Murderous Muses

Good mystery with lots of replay value, though much of the deducing takes place in the first run-through as you try to figure out the rules. Quibble: solution requires you to believe suspects are always telling the truth - if the victim was stabbed and the suspect says they hate sharp objects, you eliminate that suspect, Clue-style. Three puzzles you must solve before finishing become repetitious. Ingenious use of paintings for context and atmosphere, and the acting is well above average for video games.

After almost an hour in Murderous Muses, I will stop playing the game again. Although the setting and premise won me over right from the start, the major shortcoming is that the game doesn't explain to me what it expects of me. Well, that might be part of the appeal of puzzle games for some, but it doesn't work for me. I have a very limited time budget for playing and every gaming experience must therefore be measured to a certain extent by its efficiency/progress. The game, the puzzles have to be self-explanatory (The Witness!), or I have to be told what is expected of me. In both cases, Murderous Muses failed for me.

Delightfully unsettling like all D'Avekki games. Now with the liminal space of a museum to explore in addition to the eccentric FMV we know and love. Amazing amount of world building in a small package. One character is obsessed with lab-grown celebrity meat. Thanks to the random game generation system, I felt I only got to see a small portion of the story in one playthrough, and didn't have enough evidence to solve the mystery. I promptly looked up the solution and had it spoiled. Don't be like me. It would have been better to play two or three times and experience the joy of figuring out how the game really works.

Out of all the games I've played when it comes to this studio, mechanically I like this one the best. Unlike some of these other reviews, I think the 3D sections are the best part of this game. Unlike Shapeshifting decectrive (which was a bit to passive for my tastes) and Dr Dekker 1 (which I found a bit too open-ended), the gameplay of this game provides a logic puzzle that is quite satisfying to solve. Reguarding the FMV cutscenes, I think this is their most intreguing cast of characters to date with my favourite lore to date. The camera work in this one of their games is also the least distracting, which helps. However, I do think the mechanics of this game aren't explained well enough and I wouldn't blame people getting lost because of it. Although this game is their most replayable, each playthrough taking 1-2 hours on average, the confrentation with the killer(s) could be more climatic. 7.5/10

A whodunnit mystery where the biggest challenge is not the mystery itself but the tedious core gameplay loop around it. The FMV actors are great, each with unique personalities, but they're not the aspect you'll be engaging with most of the time. Much of your time is spent wandering around a gallery, doing tedious minigames. They're fun... for a first playthrough at least, but start to feel like a pointless commute that adds nothing to additional runs. Unlocking clips involves placing paintings above placards with key words, and spending points to see scenes to unlock police interviews. They tell an engaging secondary story of six muses of a famous painter each driven to murder and the mysterious island of Mirlhaven and its history, but they're not important to the quest you have been given and can intentionally misdirect. They confused me at first, because I assumed the scenes of a character incriminating themselves would've been my murderer, but they turned out to be innocent. What you actually focus on is the police interviews, which give you a simple [i]yes[/i] or [i]no[/i] answer, three strikes and they're your killer. Into the second night onwards, you have to give up a painting, so you can't investigate that suspect for another night or until your next run, depending on whether you can extrapolate their innocence, which added further tedium to additional runs. It didn't help that I also got unlucky and had the same two killers for all six of my runs. Getting all the scenes and 100% completion seems impossible to me as I can't get the right words to appear, I don't feel I've gotten a completed mystery because of it, but I've lost the will to care anymore. Ultimately, I had fun, but this was simply a risk that didn't pay off. 6/10

I bought this in the triple pack, and out of the 3 this had the poorest review so I decided to play it first. I was rather enjoying the game at first, despite there not really being any "puzzles". Like...one of the puzzles is literally just the game of connection, or memory, or whatever you call it where you have to match up cards. Anyways.... I was rather enjoying it still. But the lack of direction makes it a little confusing near the end, I ended up using some of my interview activations on available areas, and then an entirely new area opens up and I'm all out...so basically wasted my entire 2.5 hours of playing since there's no way I'd be able to guess the killer now. ALSO....there is a game breaking bug that is incredibly annoying in which some of your MUCH NEEDED artwork will dissapear. I had 6, then suddenly 5, then 4. They stay in your inventory unless you put them on a wall. I made sure i took them off the walls and even checked 10 times. There's not many spots they could be. So two of the suspects I got ♥♥♥♥ all from. So....the negative reviews for this. VERY justified. Unfortunately. I really hope their following games learned from this to improve them at least to the point where I could actually play them. I'd love to refund JUST this game, but I bought it in a 3-pack and still want to try the other two. This is making me realized I played the best rated one first, because if that sucked, I wouldn't worry about returning the other two.

More FMV from D'Avekki with Rupert and Aislin! Great acting in a highly replayable murder mystery. Bit confusing at first, but stick with it, it's worth it!