Suspects: Mobile Detective Reviews

Years ago I played Last seen online when it was a stand alone game. The experience I had with that version of the story was great. The story felt intriguing, you were drawn in, and it felt very real. I would say the game had a real emotional impact on me. It felt as if you were actually reading someones messages and solving a crime. The version that is in Suspects misses the mark. It lacks the personal connection and intrigue due to the way it is set up. It is glitchy. The videos and pictures don’t load. The way messages come in changed. It doesn’t feel like you have Amys phone just feels like an app. This is also exasperated by the use of keys and coins, makes it feel way less real. URND you had a great game but you butchered the experience. I understand you want to make money by offering the use of coins and keys but in my opinion, this version of the story was poorly executed. The coin/key system was also poorly implemented. Hopefully you make some changes to bring back the feelings of connectedness and intrigue the story once had.

The game was interesting for the first 3 hours because you have coins and keys to unlock texts/pics/vms/speed up time. After that it’s a drag. You have to wait HOURS for a text. I had to wait 10 hours (or spend 650 coins) for 1 text message so it’s more of a waiting game then an actual strategy game. They set it up like this so you will spend money but id rather uninstall, google it, and get on with my life. Waiting games are fine but the max wait time should be 2 hours MAX, 10 hours is redundant and annoying. Also the waiting is consistent. You get 5 text in 5 mins, get 1 text 5 hours later, 1 more text 10 hours later, 2 texts 2 hours later, then another 5 texts in 5 mins. You can watch ads if you don’t want to pay but you can only watch 5 ads and get 20 coins per ad but the max 100 coins will only speed it up about 30 mins. So unless you want to install a game and not actually get the opportunity to play it or you’re just wanting to throw out fat stacks on a mobile game, this game is for you.

So I found Suspects near it’s beginning and I have loved these stories. However the change from keys, to subscription only, to now coins has been much too aggressive.

I will say I really like the “watch a short ad” to open a convo up. However, I just started 10 miles from home, and there wasn’t a single background story to read before the first message without spending coins. You could read the main character before things went down, and it left too much to question on what the others were saying. Not one three could you go back in time! There was no really getting to know the character like before, and no catching up on previous messages unless you paid a couple coins for EVERY SINGLE ONE.

If I were a new person to this I would be sorely disappointed and have no idea what is happening. In the first 24 hours I didn’t get a relevant message that something had happened to the main character until I spent 225 coins on the main thread (band-camp), which in any other story that thread would have been included.

I support the coin/ad model, and would watch them to open up thread that used to cost keys. However you need to think a little harder about how your implementing it. If a watch an ad/coins model were available before I would’ve watched and opened every convo that was locked behind keys, I only reserved them since I couldn’t earn them easily. Now someone new can’t even understand what is happening.

This is a unique and creative way to experience crime fiction in a truly immersive way! The only problem is that the game’s glitches prevent the participants from fully enjoying the story by distracting and frustrating them. Everything depends on the use of coins, but the methods for obtaining free coins by watching video ads rarely worked during the first few days. The method for doubling daily rewards by watching ads also worked inconsistently.

It would help if a few instructions were updated to prevent readers from attempting to pause the story to look for a feature that no longer exists. Pausing the story causes the participants to lose time. The devs really have something here and should work on smoothing out the bumps to make it one of the best new ways to enjoy fiction!

This “game” is not a game. It’s a sit and wait for something to be solved for you while you waste time watching ads for coins that don’t actually help you advance.

If it’s such a mystery and you can’t wait for it to take 12 days to finish, find a spoiler online and get the story yourself. The first one dragged on sooooo slooooooowly that after day 3, I gave it up. You’re expected to unlock text threads and emails that may or may not give any hints on the situation going on. Once you’ve wasted the crap ton of coins you receive on the first day, you’re stuck paying money to essentially read a mystery or playing ads all day long. The purpose of a game is you’re interacting with and choosing. This doesn’t require anything. There’s no game whatsoever. If you just leave the thing alone for 9 days, it will advance by itself. So do yourself a favor and skip the silly Gen Z texting and unrealistic responses to tragedies and mysteries and go find someone who already did the work. You’ll find the ending and stop wasting time.

