ranzware
The problem with our modern, humdrum, urban existences is that there’s just no magic. Back in the day, when the world was young and the woods were thick, the world abounded in witchcraft and devilry. Now if I accuse an old woman of curdling my milk, suddenly I’m the bad guy.
Not so in Urban Myth Dissolution Center, a puzzle-y, point-and-clicky thing from developer Hakababunko, which puts you in the shoes of university student Azami Fukurai as she investigates spooky goings-on in and about her city.
Azami’s got the sight, you see. She sees dead people. Or not dead people, but actually the psychometric echoes of living people who have been in a location before. Maybe? I haven’t quite put that one together yet, but the point is she’s pretty much tailor-made to be a psychic detective, which is why the titular Urban Myth Dissolution Center has hired her.
Job offer you can’t refuse
Or, more accurately, the Center has extorted her. Azami’s naive and a klutz, and when she visits the center for help with her visions and accidentally breaks the their prize murder chair (a chair that kills you, QED), she’s easily bamboozled into taking on a job to pay off her debt.
Which should indicate that, despite the spooky premise, the game is actually quite daft. Think the humour of the kind of anime you might catch on a Saturday morning and you’re not far off. Honestly? It’s not what I was expecting going in: I was anticipating something much more straightforwardly horror-themed, but I quite like it anyhow. Azami’s a bit of a trope and her boss, Ayumu Meguriya, is only ever inches away from going full Gendo-peering-over-his-hands, but they come across as likeable and familiar rather than tired and played out.
The meat of the game is in the investigation. Urban myths are slippery things, prone to spreading like wildfire and mutating in the telling, and Azami’s job is pinning them down. That means figuring out their origins, the tell-tale signifiers that identify which particular myth she’s dealing with, and then, well, leaving. Because actually solving the problem isn’t the gig, we’re just here to investigate. Tough luck for the guy who hired you.
Investigation manages to keep feeling pretty varied, not trapping you in a single gameplay loop for too long at any one time, at least in the couple of hours I’ve spent with the game so far. A process of “social media investigation,” which means scrolling fake-Twitter clicking on comments that look evidence-y and assembling combinations of search terms, feeds into the process of searching the actual scene of the crime. You click evidence, talk about the evidence with victims and witnesses, that unlocks more evidence to find, and so on. At times you retreat to your mind palace to piece together the circumstances of events by assembling fragments of phrases, like you’re writing a message in Dark Souls.
All of which works quite well. Like I say, I’ve never felt like any of these gameplay sections have dragged on too long in my time with the game, and even when I’ve gotten a little stuck, the strength of the writing has kept me propelled forward. Azami’s an affable chucklehead, and watching her attempt detective work is good fun.
Also you get to do witcher stuff, so that’s good. A case concludes with your boss getting very theatrical as you assemble your evidence and pin down just which urban myth it is you’re dealing with. It’s like Geralt figuring out he’s dealing with a werewolf from a tuft of hair and the shape of a wound, except it’s a young woman figuring out that, obviously, this is the famous urban myth ‘guy with an axe what lives under your bed’.
It’s part Phoenix Wright, part Witcher, and I’m enjoying it a lot. If you want to check it out yourself, Urban Myth Dissolution Center has a demo on Steam.
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Kurt Indovina
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