Ophelia Payne

The Case of the Worst Day Ever. Sounds pretty dramatic, doesn’t it? Like that friend who stubs their toe, and now the world is ending. Honestly, this game might be more dramatic in the best possible way. We start with a family photo where everyone looks miserable, even the family pets. Each family member represents one of the ten cases/chapters, and we get to find out what made their day the absolute worst day ever.

Developed and published by a husband and wife duo at Hero Game Co, The Case of the Worst Day Ever is a straightforward point-and-click game where you survey scenes, gather words and use those words to fill in the blanks of the scenario in question. While all the clues are in each section, I still found myself struggling with some of the solutions, especially in later levels. I’m not sure if it’s because my brain got stuck on one solution and couldn’t fathom any others, or if the clues were a little more cryptic.

When you first start the game, you have the options to auto-gather the words as well as turn off the hotspot system that tells you where to look for clues or the indicator showing you how many words you are looking for. I left auto collect off, but left the others on. This was helpful when I could see I was still missing a word or two and found myself combing through looking for it.

Looking through the area to investigate, certain words will be highlighted. Click on the words to collect them. They will be separated into names, actions and objects. Once you’ve collected words, you can look are the solution page and start dropping them into the scenario to solve it. You can go back and forth as you find a word or wait until the end. I found it helpful when I found into to plug it in immediately so the info was fresh in my mind. This was particularly a good idea in later levels, where, not only were you trying to find the solution, you were also figuring out who each person was, where they sat in the office/classroom, etc. There were a lot of things to process.

Once you’ve entered the information, you will know if you’re correct or if you have made mistakes. If you have errors, you can use the hint systems or even have it highlight what is wrong. There is no penalty for taking hints or using the highlight (other than not being able to get certain achievements), and even sometimes when using the highlight system, I still found myself struggling to find the right words to swap. Not every word is used, and some can be used multiple times as well, making it more difficult.

The game is a steal at $12.99, and I really enjoyed it. I had been looking for something similar to The Case of the Golden Idol, and this definitely scratched that itch.

*Originally posted December 9, 2025 on The Hive Media*