Absolutely LOVE Suspects. Im a nosy person and all for drama especially if its not mine & mysteries! I love how theirs different stories and scenarios to view. And i love the concept of viewing someone else's phone. The only down side i would have for Suspects is having to pay with coins for some texts, emails or calls. I like how you can view ads for more coins but the big disappointment is you can only view so many in a day. Therefore not being able to view everything without having to spend money. I would like an option of just maybe being able to view unlimited amount of ads at least to get as many coins as you would like, without having to spend money. Besides that one little flaw to me I LOVE the idea of Suspects, its very different & addicting. Veryyy creative, good job!

Hello.
I like this game. It frustrates me how long in between texts you gotta wait .. causing you to spend coin not knowing for sure if the next message will be worth it or not. You will drop money to speed up to the next text and it will be some random message - and then your back to another 1-5 hours to wait for the next message.

I tried to play with just free coins and keys.. but if you actually want to Unlock everything that’s available and to move forward you gotta buy some coin or keys.
Not saying unlocking everything is crucial to move on.. but it gives you more of the story. Some things you can definitely survive not unlocking. You will know if it’s important if that locked character is texting like crazy later on.

They did a good job making a twist in the first story. The only one I’ve read so far. You kind of felt it was someone from the beginning.. and you were like “ha. Predictable” then boom… huge twist. Like no way.

It’s a great game. I wish we could speed up the story without spending coins. Like.. make us watch a bunch of ads to speed up to the next text ?

I know you want us to buy things in the game - I get it. Just cut back on that need just a little bit ?

Costs are extremely high to only get a few coins per ad. I would be 100% more likely to continue playing if I could just unlock one thing per ad, not have to watch 10 ads just to unlock one thing. I won’t pay for coins, so now the devs are missing out on ad revenue just because they made it impossible to continue without paying real money. If I was going to pay for coins/keys, I’m still not going to spend the insane amount of money it would take for a single story, let alone all the stories on Suspects .

Additionally, I was playing Last Seen Online, the first story you get. I hadn’t even finished Day 1, but when I opened Suspects to continue, it jumped straight to the end cutscene and ruined the entire experience. Deleted Suspects immediately after because I’m not wasting time and money on an app that is going to spoil the entire story at random.

Nice try, devs, but it needs a LOT of work and balancing before it’s even worth downloading again.

I absolutely love this game, i’ve gotten so invested into the case i’m working on right now, all though you do have to wait from time to time for more message to come in or spend your coins which is somewhat easy to get but won’t last long and then your waiting again😂however it’s super fun it’s just like going through someone’s phone and i think i’ve got this case figured out i’m working on, however it won’t allow you to add friends at all i tried adding someone and it wouldn’t work even if i shared it through messages it still just wouldn’t look it up? idk that part i hope gets fixed because solving a case with someone would be fun! but other than that i have nothing else bad to say about it. i love it!

This is literally like real like as if you had her phone, I give it a 5 but k had to give it a 4 because you pretty much have to buy stuff just to read a story, and they only give you like 40 coins a day for your daily reward and can only receive 20 coins for each 2 min video you watch,. It should most deff be way more coins because lord know they’re making money off of every single video/add you watch, I just feel like you have to buy stuff to enjoy the game. Other than that I love it! Also if they could make each case with more pictures in their picture album, because only two cases so far has had pictures that I’ve started.. pleasemake it a way that we can get more coins!

So far (been “playing” for a week), I really like the story line. But I don’t see how this is a game, maybe I am not far enough ahead yet. But so far, the whole thing is just reading people’s texts and watching lots of ads to get coins to unlock content and read more messages as fast as possible. But that’s a pre-judgment, it could be that more user interaction comes later on.

