On Your Tail Review

Developed by Memorable Games and released in December 2024, On Your Tail is a detective title and life sim game rolled into one and set in the tucked-away Italian town of Borgo Marina. I’m definitely a bit late to the review party, but I honestly couldn’t help it. The story and its central mystery were captivating, the characters kept surprising me and brightening my days, the town was a constant delight to walk around and look at, and there was always something to do. I kept trying to push myself to focus on the main plotlines to try to finish it off, but gosh darn it, Borgo Marina and the characters it hosts were too charming to ignore! To date, I’ve sunk around 46 hours into this gem, and it has become a frontrunner for Game of the Year in my heart. I’ll not beat around the bush — I love On Your Tail. I think it’s fantastic. Let me tell you why.

The plot follows Diana Caproni, a writer still attending university who hopes to win a fiction competition with detective stories based on her mother’s old cases, as her mom is a police detective herself. However, our protagonist gets some feedback from her professor that her writing, while skilful, is emotionless and robotic, making it unlikely to win her the contest. He recommends perhaps writing based on her own experiences rather than building her stories off of someone else’s tales. Then, after overhearing her parents worrying about her authorial dreams, she decides to rush off on an impromptu vacation, eventually landing in Borgo Marina... literally, because she falls unconscious to the ground in the middle of the city after a run-in with a masked figure. After she wakes up, she finds herself in the home of a married couple, Orlando and Beatrice, who were also robbed on the same night — though they claim nothing was actually stolen. It is here the mystery begins, as Diana decides this will be the real-life experience she’ll take on to improve her writing.

With that, she’s on the case and exploring Borgo Marina to figure out who the thief is and why they’re stealing random things around town. Soon, she meets a variety of other important people in town, finds a place to stay for the duration of her vacation, and slowly starts to realise that there’s more than thieving going on in this city… Missing persons, mysterious deaths, an assault at the local church, lover’s spats, and more shape the course of this mystery, and it’s up to you and her to make things right.

Diana is also a goat! The entire cast is made up of anthropomorphic animals of a variety of species — with many of the less-integral characters being based on real-life pets! This design decision does a great job of helping each character stand out and become more memorable, with fun character animations (wagging tails, for instance) and solidifying the bright, colourful, and cartoonish look within the overall experience.

Despite the characters all being animals, On Your Tail’s cast is fairly down-to-earth, feeling like real — if sometimes wacky — people. Everyone has a story, from the six characters you get to become closer to as Friends to the other 23 people important to the plot; even the 74 Inhabitants that you only get to meet by knocking on their doors have something to say and have their own lives and relationships with each other. Furthermore, they all have unique designs that are easy to love and incredibly expressive, both in their 2D character sprites and their 3D models. Frankly, there are so many designs that it’s hard to pick which ones to bring up! Diana herself looks amazing with her aviator jacket and single earring, there’s an older rabbit named Menettu wearing the comfiest-looking yellow button-up who radiates “cool grandpa” energy, and there’s also a pair of punks named Cicci and Mucci — a koala and a rat, I think — who seem to really like spikes on their clothing.

With a cast this large, it’s easy to find a favourite or 10. I personally loved Chea Jatti, a calico cat and the local inventor who lives and works in her own “Cheazioni” on the docks. She’s deeply passionate about her work, a little disorganised (leading to a series of neat logic puzzles where you get to tidy her tools), always waving a wrench around, and a great friend to hang around with. I loved getting to see her friendship with Diana develop over the course of the game, even taking a turn into romance toward the end.

Oh, yes, there’s romance, by the by! Four options, by my count: two gals and two guys, though all are great to hang out with. There’s lots to do around town with them, even if you decide not to pursue them romantically, and each character has their own way of seeing the town. All of the group activities are impacted by the character you’re with and it never feels like fluff. Plus, these Friends give you new and engaging gameplay options. For instance, Paun, the very sweet local photographer boyo who introduces you to town, gifts you a camera (and thereby a polished photo mode), while Chea repairs your Vispa (yes, your motorcycle is called a Vispa) and later upgrades your fishing rod.

One of Chea's logic puzzles! Can you solve it?

