Some crimes are a pyramid. Wide at the bottom but the solution is a narrow point. Some crimes are an inverse pyramid, balancing precariously on a single point with a frighteningly wide conspiracy.
Lady Love Dies
Review of the open world mystery game Paradise Killer by Kaizen Game Works, released for the pc and Nintendo Switch in September 2020.
Have you ever wanted to experience Lovecraftian horror synthesized through a vaporwave haze? Or explore a tropical luxury resort complete with brutalist architecture, perverse idolatry and palm trees? Or perhaps you’re just starving for a new puzzle game with intriguing conspiracies to unravel and fun characters to converse with? Paradise Killer promises a unique experience and delivers an aesthetic epic with postmodern woes.
Set on an island known as sequence 24, you embark on a journey where the lore has equally as many surreal twists and turns as the mystery at hand. This island exists in a separate dimension, where ancient gods lure beyond the stars, and a clique of rulers known as the “council” abducts people to harvest their psychic energy. While each island is an attempt to create the perfect world, it has never yet come to fruition, and so each cycle ends with demons invading the sun kissed beaches and then a ritualistic mass slaughter of the citizens commences. There was hope that this 24th sequence would be the last, but then the “crime to end all crimes” occurred and somebody murdered the entire council in the midst of their final meditation.
The star of this detective thriller is the lovely “Lady Love Dies”, a former investigator from the Paradise Psycho Unit, not retired but exiled away for crimes against the council. In a former sequence she was corrupted by an alien god, and to punish her for this betrayal, she was sent to the idle lands for all eternity. Wasting away in her gilded marble cage, she was set and ready to watch another sequence end, until she was called back into action. “Who murdered paradise?”
While the place at first glance looks like if Hiroshi Nagai had converted into the cult of Cthulhu, the horror is not just cosmic anymore, it is as human as greed, jealousy and vengeance ever has been. After having spent the last three million days isolated in a penthouse suite, perched atop a massive column, you are about to return to a world where law and desire will convert in a masquerade of depravity. While most of the denizens have already left for the next sequence island, those who remains will play a shrewd game of innocence and iniquity.
Time to breathe life back into paradise.
SHOT AND CHASER
From the very beginning, the game opens with a move of pure genius. As you’re about to leave from your lofty exile, you step forward to the very edge of your balcony overlooking the strange island below. You get a moment to dwell on the immense vista, map and internalize all the landmarks beneath and then you realize what you must do. You take one step over the edge and fall. The distance seems vast yet accelerating closer and closer towards you. Fear overtakes you yet you soar. You hear the crescendo of shrill trumpets playing a fanfare of funky city pop, a clarion call for the fluorescent pantheon. You’re flying without freedom; you’re trapped, caught in the air while the ground hurls closer towards you. Details start to emerge from the ground below, weird and abstract structures gain form. You’re a fallen angel, a bullet of light. Nemesis diving towards an asphalt pool. You take one last look at the island; it is already above you again. You hit the ground. PARADISE KILLER. There is no pain, no death. You are divine.
It is an ingenious moment to expand your rationality to match this setting. The gods, the music, the style. For any regular game, fall damage seems almost naturally and instinctively included, but not in Paradise Killer. Already from the very beginning the most elementary part of any video game has been subverted, and not only does it instantly inform you of the player’s invulnerability, but it also adds greatly to the gravity of the situation. You now know that not even jumping from a 1000 feet height can land a scratch on an inhabitant of this island, yet somehow, someone managed to kill a bunch of seemingly invincible beings? In an instant? How? What power could even muster such excessive force?
This is organic storytelling and worldbuilding at its best. It communicates so much more than just being a “cool cinematic”. From the moment you discover the island below, to the moment you hit the ground, you’re engaged, both in terms of gameplay and narrative. You get introduced to the setting and its limits, as well as the stakes and the twisted customs of this world.
But now, after you’ve landed safely, where are you now?
Paradise Killer offers a world both strange and wonderful to explore. From massive concrete structures embedded into green cliffs, to polished residential areas and beaches infested with purple crystals and esoteric statues. There are temples crafted in accordance with Babylonian sensitivities and wide promenades circling around waterfalls and canals. Giant pyramids cuts through the horizon and lidos are built around each and every corner of the map. It is all a fully realized 3d environment with a scope I did not believe could be executed by such a small studio.
