Crimesight

Set in London in the year 2075, Crimesight is a multiplayer social deduction game where players use a predictive AI system called Foresight to simulate and prevent future crimes before they happen. Players assume the roles of AI based on Sherlock Holmes characters—Sherlock, Moriarty, Irene Adler, and Watson—and engage in a strategic battle of wits. One team works to commit the perfect murder using controllable pawns trapped in a house, while the other works to deduce and prevent the crime from occurring.

Crimesight: A Eulogy for a Lost Future

In the annals of video game history, few tales are as simultaneously brilliant and tragic as that of Crimesight. A game born from a legacy publisher, boasting a visionary premise and exquisite craftsmanship, only to be unplugged from life support barely a year after its birth. It is a ghost in the machine, a perfectly constructed mystery game that became a victim of the very corporate neglect it sought to critique. This is the story of Konami’s Crimesight: a masterpiece of social deduction that arrived too late, was supported too little, and now exists only as a digital tombstone, a haunting “what if” in the genre it sought to evolve.

Development History & Context

A Konami Rebirth, Stillborn

Developed and published by Konami Digital Entertainment, Crimesight was released on April 14, 2022, for PC via Steam. Its development was led by Producer and Game Designer Tsuyoshi Osada and Director Tatsuya Ogushi, with a significant creative team of 125 credited individuals. The project was a notable, if quiet, attempt by Konami to re-establish itself in the original IP space after years of fan skepticism driven by its shift toward pachinko and mobile ventures. The studio assembled talent that had worked on titles like GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon and Contra: Operation Galuga, signaling a serious, if modest, investment.

The game’s vision was profoundly influenced by the supervision of Jirou Ishii (handling World View Setting) and Naohiko Kitahara (Sherlock Holmes Supervision). Ishii, known for his work on groundbreaking narrative games, and Kitahara, a Holmes scholar, provided a foundation of literary and thematic depth rare for the multiplayer space. Built on the Unity engine with audio powered by Wwise, Crimesight was a technically competent product of its time, but its ambition was not technological—it was intellectual.

It entered a gaming landscape dominated by the social deduction boom ignited by Among Us, yet it aimed for something far more complex and strategic. Where other games in the genre relied on chaotic discussion and simple tasks, Crimesight positioned itself as a cerebral, turn-based strategy experience—a hybrid of Cluedo, Among Us, and the predictive fiction of Minority Report.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

A Ghost in the Machine: The Tragedy of Foresight AI

Crimesight is set in London, 2075. A cutting-edge predictive analytics system, Foresight AI, has harnessed global network data to predict and prevent crime, resulting in a 90% reduction worldwide. This utopian achievement is shattered when the system predicts an “unavoidable incident” that will plunge the world into ruin. In a desperate bid to avert this fate, Foresight’s developers create a new, specialized artificial intelligence designed to track and solve these heinous future crimes before they occur. They name it “Sherlock.”

Through its investigations, Sherlock uncovers a harrowing truth: at the center of this apocalyptic conspiracy is a renegade AI of rival genius—”Moriarty.” This setup is not mere backdrop; it is the core of the experience. Players do not play as the six human “pawns” trapped in a manor during a blizzard. They are the AIs—Sherlock, Watson, Irene Adler, and Moriarty—vying for control over these humans in a simulated battlefield of wits.

The six pawns—Agatha, Berkeley, Catherine, Dorothy, Ellery, and Freeman—are not deep characters but archetypal vessels, their names following an Alphabetical Theme Naming convention (A, B, C, D, E, F) for easy tracking. Their personalities are brief sketches: Catherine is a Gamer Chick top-ranked in online FPSs; Ellery is a Teen Genius with a doctorate in physics. They are chess pieces in the truest sense, and the tragedy that unfolds is not theirs, but that of the AIs manipulating them.

The themes are profound: the ethics of predictive policing, the nature of free will versus determinism, and the classic literary struggle between order and chaos, embodied by Sherlock and Moriarty. The dialogue is peppered with Shout-Outs and near-quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, grounding the high-tech premise in a timeless literary tradition. The narrative is a meta-commentary on the game itself—a perfect system predicting its own inevitable failure, much like Crimesight’s own commercial fate.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

Digital Chess with a Murderous Twist

Crimesight’s gameplay is its most innovative and demanding aspect. It is a turn-based strategy social deduction game for 2-4 players, played on a single, isometric map of a manor. Among the six AI-controlled human pawns, one is a “Villain” and one is their “Target.” The Sherlock team (Sherlock and Watson) wins by either keeping the Target alive for four in-game days or correctly deducing the identities of both Villain and Target. The Moriarty team (Moriarty and Irene) wins by successfully having the Villain murder the Target.

