I’ll be attempting to uncover dark truths from 20 years ago in The Last Case of John Morley. It was created by Indigo Studios – Interactive Stories, and has us step into the shoes of the titular character John Morley. Will this truly be his last case? Who knows?
See, thanks to this random hair I’ve found, clearly the perp doesn’t close the door.
Do you enjoy a mystery? If you do, then you’ll need to add this to your Steam wishlist!
Gameplay
Our character, John Morley, wakes up after sustaining an injury from his last case. He is then quickly discharged from the hospital and upon returning to his offices is approached by an elderly woman. Who requests that he look into a murder cold case at Bloomsbury Manor which occurred 20 years ago. We of course take the job, because you know a good detective never ignores a challenge…. or £60,000. Because, you know, he got debts.
Most of the game has the player walking around interacting with clues, which aren’t all that hidden. Once found, a scene of what John Morley believe happened is shown to you. I originally thought we would put the scene together after gathering all the evidence in the room. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for The Last Case of John Morley. You do have puzzles to some locks while exploring, but over all the game is straight forward and keeps it linear.
Graphics & Audio
The dark atmosphere is great, but the lighting definitely needed some work. It was a little too dark, and the lantern was nearly useless unless you were already standing directly in front of what you wanted to see. I liked the design of the environments, but one of the biggest glaring issues was that if you look through the windows on all the levels, you’ll see absolutely nothing, just a pure white background. It takes away from the eerie atmosphere when you look through a window expecting to see dark buildings or environments.
Sir, a word?
Longevity
The Last Case of John Morley, took me one afternoon to beat, and from steam says close to 4 hours. There doesn’t seem to be multiple endings, as the story is pretty fleshed out. For achievement hunters, there are 22 achievements to unlock. Personally, I missed 2, but most are tied to the story itself.
Final Thoughts
I enjoy the pacing of The Last Case of John Morley, as it is easily digestible, and doesn’t throw so much information at you to make it confusing. This is not without issues, however, since the plot becomes quite easy to guess. Gameplay is rather light, and there are only a couple of puzzles scattered around. Minor issues I had were that some interactable icons would not work unless I was far enough away, while others did not appear.
The only thing I’d suggest is that when it comes to uncovering what happened at the scenes, the player should put it together themselves. Instead of the game just making you interact and tell you.
I think The Last Case of John Morley deserves the Thumb Culture Silver Award, for the enjoyable story and decent atmosphere.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
Funnily enough, this isn’t the only “last case” of a detective I’ve played. So why not check out my review for The Last Case of Benedict Fox?