It is one of the few times where a giant open world has been created, with the exact purpose that the player needs to experience it. Often these days it seems like studios invest millions into creating games with intricate rendered levels, only for them to serve as corridors where you have to commit major war crimes while some dude yells at you for not moving fast enough. Island sequence 24 does not rush, it allows you to get accustomed to its own strangeness, because even in this bizarre world you need to understand the difference between the regular and irregular if you want to solve the mystery.
As the island is already nearing its own apocalypse, the place is almost deserted. Except for a few guards and a few ghosts, only you and all the potential culprits remain. You have ample opportunity to investigate every inch of the gigantic map, which is indeed needed if you want to discover the many secrets of this world.
If you are new and perhaps foreign to this “aesthetic” of future funk, city pop or vaporwave, you might find yourself turned off by the imminent extravagance of the design choices whic litters this map. Everything is so glittery and sterile, so sparkly and polished. It’s a style that mixes everything from classicist inspired vaporwave to gothic brutalism. Everywhere you go the sweet funky sound of breezy synth beats by Barry “Epoch” Topping shine in the background, creating the perfect ambiance for decadent leisure. Paradise Killer is a testament to sheer indulgence and indulgence, you might think, is a vice. And yes when I first heard that “nani the hell?” was one of the recorded soundbites Lady LD occasionally will utter during dialogue, I too was compelled to throw my laptop out of the window, but this is just the natural doubt witch manifest before conviction.
It is a world crafted with love and dedication, evident in every little detail you discover. Each area is distinct, but still consistent with a coherent ideal of a fantasy resort. As you explore more and find more secrets, you find yourself mesmerized by the care and scrutiny given to make this paradise island the island of your occult dreams of first-class luxury. Even while some have found the scale overwhelming and complained about the great distance between the few key locations you recurringly have to traverse between, I did however experience it as a positive difference.
It is true fast traveling can only be used in exchange for currency, from which there is only a limited amount, but I personally never really bothered and instead just hiked between crime scenes and culprits.
To explain further:
While dealing with complex analytical problems, I often find it necessary to move my body while my mind thinks, which is not at all a strange phenomenon. The British naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin used to have his own “thinking path”, which was a specific stroll he would take whenever he worked on a complicated problem. Before he set out, he would stack a certain amount of rocks he thought corresponded to the seriousness of the question at hand, and then knock each one out of the way each time he passed a lap. Historical anecdotes aside, corpus and cogito go hand in hand.
When handed an open world like the one in Paradise Killer, I think you get to experience the same kind of physicality without actually having to exercise. You are constantly moving between interrogating suspects and examining clues, the wide distances between each helps making your brain think. Consider connections, doubt duplicity and analyze alibies. It is something you don’t normally get to experience in similar mystery games, which normally falls into the categories of being either the composed frame of a point-n-click adventure game or the static sprites of a visual novel. Often while I moved between key points I thought about making detours, I made mental notes of the ongoing investigation and sometimes even attached myself to distractions. It lands a very Improvisational bend to the otherwise very linear genre of the detective game.
While the world is pleasant to investigate, you are not necessarily alone, but who are the culprits, suspects, victims or demons who haunts this mysterious island?
Who Can Dance To This Beat?
While most people have already gone to the rapture or been brutally slaughtered in the corporate mandated end of the world slaughter, a handful of people still remains to inhabit this suspenseful story. They are named things like Crimson Acid or Doctor Doom Jazz. They are celebrity idols with goat heads, bureaucrats dressed in beach ready cassocks or skeleton bartenders. Yes, the naming convention is in the style of “Oedipa Maas”, a random string of non-sequiturs, which is something I do not really mind. It is often that an author wants to load their work with tangents of symbolism, assigning names like fatalist curses upon their characters. I believe the postmodern approach of a heterodox baptism sometimes alleviates this problem and allows characters to flourish distinct from their function or purpose.
I’ve seen people complain about how the character design divert from the otherwise conceived aesthetic of the game. Yes, in the realm of city pop remixes, the sight of Sailor Moon screenshots is what usually accompany the sound of blaring horns on loop. This have become the convention as a supplementary visual to the culture which Paradise Killer embody, but the characters you meet here is not at all reminiscent of those retro vintage anime types you know from waking up early in the 90’s.
