Info about Kill The Clock:

Official game description:
Enter the shadowy streets of mid-1900s Europe as a vengeful protagonist, only to find your nemesis slain by another's hand.
Framed for a crime you didn't commit, unravel the mystery of your enemy's demise while navigating a web of deceit and betrayal.
With each playthrough, discover new killers and methods, all while racing to clear your name.
Will you solve the case, or become the next victim of a twisted game?
Key Features:
Looping Detective Game: Solve one case, and as time resets, immerse yourself in solving recurring cases to unveil hidden truths previously unknown. While the same victim always meets demise, the murderer and method differ, providing a unique and gripping experience.
Adventure: Explore diverse locations in town, gather case clues, engage in conversations, and track down suspects.
Interrogation and Mindreading: Detect suspicious cues during conversations, interrogate individuals with appropriate evidence, and expose concealed truths. Utilize psychic readings to fathom your opponent's true state of mind and leverage it to your advantage.
Dice-rolling: Customize your character's appearance, stats, and skills, then roll the dice to determine your actions. The success or failure of your skills dictates your actions and steers the storyline.
Multi-Ending: Each chapter boasts multiple endings based on your decisions, actions, and relationships with characters. Unravel repeated murders and unearth hidden conspiracies and truths!

Release date: Jun 4, 2025

Categories: Visual Novel, Detective Gameplay, Time Loop Mechanics, Dice-based Gameplay, Branching Narrative, Multiple Endings, Character Creation, Interrogation Mechanics


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price:
  - Community fair range: $15.00 - $25.00
  - Reasoning: The reviews describe the current price as fair value for the content and even cost-effective without a sale, while also noting that 1.0 may raise the price. The replayability from multiple solutions and varied profession abilities supports a mid-range indie price rather than a budget-only or premium one. Given no explicit USD figure, the consensus points to roughly $15-$25 as a fair base-game range, with the lower end reflecting current early-access value and the upper end reflecting fuller 1.0 content.
- Playtime Metrics:
  - Game completion: 2.0h
  - Story completion: N/A
  - Session length: N/A
  - Endgame: N/A
  - Reasoning: The first quote supports an approximate current-content completion/play length of about 2 hours, so gameCompletion is set to 2 with low confidence. The second quote indicates a player spent around ten hours with the game, but it does not specify whether the story was completed or whether that was a single session, so it is not assigned to a specific metric. The third quote confirms a player reached the end of Chapter 2 but gives no hour count. There is no clear evidence for distinct storyCompletion, sessionLength, or endgame values.
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes:
  - Mystery Visual Novel Story Seeker (buy)
    - Motivation: Uncovering the truth through a branching murder-mystery narrative and collecting multiple endings.
    - Playstyle: Reads visual novel scenes, makes relationship and investigation choices, and replays short chapters to see different outcomes.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: fan of murder mystery
    - Reference games: Ace Attorney
  - Dice-Check Build Experimenter (buy)
    - Motivation: Testing character builds and stat-driven dice rolls to influence investigation outcomes and increase replayability.
    - Playstyle: Customizes the protagonist's class and attributes, then relies on dice checks and success rates during investigations.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: N/A
    - Reference games: Baldur's Gate 3
  - Aesthetic Atmosphere Reader (buy)
    - Motivation: Immersing in the game's mood through music, character art, and a polished visual novel presentation.
    - Playstyle: Reads and listens attentively, appreciating scene atmosphere, art direction, and interface design alongside the story.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: N/A
    - Reference games: Coma
  - Early Access Content and Localization Waiter (no buy)
    - Motivation: Avoiding unfinished content or language barriers until the full game and preferred localization are available.
    - Playstyle: Checks chapter completion, update promises, and language support before committing; waits for future chapters or an official Chinese release.
    - Experience: mixed
    - Purchase stance: no buy
    - Labels: N/A
    - Reference games: N/A


