Little Noir Stories: The Case of the Missing Girl

It all began with a mysterious envelope. An envelope containing nothing more than a photo of Anton and Amelia from a last year's case. But in the background, on the top floor window there was a silhouette, circled and with a message saying to save the girl. It could be a prank, or it could be something more, but with nothing else to follow on, the building in the background is the only lead to check. The player controls both protagonists in the game. One one side, Anton Muller, an ex-cop who is spending his days of retirement as a private investigator, and on the other side, Amelia R. Chandler, a young dame coming from a wealthy family who decided to team up with Anton and become a professional sleuth.

The story is split into chapters and the game offers two gameplay modes which can be switched at the beginning of each chapter. The classic mode focuses on hidden-object and puzzle games while minimizing character interactions, while the novel mode gives more substance to dialogues and storytelling making the game look more like an adventure than just a puzzle game. The bulk of the gameplay consists of searching for hidden-objects, but not so much as seeing a bunch of unrelated objects on the scene. This game is closer to an actual adventure game and has inventory where you can use or combine collected items. Also, hidden-objects scenes aren't always a single scene as things you are looking may lead you back and forth between the scenes and dialogues with other characters.

While the game features voice-acting during chapter openings, regular dialogues with NPCs are text-only. There are no dialogue options to choose from, but every now and then you can select the approach (friendly, threatening, pressing, etc.) in the conversation which will play in your favor or not, but either way will progress the game forward. Beside hidden-object gameplay which is intertwined in the story, various puzzle-based mini-games are also present, such as rotating elements to assemble the picture or finding the difference between the images. The protagonists carry a diary with them where you can examine gathered info and clues, learn about characters you met so far, and check the chapter progress. The game also features a location map which lets you reach different areas of the building you are exploring.