Collection essentials #610: Ghost Trick (DS)

I already talked not long ago about the greatness of the Ace Attorney series. After creating the original Ace Attorney trilogy, the creator of the series wanted to work on a different kind of project. This new game would still be very story-driven and all about mystery like Ace Attorney, but the gameplay would be entirely different, feeling much more like a video game than something akin to an interactive graphic novel like Ace Attorney. The result was Ghost Trick, which hit the DS in 2010 in Japan and 2011 in the rest of the world.


At the start of the game, the main character narrates and introduces you to a rather distressing opening scene. You see, this main character has just died. They identify themselves as a corpse laying face-first on the ground, a guy wearing a red suit and shades with a spiky yellow hairdo. There’s also a criminal with a gun at the scene pointing at a helpless young woman. Though this main character has died, apparently in this universe the dead do not simply cease to be; instead, they live on as a spirit that can still move around and interact with the real world in certain limited ways. Our main character demonstrates that they have an incredible superpower: the can touch a corpse, and travel back in time to a moment before their death, and then potentially manipulate objects in the area to possibly prevent that death. 


And so, Ghost Trick’s gameplay is all about these “death puzzles”. There are a wide variety of scenarios of a death happening, and the player must solve these increasingly-complex scenarios filled with objects to find a way to keep the victim alive. Your spirit can move from object to object, but not if the nearest object is too far away, so part of the puzzles involve manipulating objects in a way that gets you to where you need to be. No two are quite alike, and they’ll always feel fresh. 


This is not one of those puzzle games where you select from a series of puzzles from a menu screen. This game is very plot-heavy, and so each puzzle in the game serves to advance the story. Being such a story-heavy game full of mystery, for better or worse I am limited in how much I can say about the game in this post so as to avoid spoilers. All I’ll say is, you won’t be disappointed, as there are many twists, turns and surprising revelations that keep you on the edge of your seat.


When Ghost Trick first came out, despite being a big Ace Attorney fan, it completely flew under my radar and I didn’t know it existed. It was a few months later that word of the game reached me, as a YouTuber I subscribed to made a video and talked about how great it is. I wound up playing the game for myself the following year. I happened to get sick the week that I was playing through the game, so I remember one particular day that I was mostly bedridden and just marathoned my way through most of it. That was about a good a way to spend a sick day as I’ve ever had!


If Ghost Trick’s concept sounds interesting to you, you’re in luck, because not long ago the game got an updated rerelease on modern platforms, so it is now widely accessible on various devices. Seriously, if you like a good story and solving puzzles, this is a game that you just cannot miss. It is a unique and memorable experience that will stick with you for years to come. It is a real gem that deserves its spot as an essential in my collection!

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