Great concept for a hidden object game, where you go back and forward in time to solve a crime, but the pacing get bogged down by the ridiculous amount of simple (like, you solve them in under 10 seconds, simple) minigames that insert themselves several times during each mission. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea, but that alone is enough to not recomend this. The side game where you need to find several characters during 10 different moments in time was much better than the main game.

I wasn't entirely sure if I was going to leave a review after fully completing the game (and all of its achievements) but after seeing all of the negative ones, I kind of felt like I had to offer a different perspective. As another reviewer said, this game is far from perfect, and if Steam did stars, it would probably get 3-4 from me instead of a full 5. However, once I understood how the gameplay worked, it was easy to forgive the imperfections and just have fun. Basically, my interest in the game as a whole outweighed all of the little issues (which I'll talk about in my review, I promise.)

I want to start by saying this: for me, this game couldn't be played for hours on end. While the mysteries were interesting, they were just enough the same (gameplay-wise) to make things feel tedious after a few hours of playing. But after stopping to give myself a breather, I was always happy to return later and play some more. Fortunately, the game isn't too hard to pick back up even after you've been gone from it for awhile; some of my play sessions were months in between each other, and I had very little trouble remembering how things worked.

A word of advice, though - you can't stop in the middle of a mystery; it won't save. So make sure you've fully completed a story and returned to the main screen before exiting the game or you might lose some of your progress.

Now let me see if I can break down the gameplay a little. For those of you who are visual Hidden Objectors (like me) this game might be harder for you. The game never gives you an exact picture of who or what you're looking for. Once you know what a person looks like after finding them the first time, then you have something you can kind of work with when you need to find them again, but I definitely found it to be more of a challenge. Not that there's anything wrong with more of a challenge, of course. :)

The mini-games are going to be easy for most people - easy to the degree that they start to feel pointless. The only challenge I had was with the timers so many of them had. I would be one or two steps away from finishing and the timer would run out and I'd have to start over. :( Not fun. I do think - if the developer ever felt like implementing some quality of life changes - a setting to toggle the timers off would be ideal; especially as a way to make this game more accessible to everyone. I can only imagine how frustrating that timer would be for anyone who needs to go at a slower pace because there's no way to skip past these games - they're needed to move forward in the story.

The story, as other reviewers have said, was a bit predictable in the long run. (I'll do my best to address this without spoilers.) For me, the predictability wasn't a big deal. It only made me more curious to see how things were going to play out in the end. It's a bit like knowing who the murderer is at the beginning of the book. The fun isn't in trying to figure it out - it's in seeing how they get caught and watching as everything comes together and falls into place. I get that writing style isn't for everyone, but I enjoyed it in this game.

Another thing I enjoyed about the game were the Fulcrim levels. They didn't have anything to do with the storyline; it was just tracking down various people throughout the timelines and learning their stories - some of these people being spoofy pop culture references like Luffy, Moana/Maui, John Wick, Rick & Morty, etc. It was cute and fun! :D Though I could've done with a skip button at the end of each level. >.>

I also want to address a couple of issues I had with the game (just in case the developer is reading these reviews.) First, most of the time the game offers you the ability to go back and look at your conversations with people. It's handy if you click past something accidentally, or get distracted by something/someone outside of the game (yes, I'm speaking from experience. ^_^;) However, there are certain levels where you DON'T have access to that old dialogue, and let me tell you - trying to find a thing when you have NO CLUE what you've been asked to find is not fun. :( I had to go look-up walkthroughs for a couple of levels because of issues with that. >.<

Another issue I had was on the levels where the color is altered. In some levels, everything takes on a singular hue (red/green/purple, etc.) and then that color darkens as you move further into the level. In another, the lines lighten with each section of the level. To accommodate people with eyesight issues, there should be a setting to turn this mechanic off. Does it make things more challenging for those levels? I guess? But having to squint and get my face super close to the screen just so I can see what I need to see in order to find the next thing isn't fun, and I'm grateful this mechanic was only used in the 'boss' levels, otherwise I might've given up on this game early on.

A smaller issue I had was with some of the game's hints - where I would be told that the thing I'm looking for is in a particular area, but there's nothing about the image which indicates WHERE that area is. This was especially bad in the Aeon Age image, but I also had some trouble in the Steam Age image, too. Basically, being told that something is located in 'the Runners district' and then not giving me any indication of how I'm supposed to KNOW it's 'the Runners district' is incredibly frustrating.

And finally - the icon mini-game/battle for each boss. Some of them were easy, but the one with clocks and the one with shapes, I just couldn't figure out how the icons I was being given were meant to correlate with the icons I had to choose from. Basically it became a memorization/guessing game, and is another excellent example of why the timers on mini-games should be an optional feature.

So, there you have it. While the game has its flaws - flaws which might stop some people from playing - I thought it was a fun (sometimes challenging) way to spend a few hours every now and then. I would definitely play a similar game from this developer (or a DLC/sequel) if they ever chose to do one.