It’s October! And that means another Halloween-esque game analysis! While this one isn’t technically based around Halloween, I figured the main subject of ghosts and possessions was close enough. So, let’s get to it!
I believe I’ve mentioned in the past that the Nintendo DS ushered in a golden age of “weird” games. Games that didn’t quite fit the norm in terms of gameplay or genre. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (GTPD) certainly fits that description.
While some might classify it as an Adventure game, or some might simply call it a puzzler, heck, some might even say it’s a visual novel; I don’t think any of those titles quite justify this unique and wonderful experience. All that said, it is not really all that complicated of a game, it’s simply… different from anything I’d experienced before then.
In GTPD, you take on the role of Sissel. I’d say more, but there’s just two problems. One, Sissel has completely lost his memory. He can’t remember who or what he is. In fact, he doesn’t even remember his own name. And two, Sissel is dead.
Yep, much like Marley, Sissel was dead: to begin with. And with absolutely no memory, all this poor spirit has to go on is observations of his immediate environment. He sees three things. A young red-haired woman, a blue man dressed all in black pointing a shotgun at the woman, and the corpse of a man in a red suit laying on the floor of the platform, which gets knocked off said platform by a stray black cat.
Making the obvious conclusion, Sissel realizes he must be the corpse with the ridiculous hairdo. However, Sissel barely has time to register all of this before things get even worse, as the man in black shoots the young woman dead, right before his shaded eyes.
Sissel may not be able to remember a thing, but he knows enough to know that what just happened wasn’t right. It’s then that he hears a new voice. Instructions telling Sissel that he is special. That he can prevent this tragic death. Much to Sissel’s shock, a talking desk lamp tells him that he has special powers known as “ghost tricks.” Using these ghosts tricks, he can, among other things, Enter the corpses of the dead, and travel back in time four minutes to prevent the death from happening. Unfortunately, Sissel cannot use these tricks to prevent his own death, for some mysterious reason, but the lamp informs him that the young woman, Lynne, is the key to Sissel discovering the truths behind who he is, and how he died.
However, there’s only one catch. The lamp informs Sissel that he only has one night. After that his spirit would cease to exist.
Not really understanding everything, Sissel agrees to try out what the floor lamp suggests and save the girl. And this is where the game really begins. Through Ray’s instruction, Sissel learns all of his new tricks.
First, let’s talk about how you move around as a ghost. Being a ghost, Sissel has no physical body, and therefore can’t simply walk around as he pleases. He must “possess” objects around him, and manipulate them to create pathways of a sort. Not every object can be possessed, only those with “cores” (small glowing white circles). These cores are only visible while Sissel is in the “ghost world.” In gameplay terms, this simply means the difference between a press of a button.
On the touch screen (almost all gameplay is done via touch screen, and in this case, it works quite well), there is a button that allows Sissel to jump between the living world and the ghost world. This is nothing more than a change of color on the screen, technically. In the ghost world, everything is bathed in red, time has stopped, and Sissel and the cores are visible to the player. To move about, the player simply drags a line from Sissel (a small blue flame) to a core. Think connect the dots. The biggest trick though, is that Sissel’s reach is tragically short. So getting around is not as simple as one might think.
But this all plays into the puzzle aspects of the game. While some might view movement as a puzzle, irritating, I found it to simply be a part of the overall challenge of the game. Almost all gameplay is a puzzle to be solved, and while some of those puzzles can be difficult, they are never without a solution that can’t be figured out with enough critical thinking. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back to the ghost tricks. So, movement, fairly simple. So, let’s talk about what else you can do. When possessing certain objects, you can manipulate them in very specific ways. Once in an object, you must re-enter the living world, in order to manipulate it. This is done by pressing the “trick” button on the touch screen. Doing this will cause the object to react in whatever way it says it will on the top screen. As each object is different, it would be impossible for me to list all the possibilities here, but just know that manipulating everyday objects is the key to solving puzzles in GTPD. It may not seem like much, but such mundane tasks as opening an umbrella, strumming a guitar, and releasing a wrecking ball are all crucial elements to stopping murders in GTPD. It’s all about knowing how and when manipulating an object will solve a certain puzzle.
Now, let’s talk a bit about that whole going back four minutes thing. As that is indeed a crucial element to the game, but not one that is exactly as it sounds.
