The game you NEED to play if you loved Alan Wake 2

Do you love Alan Wake 2, but hate all the shooting? Do you love roleplaying as a detective and solving mysteries a la Nancy Drew? Do you regularly find yourself emerging from a Wikipedia rabbit hole at 2 a.m. only to discover you've spent the last three hours learning about the ongoing lawsuits surrounding the popular '90s premium sparkling beverage Clearly Canadian? Do you own a fedora? If you said yes to at least two of these things, then HAVE WE GOT THE GAME FOR YOU.
Check out A Hand with Many Fingers on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/12...
IMPORTANT LINKS
TikTok: / polygon
Twitch: / polygon
Instagram: bit.ly/PolygonInsta
Facebook: bit.ly/PolygonFB
Polygon Newsletter: www.polygon.com/pages/newsletter
And for more gaming and entertainment coverage, visit www.polygon.com

[@Ovetupp]

Femme fatale with a corkboard is a concept that needs exploring

[@Deifth]

It exists, it's called Paradise Killer and also the soundtrack is perfect.

[@tonoornottono]

@@Deifthis paradise killer good i started it and the dialogue was written kind of weird and it turned me off

[@Chronis67]

​@@tonoornottono Paradise Killer is fantastic, but it is weird. Fans of Grasshopper/Suda51 games will find themselves at home. People who want a "realistic" game may find it too strange to get into. But the story is really intriguing and lore of the world is very unique.

[@deadfr0g]

Very good twist on the standard form, which is usually just femme fatale with an uncorked bottle of wine.

[@unconcernedsalad2]

CORKBOARD POLYGON VIDEOS THE RETURN OF THE KING

[@KingOfDoma]

Feels empty without a villain's tridecagon...

[@generaldisclosure2407]

Great video about a great game! Also, Simone's wardrobe makes it clear she was born to be a glamorous widow who moves into a big house with a porch and is whispered about by the townsfolk.

[@zaidlacksalastname4905]

She really flipped the "infinite drip" switch today

[@-piras]

She reached slay levels on the cunter scale

[@aneurysm234]

fr, that outfit with the lipstick looks slick as hell.

[@richardharvey8529]

"Without being a cop." My favorite!

[@manigen]

Living the dream!

[@rionsanura]

Did you print out a screenshot of Pat from an Overboard video from five years ago JUST to make him look as deranged as possible on the corkboard

[@polygon]

Yes

[@rionsanura]

@@polygon ok just making sure. carry on

[@Michael_Lindell]

Wanting more games like Alan Wake 2 is the problem; this video is the Remedy.

[@caseysailor9301]

I'm zero seconds in and I'm already deathly terrified that if I go to Simone's dinnerparty, someone's gonna get murdered and we're gonna have to find the killer ourselves since all exits and external communcations have been coincidentally destroyed by bad weather....

[@caseysailor9301]

Also, wtf was with the H***y jumpsacre at 4:40?? Can we get a TW pls? Not cool..

[@AlexFazio64]

If you like detective games where you interact with a board... Do yourself a favor and play Shadows of Doubt. Each playthrough a new city gets generated along with clues, people and schedules. You will be a real detective trying to discover any piece of information about the case, and place it on your board to make your own connections. As an example, you can enter the apartment of the victim and check the phone book to see if there are some frequent contacts and try to piece together the case. It goes really in depth sometimes and it has a great cyberpunk style. I love this game.

[@missystrange13]

as someone who adores Cold War era history to the point i'm trying to put together a video essay SOLELY so i can talk about how the Vietnam War has influenced gaming for decades, this video was custom made for me. but then the detectivery?? the gorgeous outfit?? learning about a Simone penned documentary?? SCRUFF MCGRUFF?? 10 outta 10, can't wait to learn more upsetting facts about the CIA :D

[@dado__]

I just finished the game as a history nerd and honestly felt let down. Spoilers after the break. ... .... ... You barely learn anything beyond "the CIA sold drugs and weapons". Sure, I didn't know the *particular* bank involved, but a lot of the facts on it are alleged and murky, and it shows. The dev could have really done a deep dive into the details to make the game more interesting and/or picked a scandal with more confirmed details (hi Iran Contra), but instead it ends with 2 hours, a few photos/business cards, and 21 (short, weirdly redacted) documents.

[@lukasspielmann108]

I love the thumbnail by the way. Simone yelling at you in silence has simply immaculate energy

[@Atropos148]

EVEN BIGGER ARCHIVE?!? okay im sold, this sounds very good

[@Katy133]

I'm in this unusual situation where I've already played A Hand with Many Fingers (which I enjoyed) as well as the dev's other game, The Interlude, but have never played an Alan Wake game, lol.

