Review: Jenny LeClue – Detectivu

What we liked!

• Story: Wow, did I love the story in this game! It’s a bit of a coming of age story where you play as Jenny Leclue, a young detective. There’s tons of mystery, and some humor as well. You actually start the game with the writer of a story, so it’s a story in a story kind of formula. The author, Arthur K Finklestein, acts as narrator and guide throughout your journey. By making different choices, you change Jenny, and his story at the same time. I loved this so much. At times, there were little ‘conflicts’ between author and character as well. For example, the author would say ‘Jenny wouldn’t do that because it’s too dangerous’, while Jenny said ‘of course I’ll do it!’.
• Fun characters: As Jenny, you’ll meet various characters in and around Arthurton. There’s your mother, the mayor, peers like Suzie, and of course your best friend Keith. One of my favourite characters was conspiracy theorist CJ. On your journey, these people will help you, confuse you, and yes, of course, you get to interrogate them.
• Voice acted: This game was actually been released for PC last year, but without voice acting (it was added for PC on July 24th as well though). Since a lot of talking and dialogue takes place during the gameplay, I feel like voice acted characters are very, very important. I enjoyed the different voices, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have liked the game this much if this particular aspect was missing. Bringing this update to the PC version and releasing the Switch version with voice actors, was définitely the right call!
• Puzzles: I adore puzzle games, if they are not TOO hard because then I just get frustrated. Jenny Leclue is right up my alley. There’s your main puzzles like picking a lock or getting the electricity to work, and there’s interrogations. With interrogations, you basically inspect a person, and then gather your clues. With these clues, you’ll need to answer a detective question, like ‘what was the cause of death’. In order to solve this, you’ll have to use your brains and pick the right clues that could explain the cause of death in this case.
• Animations: Playing this game is a pleasure when it comes to graphics as well. You run around in a hand drawn world with vintage aesthetics. There’s something to discover on every screen, and the attention to details is simply perfect.
• Scenes: You have the ability to replay a certain scene. In this case, you don’t miss anything. It’s also nice for when something goes wrong and you want to back up a little. I encountered a bug that didn’t allow me to continue playing from the main menu, so the scene selection menu came in quite handy.
• Halloween outfit: This is just a little one, but I love that you can put Jenny in a Halloween outfit as well! I’m just a big fan of the Halloween vibe so yay, nice addition!
• Cliffhanger: So, as the developers tell you already, the game ends on a cliffhanger. I personally haven’t finished the game yet, because I wanted this review online this week and just didn’t have the time. I will, however, finish it because it’s so amazing, but I know it ends on a cliffhanger. As the developer studio itself says: Jenny LeClue – Detectivu is a complete game experience, like a season of a TV show. There will be a second game continuing Jenny’s story, so no worries about having unanswered questions, or ‘not having a finished game’. All you need is a little patience!

Somewhere between

• No manual saving: The game saves automatically from time to time. You’ll see the logo of the game appearing in the lower left corner when this happens. Also, when you want to quit, the game will tell you when the last save took place, so you know if and how big of a part you’ll have to replay. This warning before quitting is really nice, but still, a manual saving option would have been nice because it just makes things a lot easier for the player.

What we disliked

• Bugs: Not the biggest issue, but I did encounter a bug twice. Once, an error with the software occurred somehow, and I couldn’t continue my game. I had to select the scene I was in last and replay a little part, so it wasn’t the worst. The second bug I encountered was in-game. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’m just gonna say I had to pick up something and I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t do anything and had to restart the game.