Kept surprising me throughout my entire playthrough and was satisfying until the end. A true delight!

Paradise Killer is essentially a cosmic whodunnit by some dude named Oli that aesthetically leans very heavily into vaporwave trappings while being an absolute-bonkers bizarre yarn for players to unravel involving murder, gods, immortals, goats, whiskey and sex. Not necessarily in that order. Yet for all its effort to be outlandish and contrary - perhaps desperately so - the game is able to expertly put its hooks in you provided you get over the initial deliberate weirdness of the game's opening hour or two. That is, of course, if you enjoy solving whodunnits.

Narratively, you play as immortal investigator Lady Love Dies (all characters in this game have similarly-wacky names), released from a millennium-long exile to solve a horrible multi-murder event that takes place on the eve of the end of the world. Well, not so much the world as a special island sanctuary that the other immortals built for themselves that has a knack for ending repeatedly. Regardless, the singularly-impartial being - appropriately named 'Judge' - has put the end of Paradise on hold so you can hold those responsible for the crime accountable and ensure that their wrongdoings don't follow everyone else to the new Paradise that's just around the bend. If that sounds really out there to you, be advised that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

That said, as you roam around the open island in combatless, deathless first-person perspective, speaking to its handful of remaining denizens and gathering clues to suss out the truth of the matter, you are constantly reminded that "the facts and the truth are not the same," which is a theme that can be deeply explored in the context of the game's oddly-fascinating world. And context, as they say, is king - you spend the entire game building as much or as little of it as you like. At first, everything and everyone seems disparate, but as you dig deeper and deeper, the connections begin to emerge and the world starts to coalesce into a complex, cohesive whole. Even the vaporwave aesthetics start to make more sense as the game reveals itself to you, lending a certain air to the investigation that really reminded me of SUDA51's work. It's really well done and it's some of the finest world-building I've experienced in a game, especially one that goes out of its way to initially be outlandishly unrelatable. If you are thorough enough, you will have a pretty deep understanding of how this world and its people function and it's entirely up to you what to make of it. Ultimately, whenever you decide to do so, you can return to the aforementioned Judge and start a trial that takes you to the game's conclusion; this can be done in 15 minutes or 12 hours depending on how good a job you want to do.

The game's strength is in the way it explores its themes as the story unfolds before the player. It paints a picture of a very specific society and deftly uses its characters to explore and critique that society from several angles, leaving it entirely up to you to make your own conclusions. In fact, there is no 'true' ending to this game even though there are multiple conclusions to arrive at. This also plays into one of the game's core themes and while it may appear to be disappointing on some level (and arguably it can be), it legitimately puts the narrative into the player's hands which is something that is very rare despite the interactive nature of the medium. While Paradise Killer is indeed a somewhat guided investigation, you are not railroaded into a foregone ending that puts a button on it and rolls the credits. That could happen, but it doesn't have to, and that's just marvelous.

On a technical level, the game is mostly solid, but there's not a whole lot going on here outside of exploration. There are no enemies to fight or deadly jumps that will end your game here, but jumping around - an important and upgradeable method of navigating the island - can be frustrating as the game is oddly committed to demonstrating true inertia so you can't really exert much control in the air once your feet have left the ground. It's minor, but once you start playing, you'll understand what I mean. More importantly, there are odd happenstances where the controls won't respond after a text box disappears or, at least in my case, unless you hold down the right mouse button. Most of the time you just have to mash a little and the game will start operating again, but it's very weird and more common than you might think. However, nothing is so severe that it crashes or puts you into an impossible situation that's resolved with alt-f4.

If you like mysteries and worldbuilding and don't mind running back and forth looking for pick-ups, Paradise Killer is truly fascinating and well-written. The experience can be rewarding if you find yourself really getting into the goings-on of the narrative and don't mind so much that the art can sometimes be disjointed. The neon-soaked 80s pastiche permeates everything, not just the visuals, and lends itself very nicely to the odd universe that Kaizen Game Works have cooked up. Definitely worth your time and certainly more interactive than a visual novel, but most assuredly a weird world to explore. Just remember that when it's all said and done, you're ultimately the one who decides what happens next.

Even though the worldbuilding could not be *more* convoluted, there comes a point where it feels totally normal to speculate about the motives of people with names like "Eyes Kiwami" or "Witness to the End". You sort of lose yourself in this feverdream of a world and solving the case becomes the focus.
I'd say this game is about 40% mystery and 60% vibes