Developer: | Paintbucket Games (2) | ||
Price: | $15.99 | ||
Rankings: | 0 | ||
Reviews: | 0 Write a Review | ||
Lists: | 0 + 0 | ||
Points: | 0 + 6 (4.0) ¡ | ||
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Description

You are Esther Katz, a young prosecutor who has just joined Fritz Bauer's new special unit. Your task seems impossible: to investigate crimes committed years ago, where evidence has been destroyed, witnesses silenced and the perpetrators embedded in the highest ranks of society. Every decision matters. Every interrogation can bring you closer to the perpetrator or lead you astray. Silence is your worst enemy. Time is working against you. And German society is not ready to face its past.
In 1956, Fritz Bauer and his team of “Nazi hunters” demanded justice when everyone else demanded silence. A small team of prosecutors defying an entire nation. Criminals hiding in plain sight as respected citizens. Experience their dangerous struggle through the immersive investigations. Uncover truths a country has fought to keep buried. Challenge a society desperate to rewrite its own past.
Investigate two extensive cases based on true Nazi-era crimes
Interrogate witnesses and suspects, break through walls of silence and expose lies
Witness different versions of events through Esther's "mind's eye" as you perceive testimonies - which may be truthful, distorted, or deliberately false
Reconstruct events step by step from fragmented evidence and testimonies
Prosecute perpetrators in court with the right charges, where your investigative thoroughness will be put to the test
Shape the outcome with multiple endings - succeed in bringing justice or face the harsh reality of a perpetrator walking free
Explore Esther's story, her past and her relationships with family, colleagues and the iconic Fritz Bauer
Immerse yourself in stunning cell-shaded 3D graphics inspired by 1950s pulp comics, complete with comic panels that reflect the era
Listen to full English voice acting bringing every character to life
Screenshots










Video
What's new
- Version: Windows, MacOS
- Updated:
- 1.0.6 (16 April 2025)
Hello, dear prosecutors!
Today, we've got a new patch for you. This patch contains improvements to the notebook and adds a certain detail in a document to make things a little more consistent. We’ve also fixed all the most urgent and some more minor bugs and issues that you all have reported to us on the forums, our discord server, or the in-game bug report tool which can be opened via F5. Thank you very much to everyone who has been reporting issues in the game to us. Your reports enable us to improve the experience for everyone. We are still supporting this game with fixes and always look at every new bug report coming in, so if you find any issue in the game, we’d be grateful if you could press F5 and write a quick note describing the issue.
Thanks again for all the continued support, See you in court!
Changes
Made certain documents more consistent in the Insurgent Case. (Thanks, Staiy!)
Various updates to the notebook related to font sizes, spacing, etc
Updated some notebook glossary entries, changed the layout to be one entry per page instead of three per page.
Changed the UI font size setting names to be more in line with what they actually are (from Small, Medium, Big to Default, Big, Huge (experimental).
Did a leveling pass to make sure Paula is always loud enough to understand her properly.
Made controller stick scrolling faster in the dialogue log.
Updated petition to add one backer name.
Updated 3D magazine textures, so the fashion, sport & people magazines look distinct.
Fixes
Fixed the game breaking in unexpected ways when opening the overlay.
Fixed an issue where a letter would not be translated inside the document detail view in French and German.
Fixed a bug which prevents the game from being auto saved before leaving for court.
Fixed an issue which could lead to showing not yet obtained documents using a controller.
Fixed an issue which could lead to not being able to add labels to paragraphs while playing in Story Mode.
Fixed certain objects not being highlighted in some of the memory sequences in the Looter Case.
Fixed an issue where character pages in the notebook were duplicated.
Fixed a bug which prevents the game from being auto saved, before leaving for court.
Fixed an issue where a dialogue on the following day would not continue if you choose to search Heidi.
Fixed wrongly displayed interrogation max count in the case summary.
Fixed text display issue in french version in personal information by making the text field bigger.
Various fixes related to texts in the game across all supported languages.
