working a murder case in a small town. With interesting characters, humorous dialogue, and a unique minigame, this outing has a lot going for it. Mystery solved!
Things begin on a Monday morning in the small holiday town of Merrylin Crater Camp. You play the role of a famous detective called in to solve the murder of a local resident. The first day serves as a tutorial, allowing you to investigate the crime scene and interview the local police officer on duty. It’s a great way to learn the ropes, revealing all there is to do over the next five in-game days.
That’s right, you have limited time to find the murderer. Mindcop has a neat countdown feature that both keeps the game moving and adds a tactical component. Your task each day is to interview local residents and investigate surrounding areas. Each question you ask and every object you inspect costs you precious minutes on your on-screen clock. Once your time is up, you’ll recap the day with your partner back at HQ before calling it a night.
This simple summary belies the deeper nature of Mindcop. There are many people milling about to interview, though they could be in different places on different days. If you use a warrant, they may not talk to you. And if you arrest them, their family may no longer cooperate. These little additions help give some complex rules to this world, making it feel much more realistic.
Interviews are conducted via a series of questions. You can choose which question to ask from a pair of options, and you can also focus on specific topics once unlocked. For example, when a suspicious bag of money is uncovered in a safe, that becomes a topic that you can ask other people about. Same goes for a mysterious note, and even how the town was founded and by whom. There are over 30 such topics to uncover as the sleuthing continues, unravelling an interesting tapestry of the ongoing dramas of this small community.
I haven’t even mentioned the mind-reading part of Mindcop yet. After interviewing someone, a new option appears that allows you to “surf” their mind. This presents you with a match-three minigame whereby “mind bullets” strike the brain while a literal surfer tries to make it from one side of the mind to the other within a time limit. You control the brain, rotating it to meet the mind bullets from all directions. The aim is to line up the bullets next to others of the same color to match three in a row. A successful match adds more time to the minigame’s countdown, helping the surfer reach the other side.
It sounds absolutely bonkers, and it is. But after an initial “what on Earth is this?” moment, these experiences quickly became an extremely fun and important part of solving the mystery. This is because of what happens when your little surfer dude reaches the other side of the mind.
Once a minigame is complete, our Mindcop is presented with three doors: Truth, Uncertainty, and Lie. Entering each door presents a scene from the interviewee’s perspective. The Truth scene provides a truthful memory, while the Lie presents a false one. These prove invaluable in evaluating the statements given during interviews. It could help confirm an alibi or someone’s motivations. The Uncertainty door is a little more obscure, offering scenes that could be dreams, memories, or something else entirely. They’re always interesting, though.
As you get to know the residents and explore their minds, you learn more about the real story behind this small community. But who is the murderer? That’s the real mystery. You can arrest anyone at any point, but you’ll have to wait until the last day to find out if they were the culprit. Getting it wrong finishes the game with a dark ending before resetting everything and sending you back to the beginning. While you’ll have to go about collecting topics and surfing minds again, you have the advantage of real-life knowledge, making your second run easier. You know where people live, where they work, and what happens on Thursday (eek). I daresay solving the case the first time is intentionally tricky without a spot of luck. The developer has done a great job ensuring it’s an engaging enough experience to want to play again. It’s impossible to investigate everything within the given timeframe, making a second run almost mandatory. I was able to solve it after two runs, and I felt extremely satisfied and accomplished with the ending.
The music is another highlight, with some terrific tunes on offer. The soundtrack itself is mostly quite subdued, content to sit unnoticed in the background while sleuthing. This makes a couple of other moments stand out with their more striking tunes. There are two such scenes. Firstly, the mind-surfing minigames, which effectively uses an upbeat melody to accompany the mind manipulation. It’s catchy and adds to the fun. Secondly, the other scene is during the few minutes at the beginning of each new day. Here, our Mindcop chats with his partner while they travel to the crime scene in the back of a police car. Their conversations are quirky and fun, adding depth to these characters, but the music is just so cool. It uses a laid-back guitar-based melody as the backdrop to their commute, and I looked forward to it each time.
The characters are surprisingly deep for a game with a cartoony look to it. The simple aesthetics are great, and I love the balance between the dark theme of murder and the comic-style approach to the sprites. Everything looks crisp and clear, with an excellent user interface. Kudos to the developer!
Overall, Mindcop is a terrific whodunnit. It might have been released late 2024, but it makes a refreshing start to 2025 for this player. The developer has put a lot of love into creating this world, with the perfect amount of characters to interact with, a quirky pair of cops to get to know, and an odd minigame that turned out to be super fun. Coupled with a satisfying ending and terrific music, this is one game that’s easy to recommend.