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Attractive and fitting art style (weight 0.38): The art style is repeatedly praised as beautiful, fresh, and refined, with a simple yet effective retro early-20th-century European composition. It holds up well in-game and perfectly suits the atmosphere.
- Engaging and interesting story (weight 0.29): The story is described as interesting, hooking players and making them curious about what happens next. The plot is good and interesting enough to dive through.
- Enjoyable dice-based gameplay (weight 0.27): Players find the dice system tense, fun, and engaging, with dice-rolling TRPG mechanics adding randomness and meaningful character stats. The DnD-style randomization with customizable attributes creates varied outcomes.
- Game is enjoyable overall (weight 0.2): Players find the game moderately fun, enjoyable, and excellent overall. The game itself is very well done.
- Compelling characters with roles (weight 0.18): Characters are interesting, enjoyable, and feel like they each have their own role. They are pretty and add to the overall experience.
- Time loop adds replayability (weight 0.15): The time-loop mechanic lets players replay the same case to find different culprits and methods, adding rich replayability. Players can travel back to identify the culprit.
- Note-taking feature for characters (weight 0.13): Players can add individual notes to each character and take personal notes on character pages, enhancing engagement.
- Branching choices affect story (weight 0.1): The game features branching choices, including ones that work off previous chapters, with the story branching continuously based on choices and their success or failure.
- Fun character customization for disguise (weight 0.1): Character customization for disguise was fun, allowing players to freely change the protagonist's appearance.
- Helpful daily summary at hotel (weight 0.09): The daily summary at the hotel lists the day's events in detail and summarizes events and next day's plans, making progression smooth.

Common complaints:
- Save system limitations (weight 0.37): The game has only one autosave slot that cannot be overwritten, and saving is disabled during dialogue and option choices, forcing frequent manual saves. Save/load is also restricted to the investigation phase only.
- Incomplete story and early access (weight 0.35): Reviewers frequently note the game is in early access with only two of four planned chapters available, and the story ends on a cliffhanger. Many feel the narrative is unfinished and may never be completed.
- Poor gift-giving system (weight 0.3): Gift-giving is blocked after talking to a character when it should be available, and story progression pulls characters away before gifts can be given. No accessible place to buy affection items exists, and it is unclear if relationship progress resets after a loop.
- Weak detective mechanics (weight 0.29): The mystery element is not strong, with deduction feeling boring and spelled out. Players can break into houses and chat with police without consequence, and the profession system is poorly implemented.
- Lack of meaningful choices (weight 0.27): Each chapter follows a fixed progression, so it feels more like following a story than deducing yourself. The game gives many hints and redos, so it does not scratch a puzzle itch.
- Unbalanced skill usage (weight 0.21): Skill usage is very unbalanced, with persuasion and bribery dominating while skills like throw have only one opportunity. Low stats make dice rolls feel painful, and the psychology insight stat feels useless.
- Weak presentation and UI (weight 0.2): The fonts and UI are described as tacky, and the game does not pay enough attention to graphics and presentation. Main and supporting characters are not appealing at all.
- Limited replay and save support (weight 0.18): There is no chapter select, making it inconvenient to see different endings, and replaying chapter 2 requires replaying chapter 1 from the beginning if saves are overwritten. Ending images do not appear after seeing the endings.
- Awkward control scheme (weight 0.16): Movement controls are inconsistent, requiring different keys (e.g., F for movement in investigation, S on the map) for similar actions, which feels unintuitive. Navigation via hotkeys or arrow keys is also inconvenient.
- Localization issues (weight 0.15): Chinese localization was added but must be manually set each time the game launches because there is no Steam language setting. Some players also note the lack of Chinese support initially.
- Economy only through theft (weight 0.14): The economy structure only allows income through theft, and stealing midway has no consequences, making it trivial to steal everything. There are too few ways to earn money.
- Silly or unserious dialogue (weight 0.14): Some dialogue is silly or too comical, which reduces immersion, and the female protagonist's tone is sometimes unnaturally masculine.
- No romance or affection depth (weight 0.13): The game is purely investigative with no romance interest, despite almost flirtatious moments that did not lean into any of them. Some reviewers expected romance based on other visual novels.
- Developer communication issues (weight 0.13): Developers barely communicate or miscommunicate about progress and deadlines, and Chapter 3 was claimed to be finished but is not in the game.
- Unnecessary or flavor-only TRPG elements (weight 0.11): TRPG elements feel unnecessary because choices do not significantly change outcomes, and they currently function only as flavor rather than meaningful gameplay.
- Poor investigation object highlighting (weight 0.1): Investigation objects blend into the background with no highlight or read-mark function, forcing brute-force mouse sweeping. The cursor cannot be properly hidden in-game.
- Buggy demo transfer and achievements (weight 0.1): Achievements obtained in the demo did not carry over, requiring players to start over, and save data transfer from the demo caused the game to freeze on the loading screen.
- Dart game tutorial and mechanics (weight 0.09): There is no guideline for playing the dart game for the first time, with unclear mechanics and confusing disappearing darts. Players must listen to the dart game explanation every time in the secret club.
- Minor UI and settings issues (weight 0.09): The Esc menu defaults to settings, adding an extra interaction to save, and resolution and fullscreen apply buttons do not work in settings.

