I played the demo of UMDC a few months ago and knew immediately that I wanted to buy the game as soon as it came out, because it had all the ingredients that I love in a game: good story, engaging characters, awesome pixel art, and fun gameplay that was reminiscent of one of my fave games: Ghost Trip.

I am normally someone who does not buy games at launch or at full price, partly bc I tend to not play them immediately, so it's usually a waste of money for me to do that. However, in this case, I knew I did not want to wait to play the full game, and I am glad that I didn't.

I was expecting a fairly short game, maybe 10 hours or so, so the fact that the game is almost 3x that length impressed me. In fact, I think the game was just right--not too long or too short--and while it's not flawless and I do have my own personal issues with the story particularly, in the end, I cannot stop thinking about it and while playing I could hardly put it down. So I feel like that merits a "recommended" rating. However, read on if you want a more detailed review.

The game involves urban myths, as the title suggests, which is one of my favorite subjects, as I love Japanese horror and creepypasta, and I devour games with these topics. Going in, I expected something like Spirit Hunter: NG, but in the end, it reminded me more of Ghost Trip meets Collar x Malice (one of my fave VNs).

You primarily play as Azami Fukurai, a college student who sees "ghosts" and hopes the UMDC can help her rid herself of this scary talent. However, Ouran Host-club style, she ends up indebted to the center and is forced to work for them as a kind of investigator by the mysterious director, Ayumu Meguriya, who despite his apparent physical disability and dependence on a wheelchair is a powerful psychic. He explains that she has the power called "Clairvoyance" and that the shadows she sees are actually not ghosts but psychic residue left behind by people. He himself has the power of "Vision," that presumably allows him to see the future and "know all."

Over the course of the story, you, as Azami, work to investigate various mysterious occurrences, starting with the "Man Under the Bed" and covering some famous ones you will recognize even if you haven't read or played a lot of J-horror-- I won't spoil them for you. You work in tandem with your driver and previous UMDC employee, Jasmine, as you soon realize there is a lot more going on than meets the eye.

A mysterious cult leader and terrorist instigator has been leading a group of fantatics called "Zimmers" via his online message board on the dark web. Azami soon realizes she must discover his identity so she can attempt to stop his "Great Reset" that threatens society itself.

Each case has you investigating various locals with and without Azami's ability, as well as interviewing suspects and witnesses and coming up with hypotheses to unravel each mystery, akin to Ace Attorney Investigations. They always have a twist that you must work out in order to get to the bottom of each one, and the story--while it has its issues--does work every case detail into the overall story. The puzzles are pretty easy, maybe too easy, especially since you can't really fail--if you get something wrong, you just try again until you get it. They involve plugging int the right words/phrases from a bank of options into the right spots in a sentence with missing gaps. The hardest thing with this, I found, was the somewhat awkward phrasing due to the translation that made things a bit cumbersome. At times I knew the answer, but had a hell of a time figuring out what the correct phrasing they wanted was. But honestly, I liked that the game was structured like this, because it allowed me to just enjoy myself without getting stuck and potentially having to give up.

I did not have any issues running the game and played the entire thing on my Steam Deck. The only problems I ran into are mine because I haven't fixed my missing right trigger, and it was needed to navigate the menus, but I was able to use the touch screen, so I didn't really have any problems.

The ONLY real complaint I have is connected to the story, and it's a personal kind of thing since I am a writer who does not like plot holes or contrivances at all, and this story had... a lot of them. The twists were cool--especially the huge one at the end that I will admit I did NOT see coming--but you also have to swallow a lot and not look too deeply into the story itself once these twists are revealed because.... often things don't really add up.

Now, that said, the twists are NOT Deus ex machinas, and it's clear the writers did try to set things up pretty carefully and cover most of their bases... It's difficult to talk too much about this without major spoilers, but despite that, I still loved the whole process of playing the game and the characters so much that I can't really fault them even for this... especially since I know they DID make attempts to explain/cover their bases on some of the potential questions or plot holes that might come up.

The only other complaint is the game is absolutely complete after one playthrough. There aren't any other endings or things to unlock or experience, but I do think a second playthrough could be interesting to look at things with fresh eyes knowing how things will turn out in the end/knowing the big reveal, and seeing how the writers tried to set things up from the start.

The game does leave open for a sequel, and I will regardless be very interested to see what else this dev comes up with. Even though it's only early March, I could already see this game as one of my GOTY contenders.