2010 · Adventure · Interactive

Casebook

Casebook is a modern FMV game set in New Zealand that takes advantage of the developer's proprietary image capture technology, which gives the player free reign to explore real world, 3D environments.

Released: 24 June 2010
Platforms: Windows
Genres: Adventure Interactive
Developers: —
Publishers: Big Fish Games
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: First person
Languages: English

About

Casebook is an episodic interactive movie point-and-click adventure game developed by New Zealand studio Areo Cinematic Games and published by Big Fish Games.

›Story

Episode I - Kidnapped

The Birchermann kids have it rough. Their mother's dead, their Step-Mother is a pill-popping soap star and their father's struggling with his demons - and now they've been kidnapped. You and Detective Burton are first on the scene, but untangling this one's going to be interesting.

Episode II - The Watcher

It looks like an open and shut case - a lonely young man in a bad part of town calls it quits. His body is found beneath the window that he jumped out. Just another rough day at the Skylark Apartments... right?

Episode III - Snake in the Grass

Detective Burton is outside the law, following a trail of unsolved crimes to a small town called Garden. As Burton grows more obsessed, its up to you to sort truth from fiction, because an old snakes been whispering in folks ears again

Keywords

crime

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The game is played from the perspective of a crime scene investigator tasked with solving a series of murders. The player is accompanied by a detective partner named James Burton. Players search for clues using a point-and-click system to explore various locations. Players are then graded on how well they searched and how many "hints" they used to uncover the evidence.

Environments are rendered primarily using Full motion video technology. Mini-games serve to break up the FMV segments.

Story

The plot is broken up into four episodes. Episode 0 acts as a demo for the game, with the player being asked to assist Detective Burton in locating his uncle's ashes. Episode 1 is entitled "Kidnapped" and tasks the player with investigating the kidnapping of the Bichermann kids. Episode 2 is entitled "The Watcher" and concerns a purported suicide attempt by a young man in an apartment building. Episode 3 is entitled "Snake in the Grass" and concerns an assortment of cases occurring within a garden.

Reception

Each episode of casebook received moderately positive reviews, with reviewers praising the game's revival of FMV technology while criticizing the game's mini-games as tedious and not interesting.