The character designs conjured by Curran “Gigalithic” Gregory, Rachel Noy and Oli Clarke Smith seems modern and polished. Dressed in a manner which assimilates Jojo characters crashing a Jean-Paul Gautier fashion show, everything is presented as stylish and bold as possible. The sprites seems to combine both western and eastern art styles, and while some choices might seem a bit too gimmicky, this appearance make it easier to bridge the surreal occult elements of the narrative with the pristine design of the environment. You just can’t imagine Mamoru Chiba lecturer you on the sacred right of mass genocide or Haruka Tenou adorned with the head of a goat. The adventurous style softens the tonal mix between the cosmic horror of the lore and the clean environment, making the whole experience seem much more fluid than it has any right to be.
Missing The Perfect 25
Now, you might be a person who is usually accustomed to crime mysteries as digested through countless Agatha Christie novels or perhaps the lawyer simulator known as Ace Attorney, and then you might ask; but what about the story? Is the mystery a tight well-orchestrated conspiracy which feels satisfying to reveal, or is it all just esoteric nonsense?
Well, it is quite immediately revealed both in the game and through promotional material that the creators, Oli Clark Smith and Phil Crabtree, have a very different approach to narrative fiction than most other writers. “You will soon enter a paradise where fact and truth are not the same. Explore Paradise in your own way and find your own truth” is the very first thing you will read when you begin your game of Paradise Killer, but do not worry, even if you should forget it later on, the game will take quite a few opportunities to remind you. “What is the truth? What are the facts? Are they the Same?” Is a line you hear after first meeting the judge, who is perhaps better named “the administrator” for all intents and purposes.
But what does it mean? How does it interfere with the immaculate crafted mystery you are about to uncover?
It basically means that you, at any point, can launch the trial which will determine the fate of the islands and its citizens. As long as you have evidence, you can pin the crime on whoever you choose and create the truth in this manner. There is no right or wrong answers, no scripted ending or crafted finale. Everything is a choice you have to make yourself. Does this sound like a mystery of substance and quality? Well, it is of course not all. There are still leads and clues to uncover, culprits to interview and alibis to break. There is a grand scheme hidden deep underneath the boulevards and streets, but it will take a great deal of cunning wit to uncover it.
Still, the principles to which Oli and Crabtree have dedicated the mechanics of this game remains a gimmick at heart. Having the whole culmination of the game dependent on the players own choosing, means that all meaningful development and revelation between characters, can only happen in one single moment. This becomes a very particular problem later on in the game, where you can have dialogue which just goes:
Lady Love Dies: “I suspect you committed a foul deed.“
Suspicious Person 8: “I did nothing of the sort, you have no evidence.“
Lady Love Dies: “I have all the evidence ready right here!“
Suspicious Person 8: “Nope, nothing. Its all lies. Your evidence means nothing.“
Only for you to start the trial three minutes and have the conversation go something like:
Lady Love Dies: “I suspect you-“
Suspicious Person 8: “AAAAH IT’S TRUE. YES IT’S TRUE. I DID THE THING, ACTUALLY I DID ALL THE THINGS. AND NOT ONLY DID I DO THE THING, BUT I WILL DO THE THING AGAIN. I WILL DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN IF I EVER GET THE OPPORTUNITY!”
You can explain some of these things by referring to the worldbuilding and some of the established lore. How people generally view Lady Love Dies as a pest because they cannot accept the idea of imperfection in paradise. Or how the Judge has explained that the presentation of her case will basically decide the outcome of the trial, regardless of the truth, but this is really just a weak set-up for what remains a fundamental error.
And while both creators of Paradise Killer have talked about how they want to develop their world in future games, Oli has stated that direct sequels would be impossible due to their commitment to the “choose your own truth” concept. So despite what the gods say, we will actually never meet in a perfect 25. And while some may say that it is commendable not to milk your own ideas, I cannot help but doubt if this standard is set for the right reasons. It is based on an idea which does not help to further immersion, which does not suit the game at all, and which is utterly superfluous by the end. To conclude with a short analogy, I cannot help but to think of a man who has recently acquired a new Mercedes-Benz but refuses to drive it because he needs to reinvent the wheel first. The attachment to such a postmodern feature as “there is no truth” in a detective game is as silly as it sounds.
Perhaps if you’re a speedrunner who wants to complete the game in less than five minutes you can have a laugh, but otherwise it means nothing.
There are still plenty of good ideas put into Paradise Killer to make it a worthy experience for anyone in need of a mystery to solve, and island sequence 24 is a world like no other. It’s a paradise of breezy funk and sublime cityscapes, and as long as you are not beguiled to end your investigation before every stone is turned, there is plenty to investigate and analyze. A plethora of unique experiences await for those bold enough to take the leap and dive deep down into PARADISE KILLER.
DASEIN CON AMORE 