The Elevator

Playing a detective in video games can be a lot of fun under the right circumstances, especially if you are free to conduct your investigation and find the answers by yourself. Violence and gruesome imagery are also part of the picture most of the time, because it’s fairly difficult to talk about crime while keeping the experience clean and welcoming to all players.

The Elevator is an interactive visual novel in which you play the role of a pretty jaded detective as he goes through life trying to help people and put the bad guys behind bars. The game is not as interactive as a true adventure game, but every now and again you can make a choice that affects the course of the story. The atmosphere is pretty engaging for a detective story.

As mentioned before, the main character is so used to violence and dead bodies that he barely flinches anymore at the sight of a murder victim. This takes his toll on his mental health, but the actual story starts when he meets a woman in the elevator he takes to work every day. Thus, the relationship between the two evolves based on the interactions they have as the elevator makes its way to the top.

Since the game takes place in a somewhat sci-fi environment, there are some unusual pieces of technologies you can interact with along the way, but the elevator itself is very old and slow, which allows you to have fairly long chats with the woman in question. On the other hand, you are also working on a case at the same time, and the two subplots might intersect every now and again.

Although there are times when the whole screen is nothing but text paragraphs, you can admire a few CG backgrounds as well, each one of which is drawn by hand. This helps a lot with the atmosphere, even if the number of artwork pieces is quite small, which can make them rather repetitive. The soundtrack is decent as well, so the experience can be pretty immersive.

In spite of its simplicity, The Elevator has its charm, and it can keep you engaged from start to finish if you are a fan of detective stories. The romantic subplot is very well-designed too, especially when you consider the weird circumstances.