Parker & Lane: Criminal Justice – Review

Gamehouse definitely has some creative minds. Parker & Lane Criminal Justice is the latest Snuggford spin-off, and an unconventional one at that. Detective Lily Parker just got assigned her first murder case! Help her team up the defense attorney Victor Lane to solve a streak of murders plaguing the city!

Parker & Lane Criminal Justice presents itself as the very first detective-themed Time Management game. Instead of serving various customers, preparing different dishes, or farming all kinds of plants and animals, Parker & Lane has you solving murder cases. The game takes you on a journey through all locations relevant to a detective’s job; from the crime scene itself to the police station, and the forensics lab.

Even though the concept of the game might be foreign to the genre, seasoned players will have no trouble getting started due to the familiar elements from all the other games in the Snuggford universe. As expected, the gameplay is story-driven and the objective changes level to level. Your main task in each level is to assign the incoming agents or investigators to the appropriate spots and at times, help them perform their tasks through pop-up mini-games.

Despite the developer’s commendable effort and creativity, we do not think this format of gameplay is effective for a murder mystery storyline. The setup of a Time Management game forces the storyline to develop relatively slowly, which takes away from the urgency and the thrill of a murder mystery. Parker & Lane Criminal Justice also contains an overwhelming amount of dialogues, even the extensive conversations in some of the Delicious games did not prepare us for this.

Parker & Lane Criminal Justice comes with 60 story-based levels, all of which are fairly easy to complete with three stars if you can keep up with the frenzy clicking. The game also includes some challenge levels that allow you to compile your own “casefiles”, a very neat idea. Apart from that, there are the usual features like the hidden mouse, achievements, and even a few “endless levels”, but multiple difficulty modes are not available.

We appreciate what Parker & Lane Criminal Justice tried to achieve with its unique approach to the Time Management genre, but the execution could definitely use a little brush up for the next sequel.