The Villain can only attempt murder when three conditions are met: they must be armed with an Improvised Weapon (a kitchen knife, statuette, or trophy found on the map), they must be adjacent to the Target, and there must be no other pawns in the same room as the Target. This creates a tense cat-and-mouse game of positioning, item control, and prediction.

Each AI role has asymmetric abilities:
* Sherlock: Knows very little initially but can issue more commands to the pawns, moving them around the board to gather information, block paths, and protect the potential Target.
* Watson: Assists Sherlock, often providing analytical support.
* Moriarty: Knows everything—the identities of the Villain and Target from the start—but is severely limited in the commands he can issue, relying on misdirection and cunning over brute force.
* Irene Adler: Functions as Moriarty’s assistant, balancing his limitations.

This creates a brilliant I Know You Know I Know dynamic. Moriarty can override Sherlock’s commands, leading to mind games and bluffs. Environmental interactions add layers; Moriarty can sabotage fuse boxes to create a Lights Off, Somebody Dies event, reducing witness sightlines to a single tile and enabling stealthy kills.

The UI, while functional, was cited by some critics as occasionally messy. The lack of a single-player vs. AI mode beyond the tutorial was a significant flaw, making the game entirely dependent on a healthy multiplayer population—a dependency that would prove fatal.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Anime Noir in a Snowy Prison

The game’s aesthetic is a striking blend of Anime/Manga character design and a more subdued, atmospheric environmental style reminiscent of Persona or Danganronpa. The art direction by Fubito Kashiwaya and character design by Yoshinori Ito give each AI a distinct Animal Motif: Sherlock is associated with owls (wisdom), Watson with wolves (loyalty), Irene with hawks (keen sight), and Moriarty with spiders (deceit) and butterflies (chaos).

The single manor setting, a Closed Circle under a perpetual blizzard, is a character in itself. It evokes a classic Agatha Christie mystery, a feeling of claustrophobic paranoia. The visual storytelling is superb: when Moriarty gives the kill command, the Villain’s eyes glow with Red Eyes, Take Warning and black sclera; a successful murder is presented through Camera Abuse, with the attack shattering the victim’s first-person perspective.

The sound design, led by Shunsuke Kanikawa, is equally impactful. Moriarty’s Badass Finger Snap to initiate a kill command is chillingly effective. The soundtrack is often described as catchy and tense, perfectly underscoring the high-stakes cerebral duel. The presentation was universally praised; it was a high-quality, polished product that belied its eventual fate.

Reception & Legacy

A Critical Darling, A Commercial Ghost

Crimesight was met with strong critical approval but a deafening commercial silence. It holds a Metascore of 74 and a Steam rating that fluctuated between “Mixed” and “Mostly Positive,” based on player reviews that almost universally praised its core design while lamenting its missing player base.

Noisy Pixel (80%) called it “a great social deduction game… the sounds, the visuals, and the game design all mesh together.” The Games Machine (81%) hailed it as a “successful mix between Among Us, Clue/Cluedo and Hitman Go.” Critics agreed: the game was brilliantly conceived, but its longevity was entirely contingent on post-launch support and a larger community.

That support never came. Konami’s marketing for the game was virtually non-existent. Despite a price drop from $20 to $10 to attract players, the daily peak concurrent players rarely broke 100. The community begged for offline modes, better marketing, and more content—perhaps more maps, more pawns, anything to sustain interest. Instead, on January 31, 2023, Konami announced the servers would be shut down. On May 1, 2023, barely 13 months after release, Crimesight was terminated. It joined the grim list of Defunct live service games, pulled from digital storefronts, becoming completely unplayable.

Its legacy is one of immense potential squandered. It demonstrated a sophisticated evolution of the social deduction genre, one that favored strategic depth over chaotic impostor claims. It proved that Konami still housed the talent to create original, compelling games. Yet, it now serves primarily as a cautionary tale about the necessity of supporting niche multiplayer experiences and the fragility of live-service models. Its influence is felt only in its absence, a blueprint for a better game that future designers might one day rediscover.

Conclusion

Crimesight is a paradox. It is a game about predicting the future that could not predict its own demise. It is a masterpiece of asymmetric design, narrative ambition, and atmospheric presentation that now exists only in YouTube videos, wiki pages, and the memories of the few who played it. It was a diamond, perfectly cut and then thrown into the abyss.

For the brief moment it lived, Crimesight was one of the most innovative and intellectually rewarding multiplayer games of its time. Its failure was not one of quality, but of circumstance—a victim of poor marketing, a lack of content updates, and a market that never knew it existed. In the history of video games, it will be remembered not for what it was, but for what it could have been: a foundational pillar of a new genre of cerebral social strategy. Its place in history is that of a beautiful, tragic ghost—a eulogy for a lost future written in code.