Gosh, it’s a really great time to be an enjoyer of interactive detective fiction. I swear that not a single year goes by anymore without several new Detective games entering my periphery, each with a new spin on familiar mechanics.
Unfortunately, that leaves slightly less ambitious titles in a bit of an awkward position. That is, when there’s a great new Detective game coming out every year, it’s a lot easier to get overshadowed for simply being good. And that is the problem I have with Confidential Killings. It’s something that I enjoyed playing, and is relatively well put-together. However, Confidential Killings doesn’t hit that next bar of quality that’d get me to (annoyingly) insist that all of my friends need to play it.
Though, I’m getting ahead of myself here, so let’s start at the beginning to unpack exactly why I feel the way I do about Confidential Killings.
Developer(s): BRANE, Lorenzo Boni
Publisher(s): Surefire.Games
Release Date: January 12th, 2026
Released on: Windows, MacOS
Reviewed on: PC (Win)
Copy Provided by Publisher
Confidential Killings is a Detective game that was released earlier this month. Though, I feel like that is a bit of a misnomer. Namely because the game plays more like a traditional Point and Click Adventure (more on that later), with an overarching mystery that players slowly chip away at between several vignettes. Regardless, if you’ve played other Detective games then you’ve got an idea of what you’re in for while playing Confidential Killings.
Actually, minor correction – if you’ve played the Golden Idol games then you know what you’re in for. Confidential Killings takes heavy inspiration from both Golden Idol games featuring a similar fill-in-the-blanks puzzle to conclude each case wherein players recount the events that transpired before they arrived. Though, I’d argue this isn’t a bad thing. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it makes sense to follow the example set by 2 of the better Detective games on the market.
Unfortunately, that reliance on familiar territory does invite comparisons that don’t necessarily help Confidential Killings. For example, the game is very light on deductive puzzles compared to its contemporaries, which is why I said that it feels more like an Adventure game instead of a proper Detective game. Yes, you’re ostensibly solving a mystery, but almost all of the game’s 12 cases have such a straight-forward solution that it doesn’t really feel like the player is being asked to solve much of anything.
To further elaborate on exactly what I mean, I need to spoil one of the game’s puzzles. I think there’re merits to Confidential Killings though, so if you want to play the game without spoilers then please skip the next 3 paragraphs.
Okay – as a brief example of why I think the puzzles in Confidential Killings feel threadbare, we can look at the double murder that occurs in Case 8: Disco. You’ll go through the normal rigamarole of collecting evidence from the scene of the crime, and taking statements from all of the potential suspects. Then you’re meant to cross reference everything, and point out any contradictions. So far, so standard.
Except, the contradictions you’re meant to spot in this case amount to noticing that 2 of the suspects gave statements that are incongruent with photos that were taken during the event. It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t take much to notice, which meant it wasn’t overly satisfying to solve.
While I might’ve been able to forgive such a simple puzzle during the opening hours of the game, this particular example is situated in the latter half of Confidential Killings. Worse yet, this puzzle is one of the more challenging to solve. This is why I’ve been such a pedant about the game’s genre – if you go in expecting a Detective game akin to Roottrees, Obra Dinn, or Golden Idol then I think you’ll be disappointed. Confidential Killings doesn’t really give players the room to stretch their puzzle solving legs despite that being an accepted norm of the subgenre.
However, that’s not to say that the game is without sauce. While the puzzles left me wanting more, Confidential Killings still manages to weave a detective narrative that felt worth exploring. The game’s events are immediately kicked off with a handful of unanswered questions to anchor the player, and draw them into the story. This, combined with proper foreshadowing (and pay-off), clear character motivations, and science-fiction elements that consistently follow the internal logic of the game’s story do a lot to fill the void left by the lacking puzzles.
Plus, I think it’s worth mentioning that from a writing perspective, Confidential Killings hits all of the same notes as most of the Mystery novels that I’ve read. This left me pleasantly surprised as video game writing can be very hit, or miss. In Confidential Killings’ case, it was a big hit, so I was pulled through each of the game’s 12 cases by my curiosity about what would happen next.
I think it’s also important to highlight the effect that music has on the whole experience. In fact, I’d argue that music plays a more important role in setting the tone, and mood of each scene than the writing does. The audio direction across the entire game is fantastic, and, upon reflection, I think it steals the show in a lot of instances. Honestly, I wish I had a better vocabulary for describing music since I feel like the music was the real star of the show here, and I don’t know that I’ve conveyed exactly how affecting it was.
It isn’t just the writing, and music that’s fire in Confidential Killings: the art direction is also great. The colour choice, and shading across all of the game’s cases really helps to sell the seedy, detective noir setting of the game. Plus, the art is visually striking in a way that keeps it distinct from Confidential Killings’ various contemporaries.
Before we close out, there is one final thing that I wanted to mention, which is the UI – I don’t like it. While solving each case, you’re forced to pick words from a dropdown menu that is sorted by alphabetical order. This drove me absolutely bonkers as I’d constantly lose track of relevant information, or have to double (sometimes triple) check a suspect, or victim’s name because I had no way to actually organize the information in a way that made sense for my brain.
The dropdown also struggles to properly display information when it appears anywhere near the bottom of the screen. Instead of expanding upwards to display the same amount of information, the dropdown is truncated and continues to expand downwards even if there’s precious little space to expand into. This severely inhibits the ability for players to actually parse all of the information contained within it. It’s a small nitpick, but I’d argue that a good UI is one that you don’t notice because of how intuitive it is, and that wasn’t the case here.
Regardless, I still think I’d give Confidential Killings a recommendation, though it’s definitely a soft recommend. I will fully admit that a well delivered story, fantastic music, and great art-direction are somewhat tenuous grounds to recommend a game on. Were the puzzles a little stronger then I think this would be an easy thumbs up. As it stands, Confidential Killings is a good way to spend an afternoon, but I wouldn’t point to it as the next big Detective game for enthusiasts to run out and play.
Having said that, I believe the lower overall difficulty of the puzzle here will allow a different sort of player to enjoy Confidential Killings. If you’ve found that you bounced off other Detective games, but enjoy a good Whodunit story then Confidential Killings might be the perfect fit for you.
Did you enjoy what you read? Consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee over on Ko-fi.
Frostilyte Writes 