[@thequeenoffilth7193]

Playing Hand with Many Fingers had me paranoid as hell by the end of it

[@discgolfwes]

that outfit is giving off strong noir vibes

[@lukasspielmann108]

I can also recommend the excellent game Her Story. It's fantastic. You don't get a murderboard in game, but it gives you all the necessary material to make one in real life!

[@caustic1611]

Her Story was awesome. It's one of those games that I wish I could forget and then play all over again for the first time.

[@TheactualteamRyan]

It good to see Brian back for another unraveled, That's a pretty good Simone mask too.

[@SidPhoenix2211]

I was initially a lil annoyed that I wouldn't get to do any actual detective work as Saga. But then I realized that the case board is more of a... way to keep track of the story (and side-mission progress). It is a simple way of putting you in the character's job, and I appreciated it for what it is :) I saw like 5 seconds of this game and checked it out on Steam. It is DIRT cheap, so I got it. I look forward to playing it. Thank you for the recommendation!

[@zaidlacksalastname4905]

Your freezer story happened to me with the circuit board. Saga said "now I can get the espresso ride working with this fuse" but I had to go the floats first, which I missed. Should've forced me to go to them first, because players need to know where to put the pieces.

[@RiaWantsCookies]

vaguely unhinged simone in front of a cork board pinning papers. thats a recepie for success

[@OnyxSkies]

It's not the case board itself that triggers the heart to appear. It's the Profiling. Saga makes a comment later regarding Cynthia Weaver, I think and the record that she "made her show her where it is". The heart appears there because Saga makes Nightingale show her.

[@oliviasimkinsbullock8421]

Never played Alan Wake, just a fan of notebook games. This video immediately convinced me to go out and buy/play A Hand With Many Fingers. I co-played with a friend of mine; we took notes together and talked through our ideas. Extremely fun evening. Thanks Simone for the rec!!

[@zaidlacksalastname4905]

If you guys like detective games, you'd love Her Story. It's a must play

[@lilsheba]

Came for the premise, stayed for the jacket. 💃🏻 #fashion

[@zoeyuwu5531]

Oh yeah, Polygon is so back

[@CaliLulaLo]

Thank you Simone! This looks fantastic. I too was persistently frustrated by AW2’s refusal to let me finish a puzzle I already figured out until I made Alan or Saga tell me how to solve it.

[@LyleShnub]

It doesn't really make it any less contrived as a game mechanic, but I do really appreciate how Saga being unable to advance the plot without filling out her case board within her mind place does seem to fully work within the game's mythos in a really neat way. Cauldron Lake's paranatural power influences creative work to sometimes make it into reality. This influence could be interpreted as extending into Saga's case board. This could be even to the extent of Saga manifesting some of the solutions and future leads to her cases. It begs the question of whether Saga is solving every step of the case or is, in some instances, simply following a ritual meant to lead her on to some greater goal. Saga herself even lampshades this possibility later in the game as she thinks about her own agency in the developing story, though she's more concerned with operating at the whims of Alan Wake's in-world story, when really she's operating at the whims of Alan Wake 2's writers. Sorry, like I said, this doesn't make the actual game mechanic any less contrived for a player struggling with a particular segment. It just reminded me how mind-bending and incredible Alan Wake 2's narrative is.

[@sydneygorelick7484]

"I couldn't do the thing I figured out until the character says it out loud" was a problem I had with Firewatch, too. It's a limitation of mystery-like things in games that don't let you do things ahead of their plotline :/

[@AdmiralSenn]

You know. I never really considered how much fun it would be for Simone to do an unhinged, BDG-style deep dive into a game / lore. And now I really, really want to see that.

[@catlawyerwilldefendfortrea6038]

This is exactly what I needed! I want also put out Shadow of doubt as another place to get some satisfying string board going. It is still in early acess so it can a bit janky though. Chinatown detective agency is also a fun mystery game which will need a pen and paper or at least an active google search page open on your phone.

[@spiffybumbleteeth]

Simone introducing to us to a unique cool Noir game while also slaying that exact same vibe with her fit

[@ArcadeStunfisk]

I misread the title as “gameS you need to play” and was excited to hear you talk about Deadly Premonition, The Case of the Golden Idol and The Frog Detective.

[@douglasboyle6544]

OMG! I remember when you played this game in the Epic 72hr Livestream!!!! I always wanted a follow-up, I'm so glad you finally got around to making a video about it. I'm very much looking forward to the documentary too!

[@romxxii]

Might I also suggest The Phantom Doctrine? It's a turn-based strategy game in the vein of XCOM. It advances its Cold War era plot by piecing together clues found during missions and tying them together with string on a pegboard.

[@alltheriches]

Damn, Simone looks good in that outfit

[@moregan101]

But does it have Herald Of Darkness?

