Murder. So many stories are about murder, yet so few of them include a man with an incredible mustache surfing inside brains. Mindcop is one of those few games.
Mindcop is a heavily stylized murder-mystery game that blows my mind (pun intended). This game, by German developer Andre Gareis, is an absolute masterclass in mystery solving game design. I highly recommend that you check Mindcop out for yourself just so you can experience the plot for yourself. Without giving too much away, there’s been a murder in a small town and you, the Mindcop, and your partner Linda are tasked with solving the case. Throughout the next few in-game days, you have to collect clues and investigate leads throughout the town.
Gameplay
Most of the gameplay of Mindcop is point-and-click mystery solving. Now I’ve played my fair share of point-and-click games, and many of them unfortunately become a quest to touch every object on the screen in hopes that you found the correct one to progress. Mindcop doesn’t have this problem, instead opting to put restrictions on the player’s actions through a sort of resource economy. Time is a finite resource in this game, and every inspection and interrogation will take time. This is a great approach to investigation because it forces the player to think critically and step into the shoes of a detective. You have to look for things that seem out of place and pursue specific lines of questioning to be successful in this game. There’s so much to examine in the town, but not nearly enough time to look at all of it. This way of getting the player to prioritize certain leads is just incredible and feels so organic.
Playing this game, you feel like an actual detective. So many games can claim that they make you feel like a detective, like L.A. Noire (or the Batman: Arkham series if you get loose with the definition of “detective”). But no game truly makes me feel tense like Mindcop did. It felt incredible to stumble upon a clue and have an “Aha!” moment before unraveling the drama. There’s so much tension that builds up, so many leads that seem to go nowhere, and all the while, you as a player have to do the math yourself. I was getting in my own head, trying to solve this seemingly impossible case. This game stressed me out and the clock was ticking—it’s exactly the type of immersion you want from a story.
As a detective, you of course get to question suspects and other NPCs in the town. Questioning them, you uncover backstories and information about themselves and other characters. The depth of worldbuilding in Mindcop is really impressive. Each character has their own motivations, relationships, and quirks. I love how there’s so much underlying lore to this small town that you don’t really uncover unless you dig deep into it.
Mindcop even suggests to the player to take notes (though it is certainly not required), like an actual detective would. I played through relatively casually, not taking notes besides the ones highlighted by the game itself. However, I definitely felt the urge to create a link chart to map out the clues. Call that crazy behavior, but I was invested in the story.
With Mindcop, you’ll get a couple of hours out of the story—more if you decide to replay it. Oftentimes the length of a story-driven game is used to gauge its quality, but Mindcop breaks that mold. It felt like just the right amount of time for such a story to take place.
Puzzle Mechanics
Mindcop differentiates itself from other point-and-click games with its eponymous protagonist. Mindcop isn’t just an ordinary detective—he’s got some sort of mind-reading powers that the game never seems to fully explain. This power is called “mindsurfing” and upon successful completion, rewards the player with three scenes, each representing a truth, doubt, and lie from the targeted NPC’s perspective.
The mindsurfing puzzles aren’t too complex: you’ve got colored bullets floating towards a square brain. You rotate the brain and attempt to connect three bullets in a line to increase the timer. All while you’re doing this, Mindcop is surfing at the bottom of the screen, aiming to reach the finish line by the end of the timer. These are all sentences I never expected to write, and you probably never expected to read.
When I first mindsurfed a character, it was completely unexpected and made me chuckle a bit. That’s not to say it was distracting—I appreciated the comic relief of the sudden switch from black and white to a colorful puzzle. Despite the wackiness of it all, the mindsurfing puzzles fit in nicely with the rest of the gameplay.
Visuals
If there’s one thing above all else to praise Mindcop for, it’s the consistency and creativity of its atmosphere and art style. Everything on the screen is in black, white, and red. Arkham City’s promotional imagery used a very similar style, and while stylistically entirely different games, the color scheme captures the same crime-drama theme. I really dig the aesthetic of monochrome plus an additional color. It’s a simple and incredibly effective way of emphasizing important visual details, while still maintaining the noir vibes that black and white bring.
It’s interesting to note that the only time colors other than red make an appearance is during scenes taking place inside the mind. The mindsurfing puzzle itself uses brightly colored bullets, but the scenes you unlock with them further expand the color palette. When you take a look inside an NPC’s head, the world ceases to be just black, white, and red. These scenes make use of blues, yellows, purples, etc.
The difference between the mental world and physical world is also shown by the overlapping of art styles. Neurons and other brain-related imagery is blended in with these scenes to indicate visually that you’re in the person’s mind. There was clearly a lot of effort put into how this game looks and feels. That sort of attention to detail is something that you can only really get with indie projects like this.
Audio
Accompanying the visuals is an ambient jazz soundtrack. Though cartoonish and sometimes bizarre, Mindcop never strays from the noir aesthetic. I don’t think there’s any better way of feeling like a grizzled detective than a black and white filter and some slow jazz. In the puzzle sections, there’s an appropriate shift in music to a lighter, more upbeat style that matches the visuals.
There isn’t much voice acting in Mindcop other than a few reaction noises (surprised gasps, sobbing, angry growls) from the characters. None of the dialogue is conveyed through voice, it’s all in text boxes on screen. However, there are a few fully-voiced cutscenes between Mindcop and Linda that are hilarious due to the nature of the banter. It really ends up feeling like the type of crazy conversations you only have with coworkers.
Conclusion
I can’t recommend this game enough. I’m a sucker for good storytelling and mystery-solving. Though a bit short, Mindcop tells a captivating story with interesting characters and unique gameplay mechanics. If you’re the type of person who likes narrative video games and detective work, you will absolutely love Mindcop and its perfectly executed cartoonish noir aesthetic.