Speaking of establishing yourself as a detective, let’s talk about what goes into solving mysteries. Most of On Your Tail sees Diana walking around in a 3D world where she can talk to people, start mini-games, and so on. When she stumbles across a case, there’s a scene covering the basics of what’s happened before she and the player are let loose to find clues. These can be discovered either by talking to people around you or using Diana’s handy dandy Chronolens, a mysterious glass piece/watch thingamajig through which she can see the past. This is used to discover aspects of the environment that have been moved or shifted from their original positions, which is then noted as a clue. These are usually easy to spot with a bit of exploration once the Chronolens is open, though I struggled for a while on two occasions to find some footprints, as they didn’t take up a lot of space and I couldn’t spot them from just scanning the area as normal.

This exploratory phase does a great job of helping you get a sense of the location — helpful both for flavour and for the putting-it-together phase. Once you have all your clues, you’ll pop into Diana’s mind palace as she attempts to put all the pieces together in a way that makes sense — your surroundings are represented as a sort of box you can rotate around, with all the people involved getting these little standees of their character sprites. The clues you found are represented as cards that you must play in a certain order.

You see, each clue represents an event that took place over the course of a given mystery, and it’s your job to figure out in what order those events occurred. With each card being placed down, time will move along and you’ll be able to see the outcomes of different events happening at different times. The really nice thing about this system is that every card you put down gives you more information about how each event changes the situation and combines with other cards, so even a random, baseless guess will tell you a lot about what might have gone down. Even so, a lot of the meat of these mysteries is trying to logic out what might have happened. Time and time again, I found myself sitting back and thinking over the facts, trying to see which events should logically follow the others.

One puzzle in particular that really got my mind excited involved half the town getting gelato all while two other important events occurred in the background (events that I may or may not have alluded to before). It’s up to you to deduce what flavours the characters got and in what order, requiring you to figure out what triggers each character to order their delicious sweet treat, which flavour they prefer, and how to set up the overall situation such that those background events can actually happen. In this way, you’ll find the only way it could have happened. This was a fantastic structure for this mystery, allowing for interesting and consistent orders to nail down so that you could work out what everyone else would order and when.

For the puzzles that are a bit on the harder side, it’s also quite helpful that when you fail a mystery, the game will tell you which, if any, of your card placements were correct, so you can lock them in on all future attempts. In this way, I never felt like I had to consult a guide, even when I found a given mystery difficult. I could play out my chosen theory, see how it didn’t play out, and still come away with parts of that solution validated for future attempts. The fact that there’s no penalty for failure, beyond having to do it again, was another big plus there.

That allowance for mostly consequence-free failure can be felt throughout the game in nearly all mini-games. It’s okay to fail because you can always try again; plus, even if it’s one of the few things that doesn’t allow failure as freely — like collecting ingredients, for instance, which can only be attempted once per day per ingredient — there’s always another day! Most of the games are still fun even without that, but there’s something nice and cosy about not having to worry about failures hanging over your head: you can let your own passion drive you towards improving your performance!

This aspect of the game also saves some of the weaker moments, like the interrogations. On their own, the interrogations are an interesting diversion: you talk to a character and compare things they say to facts you know and try to find contradictions and similarities to get them to fess up about more details. The issue is that I often couldn’t really figure out the ways the statements and facts lined up, either because too many of them related to each other or because I couldn’t think of anything that did. Plus, you also sometimes have the option to press or empathise with the interrogatee, and those also have to be used in the same way. Thankfully, there aren’t many of these and failing them doesn’t do anything but have you start again from the top, so it doesn’t bring down the experience.

The cooking mini-game is another area that falls a tad flat — it requires you to be far more precise with its quick-time events than any other game, and there’s no room for error on an input-by-input basis. Thankfully, each dish comes with five failures accounted for (and you can just restart the dish from scratch if you use them all), but I never came away from a recipe feeling satisfied, only stressed, even though the dishes themselves look delicious.

