| Quick Verdict: The Case of the Worst Day Ever is a straightforward gameplay style where you survey scenes, gather words, and use those words to fill in blanks about the day. It has a great artstyle and no softlocking issues, but it can be a bit challenging to process the correct information the first time. |
| Game: | The Case of the Worst Day Ever |
| Developer(s): | Hero Game Co LLC |
| Publisher: | Hero Game Co LLC |
| Review Score: | 8 |
| Cozy Score: | 8 |
| Price: | $12.99 |
| Pros: | It’s got a charming art style, a hint system, and a fail-safe to show which guesses are wrong. |
| Cons: | While all the answers are in each case, I found the clues to be a bit hard to follow. Even when I’d examined the scene in detail, I generally got things… quite wrong. But that might just be me. |
| Platforms: | Steam |
| Genres: | Point and Click, Puzzle, Mystery |
The Case of the Worst Day Ever is a detective puzzle game where you investigate 10 cases that take place on the same day. The levels are set up like a picture that shows everyone upset. By clicking on them, you’ll be taken to the scenario that ultimately caused them to be unhappy.
The game plays a lot like The Duck Detective Series (The Secret Salami and The Ghost of Glamping) and Little Problems. You’ll survey a scene and engage with objects that you can open. Generally, they’ll give you more information about the goings-on at that moment. Normally, certain words will be highlighted that are important, and you can click them to add them to a separate area.
Each scene has a paragraph or two and sometimes pictures that have blanks where information can go. Here is where you’ll use those collected words to identify people, who owns something, and the paragraph that details the scene at hand.
In The Case of The Worst Day Ever, you have the freedom to choose difficulty. You can turn off the feature that tells you how many words you’re searching for, you can turn on the ability to have the words autocollect, and you can even turn off the hotspot system that will show you which items need to be investigated.
Personally, I kept the autocollect off, but kept everything else on. It helped to make sure that I was finding things and even with the aid, there were times I was missing a word that I needed to hunt for. It’d probably be frustrating to work without the hotspot, but if you want the difficulty, it’s available to you.
Gameplay is straightforward; you just hunt for words, survey the scene, and put the words in the right order. Once you’ve done that, you get a shiny achievement and you move on to the next case. If you want the extra achievements, you’ll want to avoid using the hint system AND checking to see if your guesses are correct.
Watch the trailer for The Case of the Worst Day Ever!
If you’ve put everything in and it’s not immediately telling you that you’ve got it right, then there are things missing. It’ll generally tell you if it’s two or three things, but unless you click a button to highlight which guesses are wrong, it won’t tell you.
I highly suggest that you highlight when things are wrong. Everything you need is in the scene, but I swear I never got things perfect. Most times, I was half wrong. While the gameplay is fun, I’ve discovered that I am either… not the brightest crayon in the box or that The Case of the Worst Day Ever is written just vague enough that you kind of have to brute force some options.
Or, again, it’s me. As the scenes progress, you have more and more information to catalogue and glean info from and maybe I just need to accept that this isn’t a strength that I possess.
While I think the game is a bit more on the difficult side, it’s by no means a bad game. It’s not even really frustrating. I’m just kind of impressed with my ability to gaslight myself into thinking I know exactly what’s going on when I generally get 50% wrong when I check.
At that point, I’m thrown into a spiral because I was incredibly sure I was right. Going back to the drawing board after getting things wrong can be a bit disheartening, but like I said… you can brute force things if you need to.
All things are possible with trial and error.
If you enjoy playing Duck Detective or have enjoyed similar games, you’ll like The Case of the Worst Day Ever. It plays the same and has no elements that make it better or worse than others like it. I’m confident that you’ll enjoy the experience, and if you’re better at processing information than I am, you’ll love it!
If you want to grab The Case of the Worst Day Ever for yourself, you can get it over on Steam for $12.99. If it’s not a gametype you feel is your happy place, then feel free to check out some of our past reviews, like UMAMI or Little Corners!
