Story of Hauma – A Detective Noir Story is well-knitted and will take you on a worthy series of crime-solving sprees.
Mystery and crime-solving games are always great little treats you should give yourself from time to time. Thinking about the crime, how to find the pieces of evidence, and ultimately solving the cases is fun- well, if you are doing it in the virtual world with fictional scenarios, of course. It creates the “Eureka!” moment in all of us, and that is the major point of detective games. Without any prior experience in this field, you too can lead a case of mysteries and unsolved cases, which ultimately leads to finding information nobody ever bothered to find in the first place.
Some of these games heavily rely on point-and-click, and some of them do include free roaming. What comes to my mind directly is Rockstar’s underrated crime-solving game, L.A. Noire, which is still considered one of the best contenders for this genre. Unlike L.A. Noire, most of the crime-solving games revolve around going through scenes, talking to people, gathering shreds of evidence, and creating a relation between the said scenarios. In terms of Hauma – A Detective Noir Story, the same elements were employed, and in fact, played well enough to draw my interest despite going in blind and expecting a dull experience.
Hauma – A Detective Noir Story is a simple, point-and-click, crime-solving game that is easy to get used to. Though it is easy to pick up and play, the game does not portray half-assed gameplay and endless loopholes that will eventually get you stuck in a certain place. Before talking about the title, it must be said that the game was funded by lots of communities, even some government firms from Germany are involved too. For known reasons that I will explain later, the inclusion of a government office in this game actually made it better.
The story of Hauma – A Detective Noir Story begins with our protagonist, Judith, waking up from a nightmare. Funnily enough, she is as confused as you are since she has no remembrance of yesterday nor how she came back to her house and woke up on her couch. Most of the talk happens in Judith’s own mind, and she shares her thoughts with you. So, in order to learn what happened last night, she has to find clues around the house to know about it. Certain items get highlighted, and Judith makes comments about the item or incident to give a clue. Once every clue is collected, you take a look at your inventory.
Inventory is, well, the place you keep your items and thoughts in. Clicking on the item or the thought leads to Judith explaining what certain items are about. The tutorial included in the first few minutes is adequate enough in terms of teaching you how to play. They are short messages with clear instructions on what to do. Once the thoughts and items are in your inventory, you can combine those two together to reveal another thought. Once Judith realizes what to do next, she explains her next move on the go.
The gameplay only relies on the left mouse button and clicking on certain items at the right time. But as I stated earlier, the main focus of crime and detective games is its story and its representation. Luckily enough, Hauma – A Noir Detective Story has a well-paced story with likable- and sometimes relatable- characters.
At first, you do not get to meet all the characters, but as time progresses, you get to know them more and trust their words. One of the first people you encounter is Judith’s brother, which greatly helps since most of the topics are all about art-related tidbits. He helps during information gathering around Münich and overall important places in Münich.
As you can guess, this is the part where the official German offices supporting this come around. The game is sort of a pseudo-gallery for showing Münich and its related places. This is, of course, not a bad thing per se. In fact, the story is based around small parts of Münich, and taking a deep dive into its notorious past is a nice touch.
Per usual, talking about the past of Germany leads to the mention of Nazis even if you do not want to, so there are some characters who you have to chat with that are Nazis. This only happens a few times, so you can actually focus on other characters instead.
The story of Hauma – A Detective Noir Story, is quite peculiar in what it is supposed to show. You are basically dumped into the middle of the story, and as you keep finding clues in your way, everything starts to make sense. The most helpful item in your journey is Judith’s grandpa’s journal, and this journal allows her to look up the clues she finds in her solving sprees.
The mention of Judith’s grandpa and Judith herself being in the same case is told throughout the story a few times. People whom you come against, or at least have a bad relationship with, end up being your enemy or your grandfather’s enemies as well. Although Judith can find most of the clues and what they mean, for the encryption and the past events, she has to find the related page in her grandpa’s journal.
Judith sometimes interrogates or speaks with certain people in order to gather information. When clicking on highlighted people, she initiates a conversation, and with her inner voice, she guides you on what to do next. Some people give out vital information or have a casual chat with her depending on the situation, which makes the game flow better and pushes it to be more life-like.
There was only one ick that I came across while playing Hauma – A Detective Noir story, and it was about how linear the story is. While playing the game, you might not realize it, but most of the time, you are on a path given by the game. The player has no different options during gameplay and is provided with no alternative routes for solving a mystery.
In fact, in most cases, you are not allowed to leave the place you are in until you solve the current mystery. Even Judith herself comes forward and says, “I have to know what happened last night.” and does not allow you to leave the apartment.
Now, linear gameplay is totally fine. If the story touches every single detail along the way, that should not be a problem, but forcing players to stick to one incident and making them figure out the next move is a bit of an odd choice. The game gives enough clues on your next move, but when tried, it yields to Judith being still confused.
And later, it turns out you had to connect two items the other way around, not the way you tried to tie them together. Sometimes the free choice of players matters, but it seems like developers wanted to give the full immersion of the story rather than letting players go on their own.
Visually, Hauma – A Detective Noir Story was looking very sharp with UI and graphic designs. The art style fits well with the atmosphere and characters, and the inclusion of ambient sounds in the background makes you feel like you are in the shoes of Judith instead. But the most prominent part of the game was the voice acting.
The crisp quality of the recording environment and the professionalism of the voice actors added an unusual experience. Kudos to them because from spelling special places in Münich to delivering proper emotion with the characters, the dialogs felt completely natural.
I found the characters in Hauma – A Detective Noir Story to be very dynamic, and that is obviously a good aspect. However, when it comes to Judith, she could be a radical character sometimes. There were some times during the story when I wondered if the actions of Judith were completely necessary or not.
Because she would push everyone out of the way just to get what she needed to know about, and unfortunately, she ended up hurting most people for her own sake. Although Judith is hard to contain in most situations, other supporting characters act more reasonably and give proper choices while addressing problems or any other usual matter.
Overall, Hauma – A Detective Noir Story was a good change of pace in terms of crime-solving games. It is not dreadful, dragging, or painstakingly hard to get through, which makes it more appealing to begin with.
There were no wrong choices or unsolved mysteries, every action taken by the player can be redeemed or understood later in the story. The explanations and gameplay are simple enough for someone who is uninitiated by these sorts of genres, and the game could be a nice, relaxing way to get away from stressful games.
At the price of just $12.49, Hauma – A Detective Noir Story gives out a lot of content to go through. The game lasts quite a very long while too, so it will definitely keep you strapped in for solving more mysteries and eventually learning about the background of Judith.
