The Last Case of John Morley is a first-person detective adventure game. Developed by Indigo Studios, it was released on Steam and PlayStation 5 on 27 November 2025. Although it is presented as a detective adventure with a noir atmosphere, we soon discover that the only thing ‘noir’ about the title is the colour of the screen.
A cold case to be reopened
In The Last Case of John Morley, we take on the role of John Morley, a penniless private detective who has an unpaid assistant and a nasty injury that has forced him to convalesce in hospital for a long time. Cool, a hard-boiled title. It has all the classic clichés, and we can’t wait to solve the case.
Our character tells us that he suffers from nightmares caused by his previous case, and that he underwent a lobotomy to make them go away. It’s very strange, but it was 1946 after all — who are we to judge certain medical choices? We deal with video games.
In any case, our character wakes up and a kind nurse enters. We should ask her four questions. No choice will change the outcome of the dialogue. She informs us that our assistant has left us some clean clothes and a letter. The letter tells us that a client is waiting for us at the office, and that our assistant is resigning because she is getting married and hasn’t been paid for three months.
We are still convinced that the plot and gameplay of the game are heading in the right direction and will provide an excellent detective experience. When we arrive at the studio, we don’t even have time to gather our things when an elderly lady appears and offers us a large sum of money to take on the case of her murdered daughter, who was killed in the family mansion twenty years earlier.
We engage in a dialogue consisting of four questions, all of which must be asked without any branching or deductive intent. We are used to playing different detective games, such as Chicken Police, where the attitude of the suspects towards us changes depending on the questions we ask, which can misdirect the investigation. Another example is Murder Is Game Over, which, although less complicated, has a rational organisation of dialogue with witnesses and suspects.
However, we are proceeding with this game in order to unravel the plot and discover its deductive element. Perhaps we need to collect evidence and clues, take witness statements and develop our own hypothesis, as in Shadows of Doubt.
Maybe I chose the wrong game
Having secured the assignment, and feeling excited by the large sum of money on offer, we are convinced that we can win back the love of our former assistant with it. So, that very night, we go to the lady’s mansion to investigate the case. It seems strange that the detective would rush straight into the abandoned house in the middle of the night. Why not do it during the day, when natural light would help our dear John read the clues better?
After all, it is a noir title, so we go to the old estate. As soon as we enter, we realise that something is wrong. The noir setting fades away to make room for a setting worthy of a horror film.
We solve the first puzzle, which is nice and simple yet enjoyable. However, the setting becomes increasingly gloomy, with the noir atmosphere giving way to horror. However, we don’t give up, thinking perhaps it’s a combination of genres, as in the famous Italian comic Dylan Dog, where horror is mixed with hard-boiled detective stories to great effect. We continue playing, hoping to find stimulating clues and puzzles that will satisfy our detective and puzzle-loving appetites.
However, all we do is explore the different rooms of the house, read letters and mark codes that open padlocks, while waiting for a jump scare. There is no need for intelligence or wit to solve the puzzles. There is no interaction with witnesses or deductive reasoning, because we are alone in a house that appears to have been vandalised. Despite this, the letters seem to be in their place. Neither the wind, water nor the police, who conducted the initial investigation, seem to have altered them.
The same applies to the other two locations we have yet to explore. All the objects that we consider to be clues are still there, as if only one day had passed since the murder. Furthermore, although the asylum had been closed years after the victim’s discharge, things were kept in the same place.
While the final twist saves the plot, there is a slight inconsistency in the early part of the game that we will not reveal to avoid spoilers for anyone who decides to play this title.
What positive aspects can we keep?
As you may have noticed, we didn’t enjoy The Last Case of John Morley at all. We were expecting a noir or hard-boiled game involving puzzles and deductions. Instead, we played a carbon copy of any low-budget game on sale on Steam during the Halloween season. It’s a horror game with a good atmosphere, and if it had better puzzles, it might appeal to horror fans. However, we weren’t expecting a horror game as this isn’t mentioned anywhere on the Steam page. I don’t think it’s appropriate to categorise noir and horror together. After all, Wikipedia is available to everyone who wants a proper understanding of noir, hard-boiled fiction and horror.
We can say that the horror setting is successful, although horror veterans might say that it is not distressing enough. As we are not horror enthusiasts, we cannot pass extreme judgement.
There are no puzzles or deductive processes. The developers have not created an atmosphere that stimulates the search for evidence or the development of a thesis; instead, they have focused solely on scaring the player.
There is also a complete lack of on-screen prompts showing which buttons to press to run, turn on the lantern, and open case files. Finally, the save system is terrible. The game does not save immediately after a loading screen, but only after several steps have been taken. There is also no manual save option.
Furthermore, the publisher did not bother to check the actual system requirements. According to the Steam page, the game should run on a mid-range graphics card from 2007. Is this a joke? I doubt that this or any other game made in the last five years would be able to run on a graphics card from that time, when ATI had just been absorbed by AMD and was still using its own name for graphics cards.
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