The interlocked Fellow and Pointer families live in a big home on the shore of a lake that’s an abnormality in nature. Suddenly, the daughter of one of the families, Freya Fellow, is murdered while trying to paint a portrait. She’s the only member of the extended family that nobody has any outward issues with, and the crime scene makes it look like a ghost murdered her, so nobody can even guess who killed her and how. And so, a Detective Grimoire arrives at Tangle Tower with his assistant Sally to dig into the crime…

Tangle Tower is a 2019 adventure game by SFB Games. You might know them from Crow Country, a loved horror game that came out earlier this year, or Snipperclips, which I remember was an early indie darling on the Nintendo Switch. Personally, I‘m more familiar with Haunt the House as one of the things I played during my flash game era with stuff like Epic Battle Fantasy. Tangle Tower… is also a sequel!

Now, when I started playing Tangle Tower, I was unaware that it was part of a series. Honestly, I have no idea how I got Tangle Tower. Maybe it was something I saw on a discovery queue once, liked its vibes, and bought it when it’s on sale. But honestly, that’s fine. Besides Sally being from the previous game, the story of Tangle Tower is pretty standalone.

Tangle Tower is a really nice looking game with lush backgrounds and strong character designs. While the first Detective Grimoire game had stylings closer to Haunt the House, Tangle Tower has a bolder, more comic style. All the characters have distinct looks that perfectly captures who they are, and they also all have nice, bouncy idle animations. Percival Pointer is probably my favorite character to look at – he’s very animated when he goes on rants, which perfectly captures that this is a guy that wants to look smart. When you finish the game, you unlock an art gallery that goes into the design process of each character and shows early designs inching their way to their final forms. I really recommend taking a look when you finish the game.

Now, the characters look good, but how do they act?

Grimoire has a sincere passion for wanting to do detective work, as goofy as he is – however! He’s not very smart. Not exactly an idiot, because he does do puzzle bullshit and will find the truth one way or another; like, I think he’d figure out Light Yagami was Kira but have no idea about the Death Note or its mechanics. Sally in the meantime covers his blind spots and keeps him humble; Sally doesn’t seem as passionate as Grimoire, but she’ll take the job seriously when she isn’t casually ribbing him. When things do get serious, they’re both firing on all cylinders together. I do kinda like their dynamic, especially whenever Sally decides to drop being serious to joke around with Grimoire when interacting with some environment stuff. I’m just kinda wondering how on Earth they started working together, considering that she was just another suspect in the previous game.

Together, they start out digging into the people of Tangle Tower. The Fellows and Pointers are varied and have their own, smaller issues that keep coming up during the course of the investigation that reveal deeper things about them. Felix Fellow seems like a weird glory hound, but he does have a sincere love for his family that’s somewhat tempered by a midlife crisis. Fitz Fellow seems creepy, but he’s just more passionate about gardening than anything else – and his fiance doesn’t seem to understand or care that he expresses his love to her through plants. Poppy Pointer also initially just seems creepy, but she proves to be one of the more empathetic characters that’s just kinda in a phase. Percival Pointer is a nerd, but really, you don’t understand how much of a fucking nerd he truly is. There’s one definite thing about the larger family as a whole though: there may be some bits of sincere love in there, but everyone’s dysfunctional – with the murder victim being the closest thing to an exception.

To help flesh out the characters, there’s a whole lot of flavor text. Everyone has dialogue for almost every profile and piece of evidence you present to them – well, except Flora Fellow, but she kinda just doesn’t talk. The characters usually won’t take Detective Grimoire further in his investigation with the stuff he presents them, but they sure have something to say about it. As somebody that loves flavor text in games, Tangle Tower hits for me.

What makes it truly impressive though is that everything is fully voiced. Normally you’d expect voice acting to only be kept for important conversations, but everyone’s got a fully voiced take on things like Felix’s painted statuette of himself. Fifi sounds mousy and usually tries to carry herself with a neutral tone, but dips into something more morose when the topic of Freya comes up. Penelope Pointer talks and feels like a celebrity displaced from an earlier decade, but her presentation slips when presented with evidence she feels emotional about. Fellow detective Hawkshaw is blunt and no-nonsense, but feels accusatory when she’s judging Grimoire. Unsurprisingly, you’ll be hearing Grimoire and Sally a lot, Grimoire carrying an inquisitive, sometimes goofy tone while Sally’s is more detached – but when they’re locked in, they’re all serious business. The voice acting is a really phenomenal part of Tangle Tower and helps sell the game to me.

Now, how will our detective duo be locking in? Besides talking up suspects and looking for clues, they’re doing puzzles. It’s incredibly funny that there’s only one thing in the game that’s locked normally while everything else gets locked away behind some puzzle bullshit. The puzzles are all different and easily understandable; if you do have trouble, Grimoire and Sally will spout hints when you put in wrong answers. There are conversational puzzles where they’ll construct sentences with the clues they’ve been finding to spout facts and ask questions, but there’s no problem if you’re having trouble and haven’t already figured it out yourself – you’re allowed to try over and over, with the game giving you hints on which parts of the statement you already got right. There’s no failure state in the game, it’s just a matter of how long it will take you to reach the end of the mystery.

And how does that mystery come together? Well, after interviewing the suspects, our duo comes to the conclusion that everyone’s alibis seemingly line up. The investigation becomes more of a matter of digging into other things around Tangle Tower, no matter how seemingly minor or unrelated, which will open new avenues for the duo to explore. The murder method and motives for the murder is the mystery to work toward, but it’s entirely possible to guess who the murderer is when you start to identify frays in a certain character about midway through. Looking back on the story after finishing it, I do feel that the mystery comes together nicely.

Though, I feel that somebody would ask, “wait, how did this character get from here to there so fast?” Brother, there is a living beetle made of solid gold. It’s fine, the story all comes together if you aren’t a pedantic CinemaSins nerd about it.

Adventure games have really been in vogue this year, with stuff like Famicom Detective Club games and Ace Attorney Investigations coming out. If you’re looking for another adventure game kick, I do recommend checking out Tangle Tower. SFB Games has a demo out for the next Detective Grimoire game, The Mermaid Mask, which carries on the presentation style of Tangle Tower, so maybe consider checking that out, too.