The rest of the mini-games are far better, however, and do a fantastic job of colouring in the town, acting as a major part of On Your Tail’s life sim gameplay. Some, like working at the local gelateria or running around waiting tables at a restaurant, show off the major businesses in town while also filling Diana’s pockets with money (money that can then be used to buy accessories for her place, outfits to wear, ingredients to cook with, and so on), whereas others, like stone skipping and marble races, give her something to do with her friends. Rather than feeling like side content, each activity truly makes it feel like you’re on an exciting vacation — even the ones you do for money.

To give a few quick, specific notes, I loved the fufufufu sound Diana makes when she runs around the gelateria, the colouring game helps me express my creative side and it’s fun to be able to share my resulting pictures with friends, though I’d appreciate a chance to see them again without having to screenshot them myself, and charting constellations with a Friend is deeply relaxing.

Two games that are particularly involved are the marble races and World Out There. The races are usually fantastic, with each character who follows you having their own track associated with them, thereby offering another exceptional avenue to characterise them while still maintaining unique challenges and interesting skip potential. Chea’s involves a lot of inventions roaming around as obstacles, including one holding up a sweet drawing of her and local rascal Lumìn. Speaking of the rascal, he also happens to have his own track despite not being one of the Friends, and it is a deep dip in quality. His track has massive inclines that make it impossible to make incremental progress, as your marble will just slide down! Instead, you have to make perfect shot after perfect shot and hope you’ve landed in the sweet spot that keeps you going the right way. Lining up those shots is further exacerbated by the fact that if your marble is against an object, it will get in between the player’s view and the marble itself during that process, preventing you from seeing the path. This is usually fine because you can still move the camera around and remember where you’re aiming, but Lumín’s precision-necessitating track just amps up the annoying factor to eleven.

World Out There, with me getting the high score!

World Out There is a full arcade game made by developer YONDER. It has you going out for a day and coming back home that evening, all while trying to stay safe and sound while being chased by a horde of cool monsters, including zombies, ghosts, vampires, UFOs, and more! It is also a shooting gallery game and simple, wicked fun. The only downside to it is that World Out There is incredibly difficult if you play it on a controller and far easier with a mouse. This wouldn’t be that bad on the face of it, but On Your Tail recommends a controller, and it’s right to most of the time — playing the rest of the game with a controller is a breeze and feels very good — but there being a mini-game that so clearly flies in the face of that makes me worried about what’ll happen when On Your Tail moves onto consoles.

Still, while there are a few problems with some of the mini-games, you don’t actually have to succeed at any of them to progress the narrative, failing at them doesn’t do much to hurt Diana’s life in Borgo Marina, and most are solid fun. I could legitimately keep running around the city and do all of these games over and over again if I had the time. Sadly, some of them can’t be repeated once finished, but most can, so I can keep On Your Tail around to play as much as I need.

Speaking of running around the town, I found that I could do that just as easily as well. The town was beautiful, with many complimentary bright and inviting colours everywhere I looked. The music captivated me too, being relaxing, energising, mysterious, and peppy in all the right moments. It’s a rare game that I can just leave open to listen to the music, but On Your Tail managed that with style — the track that plays over Diana solving most mysteries is a particular favourite of mine, all plucky and jaunty. Overall, Borgo Marina is a joy everywhere you look. I admit, at first, I wanted a fast travel option (and hey, they’re planning on adding one), but soon enough, I learned my way around town, and now the simple act of running around to the next Friend or activity and enjoying the sights and sounds is enough for me. I can just get lost in the experience and take as long as I need to get where I’m going. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the town is littered with shortcuts and multiple routes.

To be honest, I’ve bounced back and forth on how I should rate On Your Tail. On the one hand, there are certainly a few technical and design issues, even if nearly all of them are localised within side content that isn’t even required to enjoy the undeniably engaging mystery. On the other hand, what’s there is a clear frontrunner in my mind for game of the year. The town is magical and a sight to behold, the characters are top-notch, the music is impeccable, there’s simply so much to do, and it neither makes me feel stupid nor feel like my hand is being held. I would be a fool if I didn’t give On Your Tail heaps upon heaps of praise. I went in with decently high expectations, and it’s blown me out of the water in every way. There may be flaws, as there are with any game, but if there was ever one I could wholeheartedly stand behind, it’s this one.