[@ihappy1]

I feel like Remedy games are ones with really cool ideas on paper that get let down with their gameplay. Ideas that if allowed to really be fleshed out like they can in the indie sphere they would really shine, but have to be held back because of the production budget and being too big of a project to really get experimental. Like the idea of putting items on a corkboard that then make physical changes in the world is kind of awesome. But to make that kind of idea really work there needs to be a chance for failure. Like what if you had a line up of suspects, and putting one as the actual criminal would change a cutscenes showing the one you picked as getting arrested or something. But maybe at the end of the game you get a percentage amount of how much of the case you actually got right. By letting you submit your answers and have them be wrong it would demand that you actually think, pay attention to everything, and do the work of a detective instead of just getting the illusion of one like you do in Alan Wake 2.

[@Michael_Lindell]

A Hand With Many Fingers? Is the game Digital?

[@RiverNorthExile]

Well played, have a like.

[@emperorsnewgay]

played a hand with many fingers when it came out & absolutely loved it, so fun to hear it be talked about!

[@CollinGerberding]

Cyberpunk 2077 has a similar issue. You do a NCPD job, sometimes you get a clue to a follow up to find a stash or whatnot. But there are times where you can stumble upon the stash first, one, where there's a vehicle in the water near by will actually pop the icon if you're close enough, so you dive in and swin to the chest and it's locked because you didn't check the laptop first to tell you to go there. It happened at least twice in two other places where I had to wonder when I'd be allowed to access a chest I'd found because the game hadn't told me where it was first. also, Second Wind dropped a video (today, I think) about the same issue with the case board: you have to adhere to it strictly to progress the story even if you already know what to do. I can see the position of it's the way the game works, but that does sound quite annoying. I've only played Control and Quantum Break, but I'm sure the AW games will be part of some Remedy playthrough someday. Well done, Simone. Always a favorite.

[@larsnyman2455]

Damn, this is a real horror experience, I did not expect that Kissinger jumpscare

[@anna_freya]

As a trainee archivist I actually gasped at the mention of a card catalogue and archive

[@mannagrynet]

So apparently, from what I've read, the cork board was a lot more free form but playtesters got really frustrated by it. I agree with you that it would be cool if it was more free, but at least it really helps you keep track of the story! Like I feel like I actually remember every piece of lore I got out of the game for once.

[@stephanpfuetze1085]

Well, this just jumped to the front of my list of games I must play immediately. While we're on the subject, I wholeheartedly recommend The Roottrees Are Dead, a deduce 'em up that is absolutely free to play.

[@HovercraftEDM]

the SEO joke killed me lmaoo

[@ryke_masters]

I was fully expecting this to be about Shadows of Doubt tbh. It has the full corkboard experience with procedurally generated cases. It kinda suffers from being procedurally generated in that eventually you grasp the mechanics and limitations of the game in a way that makes deducing the correct info feel more like metagaming and less like clever investigation, but it has huge potential.

[@bretscofield]

Love a Polygon video essay. As always, Simone is kickin' it. I'll probably check this out.

[@ed4165]

You got me! Adding this to the list 🤩

[@shadlyn3803]

Thank you for a great recommendation! Wife and I just went down the rabbit hole! I hope this game gets many iterations and many imitators; it's exactly the kind of research I love doing!

[@doctordeceit2839]

I'm honestly surprised that this wasn't Shadows of Doubt but its good to have a new detective game recommendation!

[@bangboom123]

This game is a banger. Simone has such taste.

[@_Moe]

Man, I thought you were going to reccomend a mystery game I haven't played yet! I love A Hand With Many Fingers, I just want more games like it lol!

[@phantsyprantz6377]

love to see more attention for hand with many fingers such an experience

[@jord.an6123]

Simone! you look a a million bucks

[@jedfromyourlocallibrary]

Henry Kissinger, safely dead, but now he can haunt us as a ghost! 😱

[@Parksmanteau]

somehow I knew exactly what game you'd recommend before opening the video. great game! great video! we need more corkboard games....

[@contrafatual]

I love the subtlety of the social criticism in this video.

[@thefollowingisatest4579]

Well I'm hyped for that doc now.

[@charliethemagpie523]

Honestly expected this to be about Shadows of Doubt, but this sounds very cool too!

[@satansshadow2163]

Came for the suggestion, stayed for the deep V

[@Sydling]

Played this a couple years ago! Great game!

[@geordiebailey8648]

Just finished this game. Really fantastic, would recommend. Partners well with Clayton's notebook video.

[@Kentman513]

All Corkboards Are Beautiful.

[@Kvalln]

You can also play Shadows of Doubt, too.

[@aneurysm234]

Thanks for this recommendation! I hadn’t heard of this game before this video and it looks right up my alley, and I can’t argue with that price! Very much appreciated!

