Ambling around a cursed utopia and interrogating its eccentric characters while listening to jazzy, saxophone-obsessed electronica remains a fitting masquerade for a mercurial murder mystery. Almost two years after its first release, Paradise Killer’s commitment to its vaporwave aesthetic remains a model for creative fiction and an amusement park for industrious detectives.
Paradise Killer has the confidence to bet its entire hand on Paradise Killer.
It’s an astonishing gamble that a player will indulge in a contained open-world that combines (1) a pocket dimension full of dead gods and mischievous demons, (2) class warfare pitting stolen members of humanity against conniving immortals, (3) picturesque vistas showcasing idyllic tranquility, (4) suspects with names like Dr. Doom Jazz, Crimson Acid, and Carmelina Silence, (5) art direction and music composition boasting a healthy relationship with vaporwave (6) verbose dialogue loaded with deception, admiration, and malice, all which is woven into a narrative where less careful players could position the cast in the judicial equivalent of a Mexican standoff.
The premise for Paradise Killer’s predicament sounds like a fever dream. Lady Love Dies, an immortal member of the ruling class Syndicate, is excused from an 8000 year exile to solve a macabre massacre. The Syndicate’s Council, all of which were gruesomely murdered the previous night, had governed the 24th iteration of a perfect society in a pocket dimension of a small island. The 25th iteration of the island project was due to open the next day, but now all suspects must remain in limbo on the largely abandoned island until Love Dies’ methods of justice are adequately served.
From there, control is granted to the player and the island is theirs to capture. Maybe you’ll stroll past Dr. Doom Jazz’s yacht on your way to the Agri Fields or the Reality Folding Drive. You can visit the Citizen Housing and marvel at the inhospitable concrete calamities that housed the human fodder. You could spend a bit of time at the beach and marvel at the massive obelisks wedged in the sand, then gaze out at all of the pyramids stranded at sea. Why not head to the island’s summit and literally whistle past the graveyard? Almost a dozen living suspects idle in place at different corners of the island, ensuring the player will galivant across the island’s handful of routes multiple times.
I loved spending time strolling through Paradise Killer’s world. As an American landlocked in the center of the country, I crave any opportunity to travel south, look at palm trees, and spend nine hours reading books under an umbrella at the beach. Every inch of the island’s construction reminded me of different vacations to the east and west coast, and the diegetic loud speakers blasting Barry Topping’s soundtrack amplified the feeling that I was trapped in one of those 24-hour resorts where nothing ever closes. The island’s surreal ornamentation—garrish statues filling up alcoves, the obscene disparity between upper and lower class living quarters, and the rainbow blanket of colors highlighting every structure at different stages of day and night—felt true to the standard fantasy of paradise. This world is an idealized interpretation of what people are supposed to envision and enjoy as a model of relaxation.
A sense of menace, underlined by blood-soaked remnants of physical violence, sideswipes the island’s buoyancy. What happened to members of the ruling class is visible while what happened to the lower class (who were sacrificed off-screen to create cosmic energy to generate the next island) is not. Bouncing along to The Lemington Bop while inspecting a crime scene creates an internal conflict in the player, prompting a mental reconciliation between pleasure and its consequences. It doesn’t take many walks down the Las Vegas strip to recognize its monuments to human excess were forged by the most vulnerable members of its society, but is it wrong to simultaneously enjoy the Fountains of Bellagio while digesting stacks of pancakes and crepes from the overflowing buffet? Such is the challenge of enjoying the world of Paradise Killer.
There is more to exploring the island than pondering its opulence and interviewing its residents. Access to certain shortcuts and buildings are gated by Nightmare Computers, which function as a brief picture-matching minigame based on four distinct patterns. Other adventure gamey elements, like finding valves to flood a garden and flipping switches to power doors, compose other minimally engaging distractions. Leaving the essential double jump mechanic behind a footbath remains a curious choice, one that I hoped would have been addressed with Paradise Killer’s second release, but its location should still be apparent with minimal exploration of the world.
Myriad collectibles fill out the remainder of the island. Whisky glasses offer a glimpse into the 25th island through a flash-forward to two strangers at one of its bars. Trinkets left behind by previous residents are artifacts of island’s past, telling a short story of the ridiculous excess and curious customs of those who came before. Blood Crystals, the island’s currency, are absolutely everywhere. Another unlockable mechanic highlights all of the remaining items in this world, but only briefly. This prevents Paradise Killer from falling prey to a collect-a-thon mentality…but also I really wanted to collect everything toward the end of my time with the game, and would have preferred permanence as an option. Sometimes I am impossible to please.
Paradise Killer makes a significant effort to sell its world and provide the player with a tactile sense of presence. All of the suspects are products of and participants in its environment. It’s hard not to have a single conversation with ultra cop Grand Marshal Akiko 14, look at the brutalist architecture that composes her marshals’ barracks, and not see the specter of fascism looming heavy over the island. Listening to Sam Day Break (a terrifying red skeleton in a wide open pink dress shirt) offer Love Dies a drink with surprising warmth is to hear the gruff, disarming friendliness of any real world bartender with a threatening mustache. Every character and place may be a wild exaggeration of a different archetype, but they’re written and constructed with relatable human design and emotion. The character of the island is a reality oversaturated in excess and all of its fruits reflect that amplified process.
