A dead body. A mansion full of suspects. Two hours until Scotland Yard arrives for your verdict. The premise of the timed detective game Murder by Death is sound. I might even call it inspired. Unfortunately, the unsanded edges and duct-taped corners are exemplified by its genre and lead to an unsatisfying slog through a concept that could have done more.
Not all games need to have a high production value, but Murder by Death proves that some genres, particularly those that are meant to be about cognition, exploration and observation, need to enforce Quality of Life as a priority.
Let’s dive in with the good, the bad, and the ugly…
The mechanics and premise: The Good
It’s not in my nature to throw shade at games – I genuinely love the medium and can always find positives where they peek through the curtain of janky controls or overlooked interactions. In that spirit, Murder by Death sets an incredible scene. Of course the Lord of the estate lays murdered and any one of the little low-poly people could be the killer, so far so Christie. However, it’s the way that Murder by Death lets you explore the mansion that is interesting and unique.
Rather than simply playing as detective Dorbz (For ‘tis what the characters are reminiscent of) you can also select two other characters to assist you. These will be playable for the duration of the case, and provide various bonuses. Using the good-natured maid I was able to convince the gardener not to wander off, allowing me to switch to the detective and interrogate him where I might otherwise have lost the chance. With characters ranging from staff to visitors to family and one delectable vampire, there’s plenty of opportunity for the game to shape itself based on your chosen characters.
Once you’ve selected your characters the two hour countdown begins. That’s a real-time countdown as well, which means you are unlikely to want to just sit down and complete a case each time you play. About the longest “run-based” game I can think of is Slay the Spire before you are actually good at the game, and even those runs cap out at an hour or so.
So, you’re not meant to play this like a roguelike, but then what are you meant to do?
The “detective” “gameplay”: The Bad
After a promising setup and short, snappy tutorial (with all your inputs displayed on-screen so you can hit the ground running) you’re off into the mansion. Players will have different priorities: Some might bee-line for the bedrooms to interrogate each suspect, while others might try and map-out the mansion so they can easily find rooms and clues later on when they need to. Either way, whatever player choice prevails, they’ll have to move around the estate.
Herein lies the first of many problems with Murder by Death. The camera is fixed per room, and the map has a fixed rotation. This sounds sensible, it should allow players to know that the top of the screen is always the same direction, and navigate without always having to spam the map button.
However…
The map screen and the game are, as far as I could tell, unrelated. Not only does the map not show room names, instead opting for white boxes with doors marked, but the markings for doors don’t even line up with the in-game screen. I spent 10 minutes exploring and could make no sense of how, when I went through an east-facing door, I ended up in a more northern room.
The map categorically doesn’t line up with reality. You can leave through a door on the bottom of the screen and, upon checking the map, reveal you are somehow in the room to the left of where you just where. It’s not an issue of map rotation, either, as the camera is fixed and the “Door” icons on the map don’t line up with the exits even if you do rotate the whole thing. This leads to infuriating navigation that distracts from the orderly, thorough search I wanted to do.
After half an hour or so, I came to a revelation: Each room has its own, independent rotation. The doors are made to “Vaguely” line up but they don’t actually exist at the same angle or in the same space. This makes navigation through observation almost impossible, as “North” in the game screen could be any other direction depending on which individual room you’re in. In addition to the doors that don’t exist, there’s also area transitions that are just plonked in the middle of corridors. The change is jarring and makes exploring the mansion even more tedious. I can’t stress enough how badly clear mapping, note-taking and progression needs to be in a game about being a detective.
Interactions and items: The Ugly
Once you successfully warp yourself to the right room with the physics-defying doors, then you have the joy of trying to use the interaction keys. There’s O for “Observe”, T for “Take” and R for “Release”. Interactions, however, have no binding. This means they trigger automatically. Walking past the telephone in the lobby to reach the door behind it involves your character talking about the phone, getting past it, finding the door is locked, and then on your way back you get to talk about the phone again (This time making sure I was as far from the object as physically possible, to no avail). In a game willing to make your primary controls O, T, M and R it boggles the mind that there isn’t an interact button for starting conversations. Would it hurt to at least have T be “Take / Talk”?
In one early room you can find a Black Billiard Ball on the floor. Obviously you feel an inclination to return the little fellow to the table. “Ah ha!” you think, “A use for the ‘Take’ and ‘Release’ commands! Now this is gameplay!”. Pressing T takes the ball, and you scurry yourself over to the billiard table. Getting within a few steps of the table you hear a magical “Plip” sound, and the ball is gone from your pocket, now resting on the table…
In a game where players rely on taking notes, learning patterns and discovering interactions – a game with a dedicated “Release” button that drops your held item – why did I not even get to place the item where it should be myself? I felt genuinely robbed of the experience of being a detective or solving the puzzle.
Finding the water well in the gardens surrounding the manor was a similar experience. Approaching triggers a dialogue that, in no uncertain terms, says “There’s something down there, if I had rope I could use this bucket to get it”. Being told what to do in a game of this genre kills any motivation to even play.
Not only that, but I later discovered that the “Zwip” sound effect when you walk to an item the first time is the game automatically using “Observe” on it. Future uses just repeat the same description. Observe points are also frequently too close together, resulting in repeated pop-ups that you can’t dismiss, and have to sit through just to “Observe” a Sink and be told “A Sink”. This is a game that seems to not want the player to do anything.
The three-slot inventory is a drag, and only seems to serve to pad-out exploration to make 2 hours a justifiable length of time to play this game. If all three of your characters followed you around the mansion then you’d at least have nine usable slots, but as it is you spend more time depositing items in rooms for safekeeping than doing any real detective work.
This is, by my understanding, meant to be a detective videogame. So far, it’s failing on both counts.
Even within its niche genre, there are so many other options
I would love to have dived into the meat of the game, the mystery and puzzles and piecing the story together, but the fact is a player will only be able to access those elements of the game if they can withstand a barrage of design failures.
After the first hour of the two, I clicked “Close the Case” and randomly selected a Culprit, Weapon and Reason. I was incorrect. I’m off to replay The Sexy Brutale, and even though I know the solutions to all the puzzles and mysteries, it’ll still be more engaging than this.
Murder By Death is available now on Steam