[@Argo.nautica]

Killer outfit

[@falnica]

I really liked "Control" and the DLC directly connects with Alan Wake

[@peter_shoes_]

Unraveled reboot featuring simone when?

[@theblindbuildergrandminuti5648]

Great suggestions: also, nice outfit.

[@bubble.mp3]

Simone's videos are always a delight 💕

[@dappernecromancer5364]

I am also gonna slide on in here and recommend the atmosphere, lore, and storytelling of The Secret World. Also the investigation missions. (Combat leaves something to be desired)

[@maxwellraver4672]

Also the game is monetized to hell and back and it's like 10+ years old, but yes, the detective stuff and world is fun.

[@Sleth0theoriginal0]

"Games with no clear objective about solving crimes by doing meticulous and tedious arrangement of information" is an explosing genre rn

[@bengalgoblin]

Not to get too antagonistic, but at the end of the day the reason why I actually play Alan Wake 2 is that I like the story presentation, and the overall theme. You know, that whole thing about how it feels like Twin Peaks. The investigation board was tbh some gimmicky nonsense I would be completely fine without in AW2. It forced me to keep opening the menu to check some interface, which I think disrupts the gameplay flow. I think one should be able to simply explore a game for hours without being reminded that they need to go access a menu to do something.

[@papayacatproductions]

Kept waiting for Pat to blink or something

[@darthfishis]

a hand with many fingers was good but i felt it left alot to desire but i am really likeing "the Roottrees are dead." its a similar idea but alot deeper. also Roottrees is free.

[@SloMoMonday]

Just finished the game and would gladly take a whole series of this style of storytelling. For me, it was a loop of linking names to events to dates to locations to other names; until I couldn't. And then it becomes a timeline of events and movements. Motives. Money. The elusive PH (screw PH, all my homies hate PH). A lot of other detective games can feel gimmicky or too linear to me. This was an admittedly easy jigsaw puzzle, but in a style that has me wanting more.

[@shadyacr]

ALSO check out Shadows of Doubt, an indie from 2023 that procedurally generates murders and a city for you to solve them in.

[@JPGaming529]

Happy I'm not the only one who couldn't find the heart because I didn't add stuff to the board

[@TheFallorn]

Yesssss! All of their games are brilliant!

[@digitaldahlia]

Just finished Alan Wake 2 and I'm craving more thrilling adventures! Heard about the Ox Fun game with $OX rewards? Would be epic to see a playthrough!

[@NikELbErGErBergel]

For some reason after the first sentence i ecpected this to be about outer wilds or obra dinn.

[@pinstripeowl]

this sounds fascinating and I bought it like three quarters through this video

[@chekovsgunman]

Hell yeah, Simone video. We love Simone videos.

[@AllisonDeVoe]

I watch the Pat's Zodiac KIller Face video regularly, thank you

[@rionsanura]

me too

[@LocalNekomi]

Throughout the video I was waiting for Patricks picture to just suddenly move

[@guilleaume64]

I really liked the game! I can recommend The Roottrees are dead if you want to play a genealogist and Hypnospace Outlaw to be a Internet Moderator in the Y2K!

[@Slugby1138]

Oh damn, I'm actually related to Francis! I'll definitely have to give this game a go.

[@wellspokenrambler]

I can't believe they won't let you pin things into the soundproof foam lining the black-walled recording studio, that's like enrichment for Vox Media subsidiaries

[@matthewgilson9834]

yes! yes!!!! everyone needs to play this game YESTERDAY

[@victrium1642]

Bought it. Beat it. WANTED MORE. Thank you!

[@Ajbolt89]

Second Wind also just uploaded a video that comments about the caseboard and its not being a mechanic. Great minds think alike!

[@RachelTurtlebaum]

A game where I get to take notes?!?! SIGN ME UP!

[@padawanduck]

got 30 seconds into the video and decided i'm sold on the game. gonna play it blind soon and then watch the rest of the video lol

[@pannacotta2689]

Recommendation for fans of this genre of game: The Roottrees Are Dead. It's free and excellent.

[@ikaemos]

Hah! Second Wind just posted a Good Blood episode about the AW2 cork board being illusory within hours of this video. Great minds indeed.

[@montlejohnbojangles8937]

It's okay Simone, Henry Kissinger is dead. He can't hurt anybody anymore. Mostly.

[@ThePyrosirys]

Simone : * stops doing podcast * Also Simone : * immediately becomes conspiracy theorist *

[@pyricmacguffin]

SIMONE WHERE DID YOU GET THIS GARMENT I WANT ONE gahhhhhhh it's so GOOD

[@___Yep___]

If you like Alan wake in general you should play Alan Wakes American nightmare its sooo good

[@biel96]

Oh, I loved that game!