1 note for improvement: REMOVE THE DETECTIVE CHAT. There are so many users who are not using the chat to help each other, but they’re giving spoilers “I am on day … and it’s … who did it.” Either remove the chat, or make separate chats for users that are on the same “day” in the game because people who are further ahead are spoiling it for those who just started. And it’s super annoying.

I love the concept of this game but OMG COME ON! I can’t do anything else unless I continue to pay for crap?! No thank you! I refuse to pay such a high cost for every tiny thing within a game and I can’t even earn the coins! I mean ads help pay right? And I’m just fine earning coins through ads but not have to keep buying junk. I was good and now I can’t do anything else with Suspects!! Probably get rid of it

UPDATE: I have to take back everything I said about this game! I LOVE it and apparently I was playing it wrong, my mistake!! Allow it to be in real time and it’s awesome! Only thing I wish it could do is give me messages like read them to me in the car as my real messages can… otherwise it’s great

I have had Suspects for a few months and just recently decided to pay for the 12 month subscription. It’s by far the best $3.00 a month for some enjoyable entertainment. You can tell that there is a lot of time and money that goes into creating these wonderful stories, so why not help keep the story writers and actors able to keep doing what they enjoy? I see a lot of complaints about the creators asking for money for the stories...I understand that not everyone has a disposable income but to expect them to give it away for free and dock them stars seems demeaning to me. I pay more money at Starbucks and at the movies in a month than an entire year for this subscription. Keep up the great work Unrd!

I like the game and the concept. Keeps me entertained while nothings going on. And the drama is fun to read about. But who in their right mind is going to purchase coins just to get through the game? I don’t care how many coins you’ll give me for .99 cents. If I wanted to move through the game as fast as possible I’d understand buying them. But this is a 7 day thing with texts coming in through out the day. So why make it so hard for us to read through conversations?

Update:
This isn’t worth the hype. It’s a cool concept but you literally can’t do anything unless you constantly buy coins. You can watch a few videos but it’ll barely be enough to unlock one message thread. You can’t even switch to a new story until more texts come through. Well....you can but you’ll still have no coins. So be prepared to spend a lot of money on this crap. So disappointed.

I am so impressed with the thoroughness of the world building & attention to detail in Suspects. I hope it really takes off. Not only is the story telling on par with my favorite psychological thriller books & movies, but the immersive experience brings it to a whole new level. It made my work week fly by! I love that it is done in real time (but that you can also use coins to speed up if you don’t want to wait). It really lets you enjoy the process. I cried at the end of the Amy story. Great writing. Great acting. You can feel the emotion through the phone. It was almost too much at times. Absolutely incredible! I will devour every episode that you guys put out.

So a) but not main the game does keep kicking me out here and there I think it’s also a lot of people of the serve so I can’t complain much there. B) and very important… I have to create a group to add people to the group. Now we have part 3 coming because it won’t let me add the others… and clearly pt 2 was cause I forgot to add a few people. Which by the way the adding as friends then group is hard for sure to keep up with when you have like 20 people in your group and adding. I and the others will still play… day 4 now 😂 because it is good and we love the concept but please fix as soon as you can would be very helpful for us!

Really awesome concept I love stuff like this. I definitely think it’s way overpriced though, and the amount of notifications you’ll receive throughout a story is absolutely maddening. If the characters are having a conversation your phone will be buzzing constantly. I get that the messages come in real time just like life but this isn’t life it’s a game and it’s honestly not fair to take over my phone like that. Send two or three notifications and then tell me I have to open Suspects to read the rest or something. Plus you get notifications for the character whose phone you have so it’s actually twice as bad. Still love the concept, I’ve done two stories, one was fun and the second one I didn’t like. I’ll keep an eye on Suspects though maybe come back when there are more stories see if anything is better. Super awesome in theory.

