The Last Case of Benedict Fox

Introduction

The Last Case of Benedict Fox casts you as an occult detective who dives literally into the dying memories of murder victims, exploring dream-logic versions of crime scenes while a demon companion helps fight the nightmares living there. Developed and published by solo studio Plot Twist, it launched 27 April 2023 as a day-one Xbox Game Pass title alongside its PC release, and now sells on Steam as a Definitive Edition following a substantial March 2024 update. It sits at a lifetime Mostly Positive 74.1% across 930 reviews. This review reads a substantial share of both the negative and positive samples and finds a game whose two defining threads — genuinely striking presentation and persistent, unresolved technical friction — run through its entire three-year history rather than settling in either direction.

Atmosphere as the clear standout

Almost without exception, this review's sample agrees on one thing: The Last Case of Benedict Fox looks and sounds exceptional. Reviewers who otherwise can't recommend the game still credit its atmosphere, art direction and Lovecraftian worldbuilding as genuine achievements — one calls the environments "gorgeous" in the same breath as describing the voice acting and controls as disappointing, and several single out the demon-companion premise and dream-diving detective concept as a distinctive angle the metroidvania genre hasn't tried in quite this way. That consistency matters: this isn't a case of a small vocal minority liking the presentation while most players are indifferent to it — it's close to the one point of universal agreement in an otherwise divided corpus.

Controls that never quite got fixed

Set against that, the clearest and most persistent complaint in this review's sample concerns how the game actually plays. Multiple 2023 launch-week reviews describe unresponsive platforming, a "tentacle jump" ability that several reviewers say doesn't register consistently, jittery camera movement even with camera shake disabled, and — for a meaningful stretch of the game's early life — no ability to remap controls at all. What makes this different from an ordinary rough launch is how long the same specific complaints persisted. A 2025 review describes replaying the game two years later on the Definitive Edition and finding performance "even worse" than at launch, with a broken final boss fight the reviewer couldn't complete. Another, from March 2024, writing about the Definitive Edition specifically, notes it "probably fixes a lot of the problems" with combat and traversal, but reports frame drops and microstutters severe enough to undercut the improvements.

An official end to support

What turns persistent bugs into a firmer verdict is that Plot Twist has confirmed, in its own words, that the game won't receive further fixes. A news post titled "Case Closed: A Final Thank You," dated 20 January 2025, thanks players for their time with the game and states the studio has moved on to "new projects" it isn't ready to announce yet. Several reviewers cite this directly as the reason they can no longer recommend the game despite liking parts of it — one writes plainly that with the developers "officially announced they're done with this game, there is no hope for future fixes of any kind." This review treats that as a confirmed fact rather than reviewer speculation, since it comes from the developer's own official channel, and factors it into scoring the current, final state of the game rather than a work still improving.

A story that splits opinion

The narrative itself draws more genuinely mixed reactions than either the visuals or the technical issues. Some reviewers describe the plot as "rushed and almost incomprehensible," struggling to connect the protagonist's motivations to the player's actual goals. Others describe falling progressively in love with the mystery the longer they played, framing it as closer to a Lovecraftian puzzle-adventure than a combat-focused metroidvania, and recommending it specifically to players who value exploration and intrigue over hack-and-slash action. Both readings are consistent with the same underlying game — a slow-burn, atmosphere-first mystery that rewards patience but doesn't explain itself quickly, which will land differently depending on what a given player wants from the genre.

Final Verdict

The Last Case of Benedict Fox is a genuinely striking, distinctive game held back from a stronger score by exactly the kind of technical friction this review's sample describes consistently across three full years: clunky, occasionally unresponsive controls and performance problems that outlasted the developer's own willingness to keep patching them. With Plot Twist's support now officially and permanently closed, what exists today is the final version of the game rather than a work in progress — and on those terms, it's a flawed but genuinely worthwhile Lovecraftian metroidvania for players who can meet its atmosphere and premise more than halfway.