One of my favourite types of game is picross. There’s something relaxing about switching to autopilot and completing a load of puzzles. One of the best, quirky game series of all time is Phoenix Wright, with it’s gentle humour, amazing characters, and murders. Murder By Numbers is both these things.
I talk about it a lot on episode 33 of the ugvm Podcast, but briefly, Murder By Numbers is very much like Phoenix Wright only each time you find a clue you have to reveal it by solving a picross puzzle. Oh, and there’s no courtroom.
It has a great cast of well drawn characters with some funny dialogue, excellent music, and importantly the flow between detective sections and picross sections somehow never seems jarring. It’s also surprisingly long, especially with all the bonus puzzles you can unlock if you do all the ones in the story without using any hints.
If you even only slightly enjoy picross puzzles, this is a great game for you.