The game is such a cool concept! I love everything about it EXCEPT you have to use coins to unlock so many things and the only way to get coins is watching videos (20 coins each video, to unlock a text or next chapter is 200 coins but sometimes as cheap as 20 for something small) or to buy them. there’s waaaay too much that you have to purchase it’s not worth it. It’s a shame though cuz this would definitely be an amazing game if not for that!! I know they gotta make their money somewhere but their odds of getting someone to purchase a coin pack would be higher if there wasn’t so much locked up - it’s just frustrating and you’d need to spend serious (real) money to get anyway and no mobile game is worth more than 99¢.

All in all it was cool. Having the control, snooping about the missing persons phone. Hated the coins for individual messages if I am being honest. I rather pay a monthly subscription fee than for the info needed. I also think it would be better if we could guess the killer. Maybe buy attempts at guessing if we get x many wrong. I also would like a portion of Suspects to be the police files. Still want to see the friends reactions to draw out if anyone they knew did it. I think Suspects could be really awesome and also have a second purpose of teaching awareness (which in this model age everyone seems to lack).

This game is super heavy on pay to play. Everything needs coins. Coins to unlock past messages, to unlock conversations, to look at some pictures, emails and voicemails. The worse thing is that unlike most episode like games. This one has only one in game currency. You have to use the coins to unlock the next episode too. Instead of a different currency to unlock episodes. They also have no real great ways to earn coins if you are free to play. There is a few ads but not nearly enough. All of this is annoying and unfortunate because the story seems very real and interesting The texts you read seem realistic and not cheesy. I think if the developers took a step back on the massive amount of need for coins and/or offered more ways to earn coins without paying, this game could be great.

When I got the email that unrd came out along with a couple other series I was all over it was waiting for them to drop
Something new and I love it so far my only complaint that I have is I don’t know if its me but when I go into Suspects about I wanna say 2 mins or so the screen freezes up in one of the chat groups I’m reading and I can’t touch anything to exit out the chat I have to clear out the whole app and go in again this happens to me every once in a while which is not a huge deal just annoying sometimes.

I’ve been doing this since LSO was a stand-alone and have done all the stories that are out. I find them interesting and will keep doing them, although I have nitpicks, too. The realism suffers in almost all stories, either a little or a lot. Suspects glitches sometimes. Also, they need an American to check their US-based stories because they’re full of UK terms and expressions (or photos showing pound signs or double faucets). Many stories have live feeds—if you miss them, they’re gone. Of course, they have now moved to a subscription model, which has ticked some people off, but I think it’s worth the money (so far, at least).

My daughter and I loved Last Seen Online, so when Unrd showed up we were all over it. Yesterday I made a purchase of $5.99 for 50 keys on my phone and then a separate purchase on my daughter’s phone, also $5.99 for 50 keys. 50 keys were delivered to my phone, but my daughter’s phone never received her keys! I thought maybe it didn’t go through so I had her do it again and still nothing! The purchase for hers WAS made on her phone and we both received a receipt for TWO purchases of $5.99 made to her phone but she still has no keys. Can someone please help me resolve this? She should have 100 keys in there with there being two transactions!

Also, when you go to the “App Support” link and it’s a “404 page not found” it’s extra frustrating!!

I’ve been subscribed to Joe Sugg for some time now & I absolutely love him!!♥️♥️
When he started playing this game (explained what it was & stuff) I immediately knew I had to play this. It didn’t occur to me at first that this was an English game (I’m in America), but it doesn’t matter much 😂 As I type this, I’m getting notifications now from the Now Live story I’m playing, & let me tell ya.... it’s getting GOOD!!
Anyway, yeah I’m really liking this game so far & can’t wait to play more!

Thanks Joe!!!