1.0.5 (7 April 2025)
Dear prosecutors, After watching a lot of you play and make reviews and community posts regarding the game’s difficulty, we’ve carefully taken notes and created a major balancing patch. The game is a lot less strict about what it considers the correct solution now as we’ve added many alternative combinations for conclusions as well as many more alternative correct solutions for interruptions during witness interviews. Many of the steps can be solved with more ways of thinking than we realized initially, and this patch addresses this. Furthermore, after watching people struggle with the difficulty selection between only an easy-mode and a hard mode, we’ve now added a normal difficulty mode in between. The new mode in the middle no longer requires you to select individual paragraphs. This should hopefully make the game more approachable for those who want a bit of a challenge without wanting to choose the highest possible difficulty. We hope that you’ll enjoy this new update and are looking forward to reading your feedback about the new difficulty mode and newly accepted solutions.
As with all updates, it can happen that new bugs are introduced, even though we thoroughly tested every newly added solution. So, if you encounter any bugs while playing, we’d be very grateful if you could report them by pressing F5 while in game.
See you in court! Your Paintbucket team.
Difficulty & Balance
Adjusted the difficulty of Investigator Mode to make it a little easier. (Removed the requirement to specify the paragraph in a given document, and enabled the counter in the testimonies that shows how many optional interactables have been found).
From the feedback we received, we feel that this more closely reflects the kind of "normal" difficulty that people are looking for - whereas in our minds, "Investigator Mode" was always designed to be "Hard Mode".
Added a new difficulty setting, "Prosecutor Mode", which is the former Investigator Mode aka "Hard Mode".
Added a lot more documents & paragraphs as possible solutions for interruptions and conclusions.
Removed Esther's misleading comments when combining documents into conclusions.
Graphics
Changed the used Anti-aliasing method(s) from MSAA + SMAA (Medium) to just SMAA (Quality), resulting in a sharper image and higher framerates on certain systems.
Fixes
Fixed an issue where the interruption UI would display its animations abnormally.
Fixed Theresa being called Edwina in the court opening cutscene of the second case.
Fixed a bug which can lead to players being stuck when entering a coworkers office.
Fixed various typos and grammatical errors in all languages in the game
1.0.4.4 (31 March 2025)
Thank you for your continued support! We're excited to bring you this new update with several improvements and bug fixes:
Changes
Changed the unlock requirements of the "Fledgeling" and "Respectable Result" so they can be unlocked when having more of the required steps to unlock.
Bugfixes
Fixed an issue where the achievements "Silver Tongue" & "Argumentative" would not unlock
Fixed an issue which prevents an epilogue Save game to load, which has been used to play through other cases
Fixed an issue where the Interruption could get clicked away instantly.
Fixed an issue where the research option for Call Protocols wouldn't trigger properly in Emilia Becker's and Otto Wagner's Testimony
Fixed an issue where the option to ask Paula about Peters would sometimes not appear properly in the evening of Insurgent Day 2
Fixed an issue which would prevent the 6th conclusion to be counted as correct inside the looter court
Fixed an issue that led to the wrong conclusion being displayed in court, when a player is going to court directly after setting up their conclusions, and then answers the first question wrongly.
Fixed an issue which would result in not getting all documents from the inbox when clicking too fast
Fixed an issue which would prevent an epilogue save game to be loaded
We appreciate your feedback as we continue improving your experience. See you in court!
Price
- Today: $15.99
- Minimum: $15.99
- Maximum: $19.99
Track prices
Developer
- Paintbucket Games
- Platforms: Steam Games (1) GOG Games (1)
- Lists: 0 + 0
- Points: 0 + 262 ¡
- Rankings: 0
- Reviews: 0
- Discounts: 0
- Videos: 2
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Additional Information
- Version: Windows, MacOS
- Category:
GOG Games
›Simulation
- OS:
MacOS
,Windows
- Size:
1 Gb
- Capabilities:
Achievements
,Adventure
,Cloud saves
,Controller support
,Detective-mystery
,Overlay
,Simulation
,Single-player
- Supported Languages:
Deutsch
,English
,español
,français
,русский
- GOG Store Rating:
4.0
(6) - Updated:
- Release Date:
«The Darkest Files» is a Simulation game for GOG, developed by «Paintbucket Games». It was first released on and last updated on . The lowest historical price was $15.99 on , and the highest was $19.99 on . This game has not yet received any ratings or reviews on AppAgg. On GOG Store, the current store rating is 4.0 based on 6 votes. Supported features include: Achievements, Adventure, Cloud saves, Controller support, Detective-mystery, Overlay, Simulation, Single-player. Available languages: Deutsch, English, español, français, русский. AppAgg continuously tracks the price history, ratings, and user feedback for «The Darkest Files». Subscribe to this game or follow its RSS feed to get notified about future discounts or updates.
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