Gameplay feedback:
- Dice-based skill checks (weight 0.65): Actions are resolved via dice rolls combined with stats, skills, and other modifiers. The game uses a TRPG-style system where roll results determine success or failure and affect story direction.
- Character creation with professions (weight 0.59): Players select gender and one of five professions (detective, reporter, athlete, salesperson/merchant, artist), which impacts initial skills and abilities. They also allocate stat points and choose talents.
- Time loop mystery structure (weight 0.54): The game features a time loop where the player relives the same week to solve a murder, and after identifying a culprit, time resets and the culprit and method change. Each chapter represents one loop.
- Disguise and alias system (weight 0.31): Players can set a disguise and alias for the protagonist to gather information. The system is used to escape and investigate after being framed for murder.
- Multiple endings per chapter (weight 0.28): The game is designed with multiple endings, with each small chapter containing several possible endings based on stats and success or failure. Players can collect endings.
- Branching narrative choices (weight 0.27): Player choices and success or failure alter dialogue and situations, and affect how the story unfolds. Dialogue choices, stat checks, and dice rolls influence outcomes.
- Chapter-based release and setting (weight 0.25): The game is released in chapters, currently with four chapters (chapters 1 and 2 released). It is set in mid-20th-century Europe, specifically the 1950s.
- Deduction puzzle gameplay (weight 0.23): The game is a point-and-click deduction puzzle game with investigation mechanics. Players solve cases through deduction and chapter-based investigations.
- Gift-giving relationship system (weight 0.15): Players can give gifts to other characters to deepen relationships, which likely affects dialogue and story outcomes.
- Visual novel menus with details (weight 0.11): Visual novel-style menus provide detailed text for people, items, and evidence, covering characters, locations, items, attributes, evidence, and schedule.
- Free-form memo writing (weight 0.1): Players can write free-form memos on characters, allowing them to take notes during investigations.

Performance notes:
No performancepoints

Recommendations:
- Recommended for genre fans (weight 0.52): Many reviewers recommend the game to fans of visual novels, detective games, murder mysteries, TRPGs, and the Ace Attorney series. They find it fun and engaging for those familiar with the genre.
- Promising with interesting premise (weight 0.27): Reviewers find the game promising and the premise interesting, leading to overall positive recommendations. They support the developers and look forward to future updates.
- Mixed recommendation (weight 0.15): Some reviewers can only recommend it with reservations, while others recommend against buying. One regrets buying without trying the demo first.
- Wait for full release (weight 0.12): Some players advise waiting until all four chapters are released to avoid incomplete content. They suggest waiting for the full version if you prefer to play everything at once.
- English proficiency required (weight 0.11): The game is only suitable for players with good English skills, or they should wait for a Chinese localization. Non-English speakers are advised to wait for an official Chinese release.
- Good value at current price (weight 0.11): Reviewers consider the game worth buying at the current price, especially since the price may increase after early access. Some say it's worth full price but recommend waiting for updates and localization.
- Strong recommendation for story lovers (weight 0.11): Players who enjoy story-driven games, time loops, and decision-making with real consequences highly recommend it. It's praised as an excellent text adventure for fans of the genre.
- Worth trying in free time (weight 0.1): Reviewers suggest trying the game in your free time if it fits your taste. It's seen as a good work worth playing.

Other player notes:
- Early access two chapters (weight 0.97): The game is in early access with only the first two of four planned chapters available. Many reviewers note this limited content.
- Ace Attorney comparisons (weight 0.33): Reviewers compare the game to Ace Attorney, noting similarities in investigation and mechanics, but some find the UI less clean and story worse.
- Future chapters planned (weight 0.27): Chapters 3 and 4 are not yet released but are anticipated, with more content expected in the future. Episode 3 is planned for December.
- Developer Happy Slugs (weight 0.21): The game was developed and published by Happy Slugs. The developers are described as efficient, dedicated, and responsive to feedback.
- Responsive developer updates (weight 0.19): Developers responded quickly to feedback, adding 25 save slots and a chapter select, and changed the color of the bug report button. They are transparent about progress.
- Crowdfunded development history (weight 0.18): The game was crowdfunded on Tumblr and took a very long time to release. A reviewer backed the game and was satisfied with the support.
- Language support limited (weight 0.18): The game supports English, Japanese, and Korean, but no other languages are available. A reviewer asks about Spanish localization plans.
- Chinese localization added (weight 0.15): Official Chinese localization has been added and the quality is considered fine or decent. Some reviewers hope Chinese will be added in the full release.
- Time loop story structure (weight 0.15): The story unfolds over repeated time loops where the same murder is solved with different culprits and methods. The loop structure uses one loop per chapter, differing from Gnosia.
- Mid-20th-century European setting (weight 0.15): The setting is mid-20th-century Europe with bars, streets, and bartenders recreated in the art. Some also note Victorian-era vibes.
- Fair pricing expected increase (weight 0.15): The current price is considered fair for the content, with an expected increase at 1.0. Reviewers find it reasonable value.
- Good use of early access (weight 0.15): Reviewers feel the game is a good use of the early access program, with the first chapter more polished than some fully released games.
- Full release planned June (weight 0.11): The full release is planned for June next year, with chapters being added sequentially. The reviewer is waiting for the full release.
- Korean indie art style (weight 0.1): The game is a Korean indie game with an art style influenced by Korean aesthetics and reminiscent of the Coma series.
- Positive reviewer score (weight 0.1): A reviewer rates the game 9/10 for now, expecting 10/10 once complete. They wonder how everything will turn out.
- Short completion time (weight 0.06): The game can be finished in a couple of hours as an easy diversion, indicating limited content currently.
- No bugs experienced (weight 0.06): A reviewer reports no bugs, indicating a stable experience for some players.
- No voice acting (weight 0.06): The game currently has no voice acting, which may be a downside for some players.
- DLC disguise content (weight 0.06): There is DLC that adds disguise content, offering additional gameplay options.