I love the concept of this and you guys have really done it better than all these other apps! But 3 keys and only 6 to start with- is a bit rubbish
It should be to where you’re able to finish at least one story!
I’m deleting Suspects for now and when there are better ways to earn keys and a few of the glitches are fixed ( freezing and sending the same text messages over again) also I think there should be a setting to have it real time or not, if we’re paying out for it, some people just want to get on with it.

I will be back, once there is improvement.

I’ve been following the developer seen Last Seen Online. I love the concept. I hate that you no longer can get individual keys but I love Suspects so much that I bought a subscription. With that being said... Why is it that every time I go back into Suspects it’s updating and retrieving messages. Then when it’s done I have to restore my purchase EVERY TIME! I don’t always have service and I notice this apps works without it, but having to update and restore every time I open Suspects is a pain. Fix this.

I love Suspects, but I’m really disappointed that we can’t unlock individual conversations anymore, especially by watching an add. I feel that it isn’t fair to the users who really can’t afford to waste that kind of money on an app. I’m glad that you guys are growing, so now you are in a position to start charging people, but I don’t think it should be the only option. Your loyal users that can’t afford a package are really missing out on the opportunity to enjoy the stories more completely. I just think it kind of punishes people who don’t want to spend so much.

I was invested in this. Read on for about an hour or so. Then I read all the messages I could read without purchasing keys. How do you continue the story when you either have to purchase keys or wait an entire day for 1 key??? This is malarkey! I’m going to uninstall. All that time I was reading was in vein because I can’t even continue the story. It doesn’t tell you what to do besides read, so if I did continue to read all the messages (including the locked ones) what would I do next? Also the notifications are broken. It tells me I have new messages to read, and when I do, nothing happens....I’m disappointed. 🙁

So far Suspects has glitches several times. It will show a notification that I have unread messages and nothing will be there, Suspects will just freeze and shut down. There has also been glitches within chats between people. One person will text and then it shows that same person responds to their own text even though the words they are saying should be coming from the responder. I do love the concept and really hope Suspects fixes all the glitches! It’s hard to enjoy or really immerse yourself when so many glitches happen.

So I paid the $4 for an 8 day story and god is it slow. It wasn’t u til day 4 that anything happened and there is zero suspense. It’s realistic but almost too realistic they have to skirt a thin line between realism and enthrall storytelling and last seen online isn’t doing it for me. I feel empathy for one or two characters but overall I just don’t care. It’s mindless activity to do at work ever few hours. I was excited for this and I’m hoping other stories build more. I wish there were premium stories that had stuff mailed to you and had you geocaching or more interactivity.

First of all can’t wait for new stories to come. Finished my first story and I am loving it. Suspects is definitely a total upgrade from the original Last Seen Online, there’s variety and a feeling that I am actually reading messages from another person’s phone, something that I didn’t fully get in the other app. This is ultimately so much better than the other story apps out there.

Wanted to love this game. Absolutely loved Last Seen Online and was super excited to see a new app. Finished 1 story and am midway through another. Biggest and most annoying issue I am finding is that the game keeps getting “stuck” inside messages. This forces me to force close Suspects multiple times when multiple text messages are happening. Story’s also don’t synch. I find the the audio from one story leaks into another one. Hopefully these issues are fixed soon since this has the potential to be a great story telling game.

I enjoyed the “Last Seen Online” story/game so I downloaded this one but the stories aren’t quite as compelling and Suspects has continued to crash so much I’ve only been able to watch one of the videos in full so far. I think the ability to “unlock all” would be an asset for the keys, too, myself rather than making people guess how many they’d need for all of the stories; we won’t buy a random number not knowing if we’ll be buying too many or too few and most won’t go through the rating comments to find out how many to buy. Thanks!

I feel like u guys should let us watch ads to let us get keys or even add like a mini game in there for us to get the keys Becuz I only got one key and that was it and it’s not fair to make us pay for keys that u know we need to solve this I’m highly upset and might delete Suspects if no changes are made