Death off the Cuff

I saw the creator announce its release just earlier today, and decided for a few bucks, sure why the hell not. And now here I am giving my first impressions immediately after playing. I'm not much for the interactive fiction genre - my most memorable experience is with the old Infocom "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" growing up, so I'm a bit out of date. Still, this is a charming piece with a clever little gimmick: you are the detective in a murder mystery who's called everyone to the parlor to reveal all the dark secrets, except you don't know a dang thing and have to stall and babble. (And twirl your moustache. Very important, that.) A single run-through isn't going to take very long, I've already finished it once, but there are clearly more endings and secrets to find than I did, in fact, find. I'm not sure I'm going to go back to it to dig all those extra endings and secrets out, to be perfectly honest. Don't take this as a criticism of the game itself - if it failed, it was only in that it didn't rekindle some long-lost love for interactive fiction games. And that's fine. For me, it was a one-off into a genre I don't usually explore, and I appreciated how succinct and direct it was while still playing to its premise. I like those one-offs into things I don't usually do; maybe I'll come back to it, maybe I won't. I'm quite happy with what I spent on it in both time and money, and would gladly gift it to someone interested in a little slice of the genre.

The premise sounded interesting, but the actual experience was frustrating and dull. Hints are presented in an obscure way and it is difficult for the player to exercise much agency. It feels very much like interactive fiction on rails rather than an actual game. I spent the last hour or so randomly trying prompts without success,

Fun little premise, deceptively simple (there are less verbs than you might think if you're an IF veteran). It's a little fiddily to get on the right path at first, but overallI thought it was fun and funny and a nice little exercise in observation.

fun game so far. finding a lot of ways to mess up. my favorite so far is deliveing a never ending speech on the virtues of proper mustache care while i stall for time, this cunning tactic enraged the murderer enough for him to reveal himself by resorting to violence. sadly that violence was shooting me in the back but the important point is that mustache care can tell you a lot about a man's character........

Super cute idea. I suppose the game tells you what it is on the store page, but the idea is that you're a Hercule Poirot character who has not done his homework on the day of the exam. You've gathered the suspects into the lounge of a hotel to reveal the murderer but you still know basically nothing about the crime. You flub your way through my making blind accusations and springing upon the smallest revealed detail while you "summarize" your findings. This is a traditional parser-based text adventure, but it all takes place in one room which alleviates some of the annoying things in the genre like having to draw out a map. Amazingly, most of the game is played through dialogue which has always been a problem for both text adventures and mystery games, but here works very well. I don't know the order the games came out but it reminds me of Her Story, where you used keywords to search for more pieces of the puzzles which in turn revealed more key words. Anyways, I'd highly recommend this game for an evening's entertainment. The gameplay compliments the story and involves you in a way that makes it much more satisfying than if the same story had just been written out or even presented in the choose your adventure style so popular today in visual novels.

A short interactive story where you can trap anyone and twirl their own mustache. Short, simple and fun. I recommend it. Uma pequena história interativa onde tu pode prender qualquer um e torcer o próprio bigode. Curto, simples e divertido. Recomendo.

I enjoyed it, I played it about a year ago and I still fondly remember playing it even if I don't remember the story. I would more like little detective games like this.

Fun little interactive murder mystery. For $3, why not?