The island’s living characters provide motive for direct action. When Love Dies first speaks to someone, she can ask rote questions for her investigation. Scouring the world for evidence, and collecting it in both easy and obscure places, triggers additional speaking prompts to each suspect. “Hanging out” with each character reveals more of their personality and leaves the player to respond to some of their own questions, creating moments of agency for their version of Love Dies. All of these sequences build into a complex web that influence the player’s estimation of the case, and player’s responses might cause the suspects to start narc’ing on each other or, when confronted with damning information, refusing to answer incriminating and intimidating questions. This solidifies the relationship between Paradise Killer’s adventure game-themed exploration and its dialogue heavy, visual novel-inspired conversation sequences. It’s a feedback loop that lasts until every component is exhausted.
It’s easy to get lost in conversation with these characters. The political machinations of the island reveal everyone is guilty of something, but are their actions complicit in this crime? Do you blame the person who swung the sword or the person who positioned every domino in place? Is religious fervor and zealotry as harmful to the populace as a different quest, at any cost, to forge a perfect society? Paradise Killer plays personal bias against observable facts, twisting dialogue to manipulate the player into wondering if the worst person they know just made a great point. It’s a game, after all, and obvious villains may not actually be obvious villains. Or maybe they are! Paradise Killer’s mystery is postmodern work of detective fiction and it keeps the player guessing by submitting to as many tropes as it defies.
Shinji, a powerless—maybe powerless—demon who pops up all over the island, is Paradise Killer’s true chaos element. He appears as a large-headed neon blue alien with four arms (two of which have raised middle fingers) and censored genitalia. He seems to be here just for kicks, but shows up to ask Love Dies questions that range from general wastes of time (I always think people without hobbies are natural murderers) to the introduction of basic philosophical concepts regarding the nature of existence and human morality. Shinji forces the player to reconsider everything they know, or possibly nothing at all, on the basis of being an impartial third party. Does a psychically-projected demon know more about humanity than the ghouls trapped here? Maybe!
Paradise Killer culminates in a sequence where each crime is outlined and each suspect is put on trial. Love Dies’ PDA has collected all the evidence and laid out detailed case files, but it’s up to the player to review every element and make an accurate accusation. It’s the best feeling in the world to get it right and watch the suspect melt down on the stand (and sometimes point fingers and take others down with them). It’s heartbreaking to learn you got it wrong and sentenced a (generally) innocent person to their doom. Your facts have become truth says the judge, and whether that truth is the actual truth is ultimately the player’s responsibility.
That final sequence, which required almost an hour of my time to sort through, is nerve-wracking. It’s also impressively assembled, as it draws from not only the player’s experience and evidence, but also how they may personally feel about anyone getting grilled on the stand. Do I let someone walk if I know they objectively did something wrong, but they were always nice to me? Do I feel like this environment is only capable of breeding damaged souls, and should I execute everyone? If god is real and someone’s been trafficking his flesh, is that actually a crime? What is crime, really? It’s possible to end Paradise Killer feeling like you’re in hell with everyone else. It’s equally to possible to feel like you properly disposed of all the baddies and island 25 really will be perfect. Which, hey, wasn’t that also the objective of everyone you’ve been investigating? It’s a potent, contemplative system.
Paradise Killer, of course, debuted in 2020 on Switch and PC platforms. Nathan reviewed it for us at the time. I finished it that year, and hoped a new release to different platforms would adjust some of the game’s more innocent shortcomings. It largely didn’t. Love Dies still kind of controls like a tank, and her momentum-focused jump takes some getting used to. Cutting to a slide of a Blood Crystal every time one is collected wears out its welcome. I’ve already discussed the foot baths. There’s also one critical element of the plot and murder that’s reasonably well hidden in an obscure area of the island. When found, it’s a revelation and it blows the case wide open. But it’s possible it might never be discovered! I don’t have solutions for any of these problems—and none of them are severely damaging to Paradise Killer—but I was disappointed to see a new trailer boasting new features and find these issues unaddressed.
Some bonus elements are present. Three additions to the soundtrack, drawn from the Paradise Killer B-Sides release, are found through three Deader Nebula vending machines newly hidden around the island. Mika, a demon inhabiting a fish ghost in a high-rise pool, acts as a new NPC (though they only function to comment on a few of the existing collectibles). Paradise Killer ran at 4K/60fps on my PlayStation 5, and featured ray-tracing on reflective surfaces. This is nice on paper but, in my memory, the game looked and behaved the way it did when I played it on Switch. These additions are all nice tips of the hat while Kaizen Game Works are building their next project, but they’re not meaningful reasons to replay Paradise Killer from scratch. It’s largely the same experience.
Ambling around a cursed utopia and interrogating its eccentric characters while listening to jazzy, saxophone-obsessed electronica remains a fitting masquerade for a mercurial murder mystery. Almost two years after its first release, Paradise Killer’s commitment to its vaporwave aesthetic remains a model for creative fiction and an amusement park for industrious detectives.
