Paradise Killer Review

Paradise Killer is a detective game set in the open world of Paradise Island. It's a strange place with quirky characters and an alien obsessed, demon worshiping world. You are an exiled investigator brought back to solve the mass murder of the island's Council. You scour Paradise Island for clues and discover the culprit, or culprits. But unlike other detective games, you are free to accuse who you like, rather than being funnelled down a single correct path of enquiry.

Paradise Killer is a mystery that you create as you go. By choosing how to interrogate suspects and finding any evidence in any order, you uncover not a singular truth but a truth they shape and craft. Find your truth and breathe life back into Paradise.

What's needed is impartial investigative work, although this can be hard if you (as you can) decide to sleep with your suspects. This takes time and patience, and some may find the leg work too much. However, as you persevere you slowly discover that as you put the clues you find together you impact both the story and the outcome.

This might sound like a pointless exercise, if there is no right answer. The genius of the game is allowing your discoveries in the world to percolate and congeal into a satisfying whole.

"Our minds are predisposed to arrange facts into stories," said Simon Parkin in his review. "Once we understand something we have in some way tamed it. This wrinkle in human psychology has led to thousands of wrongful arrests by overstretched or under-equipped detectives, as well as wrongful verdicts by juries, who are as susceptible to easy narratives as the readers of airport thrillers. Paradise Killer forces us to reckon with ideas of our fallibility, as we pursue the wrong paths and leap to reckless conclusions. Long after you’ve made your case you’ll wonder if, just maybe, you missed a crucial piece of evidence, and whether that oversight led to some profound miscarriage of justice."