Unheard - Voices of Crime Review Summary

Quality DLC offers a surprising story and innovative audio mechanics, but the campaign is too short and easy, with no subtitles.

Quality DLC praised: Players highly praise the DLC for its high quality, engaging story, increased difficulty, and substantial content. It is considered better than the base game by some and is well worth playing.

Surprising and compelling story: The game and its DLC feature surprising twists, especially at the end, which players find engaging and memorable. The story is interesting with interconnected cases.

Innovative audio-based gameplay: The game's unique mechanic of solving cases by listening to audio is frequently highlighted as innovative and immersive. This novel approach to detective puzzles is a standout feature.

Excellent voice acting: Voice acting is consistently praised for its quality, natural delivery, and use of dialects. It significantly enhances the immersive experience of the game.

Great value for money: Players appreciate the game's value, especially when purchased on discount, and note that the free DLCs add significant content, making it a worthwhile purchase.

Game is too short: The base game is very short, lasting only 1-3 hours, and even with DLC it feels limited. This is a common complaint across multiple clusters, indicating players expect more content for the price.

Development team disbanded: The studio disbanded, meaning no more updates, content, or sequels are possible. This leaves players feeling abandoned, disappointed they won't see more from this series.

Difficulty too low: The reasoning puzzles in the base game are too easy, making them feel unchallenging. Players desire a harder difficulty, especially after experiencing more complex DLC chapters.

No subtitles available: The game lacks subtitles for dialogue, including for accented or dialect-heavy parts, making it inaccessible for hearing-impaired players and tiring for others. This is a major accessibility oversight.

Game feels incomplete without DLC: The base game feels like a demo or incomplete without purchasing additional DLC, which is seen as a negative practice. Players are frustrated by this business model.

Audio-based deduction gameplay: The game primarily revolves around listening to audio conversations and sound clues to deduce information, solve mysteries, and progress the story. It requires active listening and note-taking to piece together fragmented information.

Detective and mystery focus: Players take on the role of a detective, solving cases by eavesdropping on dialogues, identifying characters by voice, and reconstructing events. The game is described as an immersive detective experience with innovative mechanics.

Base game simple, DLC harder: The base game is considered easy and serves as a tutorial, while the DLCs are significantly more challenging, with complex cases and higher difficulty. Many players feel the DLC contains the real content.

Suitable for passive listening: The gameplay is suitable for passive listening while doing other tasks, but it also requires active deduction for solving cases.

Spatial audio and directional sound: The game uses spatial audio technology to simulate realistic positional sound, enhancing the immersive experience of eavesdropping and locating audio sources.

Improve sustainable development optimization: Feedback highlights opportunities for better optimization to support long-term game development and performance. This includes ensuring resource efficiency and code scalability to maintain a healthy product lifecycle.

Strongly recommended overall: Overall, the game is strongly recommended and worth the money, even at full price for some. It is described as a good game with excellent value, definitely worth playing.

Great for detective game fans: The game is strongly recommended for fans of detective, deduction, and mystery-solving games. Reviewers highlight its appeal to those who enjoy logical reasoning and crime-solving puzzles.

Good for beginners and casuals: The game is recommended for casual players and beginners, especially those new to deduction games. It may be too simple for experienced players, but it offers easy reasoning suitable for novices.

Not for sensitive to swearing: The game is not recommended for players sensitive to swearing. It requires sufficient patience and tolerance for strong language.

Great for audio drama fans: Recommended for fans of audio dramas or radio dramas, as the game has a strong narrative focus that appeals to this audience.

Community fair range: $5.00 - $10.00.

Game completion: 8.5h.

Story completion: 4.0h.

Session length: 1.0h.

The game starts slowly with tedious audio listening and shallow early cases, but becomes deeply rewarding once players immerse themselves in the investigation, typically after the second case.

Friction: Tedious rewinding of levels to follow different characters; Long, repetitive audio recordings (10+ minutes) with no background noise; Demanding concentration and active listening with no visual aids; Frustrating controls and lack of polish; Boring, wandering gameplay for those seeking action.

Unlock drivers: Satisfying 'aha' moment when piecing together the full picture; Improved voice acting in later cases; Varied re-listens that reveal new details; Immersion in the story-driven, movie-like experience.

Deductive Puzzle Purist: Replays audio multiple times, draws relationship maps, and actively compares the game’s puzzle design to other deduction benchmarks. Motivation: Solving complex cases through logical deduction and comparison to classic detective games. Stance: buy.

Audio Immersion Seeker: Uses high-quality headphones, moves the cursor between rooms to follow conversations, and replays segments to catch subtle audio details (accents, background noises). Motivation: Experiencing a fresh, sound-based detective mechanic that relies on careful listening and spatial awareness. Stance: buy.

Casual Mystery Novice: Plays through in a few hours, uses the built-in note system lightly, and relies on obvious audio cues without needing deep analysis. Motivation: Enjoying a straightforward, low-commitment mystery game that doesn’t require heavy concentration or prior genre knowledge. Stance: sale.

Based on a single non-recommended review from a player with 8GB VRAM, the Windows <8GB VRAM cohort reports poor optimization and problematic feature additions that hinder playability.

Windows <8GB VRAM: negative. The only provided review describes unoptimized operation issues and a disruptive new feature, implying performance and stability problems.

Steam Deck: The game exhibits frequent crashes during cutscenes and completely lacks controller support. These issues are severe and directly impact playability on Steam Deck, even if some workarounds might exist.

Monetization: All user feedback refers exclusively to standard DLC (free and paid). There is no evidence of microtransactions, loot boxes, currency obfuscation, pay-to-win, or any predatory monetization. The only minor negative is about missing translations for paid DLC, which is a localization issue.

External guides: Players consistently mention needing walkthroughs or solution guides to progress, especially for the DLC, indicating a clear external dependency for understanding game systems and puzzle solutions.

Co-op mode suggestion with deception: A player suggests developing a multiplayer co-op mode with rooms and deception mechanics, indicating interest in social or strategic gameplay extensions.

Chinese IP and multimedia format cited: A review mentions Chinese intellectual property and a multimedia form of the game, though the context is unclear, suggesting niche or external references.