Solve crimes as a time-travelling detective in this Where's Wally-like puzzler

Freshly announced puzzle game Crime O’Clock will be putting you in the shoes of a time-travelling detective when it comes out on June 30th, its release date seemingly perfectly timed (sorry) to coincide with Capcom's object-hopping time puzzle detective game, Ghost Trick. In all seriousness, though, Crime O'Clock looks to be its own distinctive beast (and not just because you seem to play as a rabbit). It has shades of Where’s Wally? (or Waldo, Wanda, Willy, Valli, and my favourite, Ali for international readers) as you’re given densely illustrated maps to navigate, and pick out key details in order to stitch together clues to solve cases. It could be very cool if all the right cogs click together.

Your investigations will take you through five different eras: the automated Steam Age, the mystical Atlantean Age, an Italian-inspired Information Age, the sandy Lost Age, and a futuristic, hi-tech one called the Aeon Age. That one promises “ruthless corporations,” so expect a couple of jokes pointing at our current timeline. I’m calling it the How Much Longer Do We Have Left Age.

Each era has its own big map to point-and-click on, and each of those said maps have their own time markers that you can skip through, helping you to solve cases of theft and murder by looking into the past, present, and future - if those concepts even mean anything to a time-travelling detective. Even though every time period has its unique crimes, there’ll be a common thread that connects all eras and develops over the course of the game/centuries, too.

With the help of your upgradable AI companion EVE, you’ll need to use your deduction skills to spot crimes, connect them to clues, and tag suspects in the environment. A minimal colour palette means that pops of colour can be used to guide your attention, without losing the expressiveness of Crime O’Clock’s cast of characters.

There's admittedly not a ton of footage to show off how this all looks in action, but I'm excited based off this premise alone. Crime O’Clock will be launching on Steam and Nintendo Switch on June 30th, and I’m sad we can’t skip forward a couple of months and play the game right now.