When you enter the corpse of a newly killed person (more often than not, you’ll be preventing Lynne from being killed [she’s got some seriously bad luck]), you’re shown a short cut scene of how that person died (for the record, the cut scenes are never literally “four minutes,” just want to get that out of the way right now). After watching the murder/accidental death, you’re given free roam over the scene, able to manipulate objects in an attempt to prevent the death from occurring.
Of course, you must do this before your time runs out (I think the actual game time limit of preventing a death is four minutes, but I’ve never actually timed it, and time is represented by a vague hourglass, so I’m not sure), otherwise the person will die. Being a video game, though, you are free to start over as many times as you’d like until you figure out the correct solution. The events leading up to the death will simply play out as often as you need.
Some deaths are more complex than others, naturally, and so it requires more than one simple change or object manipulation. When this happens, and when you successfully change someone’s immediate fate, but not yet prevented the murder/death completely, you will get a “fate changed.” What this means in gameplay terms is a checkpoint. If you need to start over, you don’t have to go all the way back to the beginning, but rather back to the point where you changed fate initially. Fate changes also add time to the ambiguous hourglass counting away the minutes until the victim dies.
As I’ve said many times now, some of these puzzles can be very tricky. Luckily, the game offers generous amounts of hints via conversations between Sissel and the spirit of the person(s) he’s trying to rescue. These hints come in the form of speech bubbles that appear at the top of the touch screen. What’s really nice about these, though, is that they’re completely optional. If a player does not wish to receive help, or simply doesn’t care about text/narrative in games (these people are called monsters, by the way), they can disregard the speech bubble and continue playing by themselves.
Oh, there’s one other ghost trick, our protagonist can perform. As I mentioned earlier, getting around as a ghost is certainly not easy, what with having no body. And the entire game does not take place in just one area. So, how does Sissel get around an entire city in just one night? Phone lines. For some inexplicable reason, Sissel can possess phones and travel to other phones, but only to numbers that have been connected. Sissel has to be possessing a phone receiving a call, in order to learn the number of the caller before he can travel to caller’s phone. It’s a little strange, but so is the entire game. The abilities of ghosts don’t make a lot of sense, but they don’t really need to. It’s absurd, and the game recognizes this. In fact in embraces it. And it’s all the more charming for it.
Speaking of ghost’s abilities. There are a couple other spirits with special powers that Sissel meets in this strange journey of his. The first is Missile, the multi-tailed Pomeranian.
Missile has powers similar to Sissel, but they differ in certain ways. For one, Missile cannot manipulate objects. But he can swap objects with other objects of a similar shape. He also has a much longer reach than Sissel. Obviously, these different powers come into play, later in the game, when Sissel and Missel team up help Lynne and the other cast of misfits in the game, all for the sake of Sissel finally regaining his memory (at least, according to Sissel).
From a gameplay perspective, the devs were smart to make some key differences in playing Missile. When he’s playable (he’s not always around), the player can swap between Sissel and Missile with the press of a button on the touch screen. In Missile’s ghost world, everything is green. This makes it a lot easier to differentiate which ghost you’re controlling at any given time.
Also, unlike Sissel, Missile can only perform his ghost trick, called “swap,” while still in the ghost world. This is most likely due to the fact that swapping objects in real time is just too difficult (and sometimes impossible… not sure I could swap a bullet with a yarn hat in real time…).
Technically, there is a third spirit with ghost tricks, but the player never actually controls him. His name is Yomiel, and is the real man in the red suit. Plot twist! Turns out Sissel isn’t who he thought he was. In fact, Yomiel plays the role of the villain for most of the game. In an incredibly convoluted story, Yomiel was “killed” ten years prior, and has been working tirelessly to get revenge on Lynne and others, setting the events of the night into motion.
However, Yomiel has a change of heart late in the game, and joins Sissel and Missile in the final puzzle of the game. Using his own unique powers of manipulating living creatures, he pulls off a deus ex machina to save the day, preventing his own death ten years prior.
Mechanically speaking, the game isn’t all that complicated. Possess objects, manipulate them, save a life. Rinse, repeat. But the ways in which you need to save lives are increasingly difficult, and increasingly fun. The puzzles are clever and very well thought out. And the game is simply a delight to play. I don’t see “weird” game’s like this too often, these days. But I wish I did, for they are a rare treat for anyone willing to try something new and different.
