You should go (still) go play Paradise Killer

Paradise Killer, the first release from developers Kaizen Game Works, is a truly bizarre game. You are ‘investigation freak’ Lady Love Dies. Brought back from exile to investigate the murder of your island’s enigmatic council of leaders in a strange alternate dimension populated by the immortal worshippers of ancient gods – the Syndicate – you are determined to root out every secret, no matter the cost. While it’s a game about bloody murder, human sacrifice, and demons, it’s at the same time a relaxing exploration game that leans on a vapourwave-inspired aesthetic while carving its own distinct sense of style. The writing is very good, the characters are excellent, the visuals are great and the soundtrack absolutely slaps. I’d stop short of saying that the central murder-mystery itself unfolds in a way that I found exceptionally compelling, but this is more than compensated by the fact that everything around it elevates it. 

Crime-solving inheritances, but focused on exploration

There are other games that share some DNA with this one. Probably the most striking would be Danganronpa. On a basic level the 3D walking-and-talking gameplay is very reminiscent of this other weirdo murder-solving game, with a particular detail being the way the character sprites live in a 3D space. This isn’t to say that Paradise Killer is at all derivative of Danganronpa, just that it shares a few gameplay conventions and aesthetic flourishes – I think the fundamentals of how you’ll spend your time in Paradise Killer are quite different to Danganronpa, with a vastly increased focus on exploration and much less trial time. 

The main point of difference would be that Paradise Killer has an extreme focus on exploration, much more so than other titles in the genre. You find details of the world, investigate the murder and source precious collectibles primarily by sprinting around the place, poking your nose into every possible cavity on the island, and doing a little bit of platforming. There’s this wonderful quality to Paradise Killer’s island, a fun intentionality in every square inch of its design – there are almost no invisible walls, and every part of it entices you to investigate more. There’s a near-immersive-sim quality to the way the game lets you find creative, platforming-based solutions to some environmental puzzles; instead of flipping the electrical switch to unlock a gate, you can find your way up to a building above the enclosure and drop in. It’s also impressive that, despite how often I did stuff like this, I never found myself getting stuck anywhere.

The island and its people all have mysteries to be uncovered

Yet where games like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa frequently rely on piecing together disparate elements of a bizarre case at trial, Paradise Killer puts much more emphasis on thorough exploration and investigation. Sometimes you can go into an AA trial phase with borderline zero idea of what happened, only for a wild sequence of witness slip-ups and last second interventions to assist you with seat-of-your-pants murder-solving. The aforementioned focus on exploring every inch of the island will also lead you to explore every inch of the mystery; progression through the geography of Paradise Killer basically goes hand-in-hand with progressing your understanding of the murder plot.

It’s the characters and the environment that really make Paradise Killer‘s investigation so compelling. From goat-headed idols to skeleton bartenders and chatty demons from the void, the island is populated by some really peculiar people. The conversations make up the game’s social element, and are really quite engaging. The characters have enough motivation and personality to be recognisable as fully-formed people (some of them you can even sympathise with), but those motivations exist within a world of occult morals alien to our own; the oddity is what makes Paradise Killer so compelling from bottom to top. This is a bit of a cliché, but the island itself is a character as much as anyone else – all the explorable areas have clearly had a metric ton of thought put into their location, form and function in the Syndicate’s bizarre world.

Whether or not you find Paradise Killer’s gameplay loop engaging will be the main sticking point for most players. There is a lot of wandering around, not always with a clear idea of where to go, though the game does its best to remind you what to do. When it’s in motion it’s a joy, as you traverse the environment, find secrets, converse with and interrogate a cast of fabulous weirdos and scour every last inch of the island’s deceitful corners. It does occasionally halt, though, resulting in periods of aimless exploration (at least if you’re as daft as me) – if you were looking for tips, I’d say don’t neglect the power of conversation, as topics frequently point you towards other places and people. After all, the characters are brilliant, and gathering as much information as you can through conversation and exploration is key to solving the game’s mystery during thet trial phase. You can choose to end the game whenever you want – how good your deductions will be in the Syndicate’s court is down to how much info you’ve gathered.

I basically ran into some of the game’s very useful permanent upgrades (delivered by relaxing in a hot-spring) by chance – if you were looking to speed up the process of discovery without quite spoiling the game, that’d be a place to check out. At any rate, the wandering isn’t so bad, even if it can occasionally end up directionless – chilling out going back and forth across the game’s world, hanging out with the characters, and soaking up the immaculate vibe. And what a vibe it is. The music is a special highlight of the game, tying the entire theme together. I had a bit of a weird moment when I realised the OST was made by Barry ‘Epoch’ Topping, who I’ve listened to discussing some truly disgusting shit on the 2 Good Boys podcast.

Paradise Killer’s oddities are what draw you in. It’s a bit hard to describe what I mean here without playing the game, but even from learning characters’ names there’s an intriguing sense of mystery. Things are recognisable but not quite normal. The characters are people, full and fleshed-out (except the skeleton), but there’s something fundamentally not-quite-human about their ethics and way of seeing the world. The retro-coloured, vapourwave-soaked aesthetics of the death-cult island meld with the cheerful but slightly offbeat soundtrack to create an atmosphere that’s extremely unique.

The island itself is desolate, despite the hundreds of years of personal history it contains – most of the permanent residents have left or been murdered, and the enslaved human caste has been ritually sacrified to power the next, ‘perfect’ version of their Paradise. Paradise Killer is so wonderfully ‘off’ – in a way that demands to be experienced in order to be fully communicated. By the time the credits roll and a voiced version of one of the game’s wonderful tracks kick in, you’ll probably want to stay forever in this messed-up vision of paradise.

---

We’ve not got a massive amount of murder-mystery content on our site, and nothing quite compares to Paradise Killer. I did write about Palworld lately, which is sort of weird, I guess! Check out our games of the year as well.

You can also use our Amazon affiliate link to give us a little kickback on purchases, or our Ko-Fi, if you’re an extraordinarily kind human and want to directly chuck us some money.