It's 1971. You're Perlman, a renowned investigator living in a small apartment with your dog (which, yes, I should say upfront that you can pet as often as you like), casually going about your job and occasionally looking out of the rain-soaked window at the city below. One day, you are contacted with a mysterious request: would you like to bring a secret network of Nazi war criminals known as The Ratline to justice? The answer is, of course, yes. This is a case many a detective would love to sink their teeth into.
In The Ratline, each morning, a secret folder of documents will be slid under your door. The goal is to flick through the dossier - stuffed with notes, photographs, newspaper clippings and the like - and work out each criminal's last known alias and location, plus a photograph to go with it. Finding each criminal is an international affair, and you're tasked with digging through library archives for news articles and documents, searching each photograph for potential clues, and making phone calls. You can pin each document to your trusty pinboard, and you can examine every piece of evidence closely (and even flip them over, in some cases). You can also place clue snippets side-by-side, letting you make comparisons when required.
The puzzles in the preview demo were surprisingly challenging. There are clues from the first case that you'll need to bring up again later in other cases, and making connections will involve closely examining faces and re-reading transcripts from each phone call you make and chasing up each potential lead, no matter how small. Luckily, you'll have an index of all clues discovered across all cases, which was handy in the three you can try out in the demo. It will certainly put you through your paces, and these are only the first few cases (ignore my accidental rhyme). I'm intrigued to see how much the difficulty ramps up as the game progresses. Aside from the first case, which acts as a tutorial, The Ratline keeps in line with other hands-off detective games in that it won't push you in the right direction, necessarily, but rather wait for you to make connections yourself. It was nice to have some genuinely thought-provoking puzzles to tackle.
One major key to your sleuthing is the Rolodex; there are a lot of numbers in there, but only a few will be relevant (or, indeed, actually answer the phone). I enjoyed the tactile nature of making phone calls in The Ratline, having to type out each number myself, there's satisfaction in calling the right number and finding a bunch of new clues on your pinboard. There's a neat little reference to The Roottrees Are Dead in a conversation you'll have involving a dental conference. This made me smile, because the nature of The Ratline already reminded me a bit of the Roottree family saga, and I'm sure there are probably other puzzle game references in there I haven't picked up on yet.
I've played two other games from developers Owlskip (Riley & Rochelle and Echo Beach, both of which I'd recommend for Thinky readers). The Ratline reminds me mostly strongly of Riley & Rochelle, a narrative puzzle game steeped in '90s pop culture. One of my favourite things about Owlskip games is the strength of the writing. Every game I've played of theirs is witty, smart, and genuinely fun to dive into, packed with references from whatever era the game is set in, and with interesting characters you want to find out more about. From what I played, The Ratline is the same, which is brilliant. What pushes me through more difficult puzzles is the satisfaction of advancing a narrative I'm genuinely invested in, and I can see that the ongoing story here will keep me going even when I get stuck.
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We don't get to see a lot of Perlman in the preview demo, and I'm hoping we can get to know him more in the full game. I also would have loved to see voice acting for The Ratline; one of the things I loved most about Riley & Rochelle was the voice actors, because they really brought the writing to life. But regardless, from what I've played, The Ratline is a very promising detective game. Definitely one to keep an eye on, especially if you enjoyed the deduction process of games like Home Safety Hotline and The Roottrees Are Dead; it'll stretch your brain in a similar way.
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