BURIED STARS

BURIED STARS drops you into the aftermath of a collapsed TV studio, where the survivors of a live audition show realize the building coming down wasn’t the worst thing that happened to them that night. Somebody in the wreckage is a killer, and figuring out who means picking through testimony, suspicion, and whatever scraps of truth the rubble hasn’t buried. It’s a narrative mystery first and a game second, built by the Studio LARGO team behind Panic Room and City of Mist, with LINE Games publishing. If you like your mysteries claustrophobic and character-driven rather than action-heavy, this is squarely built for you.

The setup is a locked-room murder mystery stretched across a disaster: a reality show gone wrong, a cast trapped together, and a death nobody can explain. The reference material LINE Games put out makes clear this leans on visual novel style storytelling, with illustrated 2D characters placed into fuller 3D backdrops rather than flat static panels. There’s also an in-fiction social media and timeline system meant to feed you public reaction and chatter as the situation unfolds, which doubles as a way to drop clues without just handing you a case file. Your choices in conversation and investigation branch the story, so the game is built around replay rather than a single fixed path to one ending.

How it plays

Expect dialogue trees, scene-to-scene investigation, and decisions that nudge the story toward different outcomes rather than toward a scored “correct” path. You piece together what happened by talking to survivors, reading the room, and cross-referencing what people say against the social chatter the game feeds you in real time. It’s less about mechanical puzzle-solving and more about tracking contradictions and motive, the way a good whodunit should work. The branching structure means a second or third playthrough is meant to reveal details, suspects, or context you didn’t get the first time through, rather than just replaying the same scenes with cosmetic differences.

Who it’s for

If you’re into story-forward adventure games, Korean and Japanese visual novel sensibilities, or mystery fiction where the fun is in the accusation rather than the action, this fits right in your wheelhouse. The dual Korean and Japanese voice casts suggest a lot of care went into performance, which matters for a game that lives or dies on its dialogue. Skip it if you want mechanical depth, combat, or open exploration. This isn’t that kind of adventure game, it’s closer to an interactive drama, and if branching dialogue and reading-heavy pacing aren’t your thing, you’ll bounce off it fast.

Is it worth grabbing?

For anyone who already likes mystery adventure games or has fond memories of Studio LARGO’s earlier work, this is an easy addition to the library. The genre is a bit of a gamble for newcomers since so much rides on whether the writing and voice work land for you personally, but a murder mystery with a collapsed studio and a hidden killer is a strong enough hook that it’s worth the time investment to find out. Grabbing it costs you nothing but hard drive space, and casual adventure fans tend to get more mileage out of games like this than the runtime might suggest, especially if the branching endings actually pull you back for a second look.

Quick facts

Genre: Adventure, Casual. Developer and publisher: LINE Games Corporation. Platform: PC via Epic Games Store. Release date: November 29, 2021.