Emotions:
- Anticipation (weight 0.13): Players are looking forward to future chapters and the full release. They are eager to see how the story continues and what mysteries about the protagonist and family will be revealed.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.11): Players enjoy the well-implemented mystery, the TRPG-style dice mechanics, and meaningful choices that affect dialogue and outcomes. The art, music, and character customization add to the fun.
- Disappointment (weight 0.1): Players are disappointed by the game's incomplete state, with only two chapters available and missing features like romance and affection-building. They also find the story predictable and the deduction mechanics underutilized.
- Excitement (weight 0.08): The tense dice system and time loop mechanic that changes the culprit each cycle generate excitement. Players are thrilled by the unpredictable story developments and attractive characters.
- Frustration (weight 0.08): Players are frustrated by technical issues such as save system problems, awkward controls, and language settings that must be changed manually each launch. They also dislike frequent dice rolls with low-stat characters and the lack of later chapters.
- Curiosity (weight 0.05): Players are driven by a desire to uncover the murderer and the protagonist's secret. They want to see how the story ends and how their choices affect the outcome.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.04): Players are satisfied with the game's quality, including the decent Chinese localization and dialogue changes based on progress. The replayability from choices affecting information adds to their satisfaction.
- Appreciation (weight 0.03): Players appreciate the visible effort in story structure, well-balanced dice randomness, and high-quality cases with creative loop integration. They also value the developers' efficiency and dedication.
- Confusion (weight 0.03): Players are confused by unclear mechanics like the purpose of bribery and gifts, and the dart game lacking guidelines. They also find it odd that the adopted child acts acquainted with someone who never appeared.
- Engagement (weight 0.03): The time loop mechanic and clue discovery make each playthrough feel new, keeping players engaged. The branching dice system and layered mystery plot encourage them to unravel the mystery.
- Hope (weight 0.02): Players hope for quality-of-life updates and the release of remaining chapters. They also want to support the Korean indie game and look forward to the developer's next work.
- Intrigue (weight 0.02): The murder mystery with a supernatural time loop twist intrigues players. They are drawn in by the plot revelations about the incident and the overall premise.
- Admiration (weight 0.02): Players admire the flowery art direction inspired by Belle Epoque European art, the well-developed characters, and the serious atmosphere. The beautiful art style and mystery setting are particularly praised.
- Mild frustration (weight 0.02): Players experience mild frustration due to save restrictions during the action phase and sometimes weird controls. The gift option being blocked and history text readability also contribute.
- Fun (weight 0.02): Players find fun in the unpredictable outcomes of dice and negotiation elements, as well as going into the story blind and trying to figure out the plot. The character sheet, dice rolling, and combat add to the enjoyment.
- Interest (weight 0.02): The art was the main reason players got interested in the game. The fresh loop structure with changing details also sparked their interest.
- Annoyance (weight 0.02): Players are annoyed by the lack of romance, repeated dart game explanations, and the autosave slot overwriting a manual save.
- Amusement (weight 0.01): The dice-rolling mechanic leads to hilarious outcomes, such as resorting to violence, which amuses players.
- Delight (weight 0.01): Players delight in the TRPG dice-rolling gameplay and character customization.
- Captivation (weight 0.01): The excellent hand-drawn art and character portraits captivate players.}