MicroMacro: Downtown Detective review

 

  MicroMacro: Downtown Detective may just look like another hidden object game, but calling it that would be unduly reductive. I say this because underneath its veneer that makes it look like a Hidden Folks imitator is a set of ideas that may seem simple but completely changes the experience into a full-on detective game instead of something where you just tap around to try and find things.

Massive monochrome mysteries

The first key ingredient to MicroMacro: Downtown Detective's magic is its scale. Where other hidden object games may present scenes that can fit all on one screen and move between different ones, this game instead has one massive city drawing as backdrop to a number of mysteries you end up needing to solve.

The second piece is, of course, the mysteries themselves. With each challenge of MicroMacro: Downtown Detective isolated to a specific crime, your searching and tapping becomes directed around certain parts of the cityscape or only concern certain individuals. This keeps the massive scale of the drawings in check while also still giving you a ton of stuff to sift through to find what you're after.

And, last but not least, the thing that caps off this inventive combination is how the giant city drawing is illustrated as if multiple snapshots of the scene are superimposed on each other, which leads to situations where you can retrace a victim's actions, follow thieves making their getaways, and even uncover secret hiding places that otherwise you'd just have to stumble upon randomly.

Drawing conclusions

If all of this sounds complicated, don't worry. MicroMacro: Downtown Detective is very helpful in guiding you along and teaching you how it works, particularly in the early stages of the game. Once you've completed a certain number of cases, more start popping up, and even some additional sections of the city get added onto the starting drawing. The levels here can start to get really complicated and clever, but MicroMacro: Downtown Detective also--smartly--adds simpler challenges here and there that can feel like a nice palate cleanse or refresher.

For me, though, the real draw is the tougher cases. The things this game has you do to crack some of the hardest challenges are almost always surprising, delightful, and distinct from one another. Some of the appeal comes from the novelty of the reveal, though, so I'll only give a couple vague-ish examples to illustrate this point, like the need to make full use of the game's zoom function to see particular clues or finding things that unlock additional scenes within the base scene in a way that feels very on-brand for a game about solving crimes.

Limited landscape

It is this aforementioned zoom function that both helps MicroMacro: Downtown Detective's title make sense and allows it to be so easy to play on mobile. That said, it is also one of the few mobile games where its portrait-only orientation mode has actually proven slightly irksome to me. Many times when playing MicroMacro: Downtown Detective, I had backseat detectives (friends, family, etc.) who saw what I was doing and wanted to join the fun, and in those moments I wish I could have turned the screen to give us all a better view.

If that sounds like a reach for finding fault with this game, it's probably because it is. I had no other issues while playing and loved each and every case. If you're still not sold on this endorsement, it might also be helpful to know that MicroMacro: Downtown Detective is free to download and try out before deciding whether or not to plunk down $4.99 for the full game, which I definitely recommend you do.

The bottom line

MicroMacro: Downtown Detective's twists feel small and intuitive, but that's also what makes them so special. They feel like a natural evolution of a genre that has been in need of a shakeup for a long time, and transform the experience of looking for stuff in a drawing without overcomplicating or sidelining that simple act that is core to these games' broad appeal.