Ophelia Payne

Staffer Case: A Supernatural Adventure is, no surprise, a supernatural thriller. Comprised of a complex narrative, interesting characters and an intriguing setting, Team Tetrapod has brought something outside my norm for me to review. I wasn’t sure what to think about a supernatural murder mystery visual novel, but it didn’t take long for the Korean developer to capture my attention.

You play as Notrick (Note) Case, an American travelling to London for the first time. When you first meet the sharp-dressed man with a fountain pen curled into his hair, he’s sitting in a cab on his way to his new workplace. As the cabbie tries to upsell him by encouraging him to get dropped off right out front of the office (what’s a shilling more when you paid a handsome sum already?) Notrick eventually gives in to the nagging, but can’t remember the name of the agency he’s going to. This brings you to the first investigation section of the game and introduces you to the first skills you’ll need. You’re prompted to look at the documents you have, located at the bottom of your screen, to find the clues to the location. In this case, you have a letter of employment where you can find the name of the agency and the building you are going, as well as your employee ID. A few button presses to combine the clues, and you tell the cabbie the info you need.

While it’s clear that the setting is 1960s London, it doesn’t take you long to realize this isn’t a normal timeline. In this world, Pheno-mana permeates throughout people, animals, and objects, granting them supernatural abilities. Humans with this ability are called “Staffers”, animals are called “Creechers”, and objects are called “Staff”. Of course, you couldn’t have any supernatural abilities without some government organization trying to label, track and contain any of them who are deemed threats. They strike fear into most Londoners, explaining why the cabbie at the start stopped being pushy when he found out who Notrick was working for. They are corrupt and authoritarian and often involved in shady activities. Since London has the highest population of Staffers (approximately 10% of the population), it makes sense that they are headquartered there.

The Pheno-Mana Bureau has four levels of danger they can assign to someone: Unarmed, meaning harmless; Colt, meaning they have the danger equating a pistol; Estienne, equating the power of a tank; and Oppenheimer, meaning their threat to society is similar to that of a nuclear bomb. It’s important to note that these categories are based on their threat to society, not their destructive ability. For example, a Staffer who can change currency into more valuable options and also manipulate the minds of people so they don’t notice could be classified as Oppenheimer.

Notrick is joining the experimental investigations section of the Bureau; it’s a scrappy and understaffed division with minimal clearance, you find out. The first person Notrick meets at the Bureau is Pandoria Redfins. She’s cool-headed and aloof but also doesn’t mind bending the rules. Her Staffer ability is being able to read the memories of anything she touches, except humans. Next, he meets Detective Thena, who is hot-headed enough that she immediately pulls out her revolver as she doesn’t trust that Notrick belongs there. She can use vibrations to read heartbeats, turning her into a sort of human lie detector. Then comes Detective Bryan, keen to help others even at a cost to himself. He’s a bit of a pushover with the skill to see footprints and fingerprints as well as the time they were left. That leaves Notrick (also known as Note), who’s extremely intelligent but often so focused on details that he misses the bigger picture. He’s the only member that isn’t a Staffer (i.e. no supernatural ability), but his intellect more than makes up for that.

This new group must come together to solve five unique cases using all of their skills together. Each case can take between 2 to 4 hours, depending on how quickly you can solve the puzzles and which ending you get. Yes, it’s not just about closing the case; it’s about whether you got the correct ending for each case. If you don’t solve it correctly, you can go back to where the path deviated and try to correct your error and solve the case correctly. The game did an excellent job of respecting my time by not making me backtrack too far when I made an error. I appreciated that.

During each case, you will have a variety of documents from each of the Staffers on your team, Memories from Redfin, speech reviews with heartbeat analysis from Thena and Bryan’s print documents. Determining which documents and entries are most important is up to Notrick and is not straightforward most of the time. Does a witness have an irregular heartbeat because they are lying, or because they are upset that their boss was murdered? That’s up to you to decid,e for example. You can repeatedly make errors when combining evidence with no repercussions. Simply unmark them and try again. This made the game fairly stress-free. However, since the game really wants you to some up with what they deem to be the correct choice, I did have moments of frustration when clues definitely lined up, but they weren’t the combination that the game wanted me to make.

Staffers Case is so full of details that at times I found it a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of details, and even more reading onscreen. Scraps of evidence could seem insignificant, but have an overarching impact on the story. Even simple things like a small detail in the appearance of a character can be considered a clue. You need to look at everything.

Documents and clues are always easily accessible on your screen, and you can zoom in as required. There is also a handy hint system that will highlight the exact document you should be examining if you get stuck. You can also refer to text logs if you missed something during the dialogue the first time.

There is a lot of lore in Staffer Case, and I loved learning more about the Bureau as well as the back stories of the people I worked with. As evidence is constantly unravelling, there were many moments where I found myself suddenly hit with the fact that my theory of the case was now completely wrong and found myself rethinking clues I thought weren’t important the first time.

The music and the art direction set the sinister mood for the game. You can easily feel that you are working in the London fog in the 1960s. Each of the cases takes place at a different locale, and each feels unique and is so full of details. As mentioned briefly above, there is a lot of reading in the game, and if that isn’t something you are a fan of, you may find this a bit daunting at times. I am a fast reader, though, and was able to skip through the dialogue rather quickly. It is not fully dubbed into English.

Overall, Staffer Case: A Supernatural Mystery Adventure is a fantastic mystery visual novel, and I am hoping to see more of the series in the future.

**Review code graciously provided by Team Tetrapod and reviewed on Nintendo Switch**