When an indie game about an amnesiac squirrel trying to solve a chicken’s murder pops up, you simply can’t pass up the opportunity to check it out. We aren’t master puzzle solvers. In fact, we usually hate puzzles; they just aren’t our thing. It absolutely destroys our will to play a game when we run around in endless circles trying to decrypt broken logic. But No Stone Unturned doesn’t care if you mess up. It just wants you to have fun with the weirdness.
You play as Detective Cox. Hehe, “Cox”—sorry, we’re immature like that. Anyway, you may be a detective, but you don’t have an arsenal of useful gear—just a magnifying glass, a tape recorder, and a crowbar. But what starts as a simple mystery quickly turns into something completely different.
Point-and-click walking around town to talk to witnesses.
WarioWare-style minigames to investigate crime scenes.
Gathering resources to build “item bundles” that fix the town and open the map.
Stealth sections and a drawing mini-game to connect evidence.
The WarioWare Detective
In No Stone Unturned, you do a little bit of everything. You walk around the town and do what every good detective does: you poke your nose into things.
With genuinely funny writing, interrogating the animals is where the game truly shines. There’s this cool system that the devs built called “Choices That Don’t Matter.” It means exactly what you think it means. You can pick the dumbest dialogue options on purpose or ask completely wrong questions just to see what happens. The game rolls with it. You still solve the case eventually, but the path you take is a joke.
It’s a great way to let you fail or simply experiment without the worry of being slapped with a “game over” screen or a bad rating. We can’t stress enough how much we love this. The devs give you a unique kind of freedom where you don’t have to be afraid of messing things up. Your only job is to just relax and go with what feels right for you.
Instead of solving logic puzzles, the game throws fast microgames at you—something that actually reminded us of WarioWare. If you need to check a crime scene, you have to play a ten-second minigame. These short games act like literal punchlines to jokes from the dialogue. Put it all together, and it keeps things moving in a spectacular way!
Well, it does that mostly in the parts of town you’ve unlocked. You can’t just walk straight to the next story beat; you have to unlock certain areas by collecting item bundles. Some bundles fix bridges, while others open new paths through broken buildings. The devs really played with a lot of ideas here. We were pleasantly surprised to come across stealth sections where you have to sneak around houses. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but everything feels and plays great.
When you finally get clues, you connect dots on a drawing board. That part is smart. But its just a part of a much longer and complex dance.
Hey, did you also know that:
The developers hired Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to make a real puppet of Detective Cox for gaming events.
Game director Gareth Owens used to make escape rooms and grew up with two police officer parents.
Alongside the game, they made a comic book called The Peculiar Case of the Missing Acorn.
The Final Cluck
It is a charming game with a surprisingly good narrative that will make you want to come back for more. No Stone Unturned is one case that you’ll definitely want to investigate in greater detail.
8/10
ID Card
- Developer: Wise Monkey Entertainment Ltd.
- Publisher: Wise Monkey Entertainment Ltd.
- Engine: Custom 2D / Unity
- Platforms: PC (Steam Early Access)
- Release Date: April 29, 2026 (Early Access)
- Genre: Comedy / Mystery Adventure
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