First I should say that this review is based only on the murder story starring our beloved Josie, whose dreadful end is schedule for three days later having begin the story.
Positives :
- The concept is interesting and, as far as I know, quite new. There are some other phone chat apps out there, but few of them are real-time stories. But this also has a flaw : how can you be sure that you will still be engaged three days later? At some points, I couldn’t care less about what was happening to her. Which makes me think, I’d advise to keep only the badge notification, as a banner of your fake ex-boyfriend message can get you into troubles.
- It’s not only text messages, there are also stories (as in snapchat), videos and fake journal articles. The diversity of material is clearly a positive feature.
- You can access the entire phone of the person. To be honest, it’s quite disturbing, sometimes you might end up thinking why the hell you’re looking at their private stuffs and you feel kind of not in your place. But that’s why you downloaded the app in the first place though.
Negative :
- The key system. After all, it’s not really that much of a bother. The convos you access with them are of minor importance to the story. It doesn’t add any new elements, but just sheds light on the past of the person whose phone you sneak in, just in case you want some more background information.
- The storyline. This is the major flaw. Again, it’s based only on one story. But the plot has zero twists, and you can see everything coming from miles away. In a crime story, I was expecting more dead-ends, more tension, more side plots that would actually reach a conclusion. The focus is clearly on the main storyline, and it’s built up quite slowly.
- I didn’t really feel any tension or anything. That’s the main flaw of the multi-day design : you don’t really feel empathy with the main character, as sometimes you get the notifications while doing something else. Perhaps playing it at one time only during the day to catch up with everything would be more efficient.
Overall, interesting design, nice features, but the story is really slow without any twists. But worth a shot.