The Incident at Galley House

A well-written mystery I througly enjoyed. Great characters. Anything more would be spoilers. Just play it.

Superb game. The game has a really originally story and plot, and is revealed by a extremely well designed game interface. You're dropped into the mystery from the start, and have to use a strange machine to piece together what is going on. There are plenty of surprises along the way, and everything ties together satisfyingly by the end. If you like induction/deduction games like The Roottrees are Dead, Return of the Obra Dinn or the Golden Idol games, then this game is definitely for you. The game mechanics are different but the same style of problem solving is front and centre. One recommendation: when you start the game go into setting and turn OFF "Show connections". This would make it too easy, and it's more interesting to find the path yourself, plus there is an excellent hint system anyway if you do get truly stuck. I played this game on Linux throughout without any issues.

I'm happy to have bought this game, if anything, to support one of my favourite devs but man, this negative review is a struggle. The Roottrees Are Dead is one of my favourite indie mystery/detective games I've played, the peak of "wish I could erase my memory just to play it again" type of video games for me, personally. This is not The Roottrees Are Dead. To be clear: it doesn't need to be. But God I wish this went...somewhere else for the 2nd and 3rd half of the game. I suppose I would be better satisfied with its ending if I really felt like the entire story connected the inciting incident back to the "endgame" of this game. In my opinion, it really doesn't. Not well, anyways, and not with any particularly interesting way. This ending only left me saying to myself "Oh...well, I guess that's it, then?". I kept thinking to myself: 'I'm just missing one more thing.' 'Once I find that scene, I'll be happy.' 'Once the whole story clicks to my brain, I'll feel clever.' 'That if I just dug around deeper into missing scenes, clicked around harder for easter eggs, went straight into the discussion board trenches-- surely someone, somewhere found the missing piece that would fix my discontent for this game.' Unfortunately, no. And it sounds like I'm not alone. I would say I really enjoyed the first 1/3rd of this game, but -- since I shall say no spoilers here just in case-- as this mystery pushed itself into a direction that I really wasn't happy with, and then double-down on it at the very end. So, no, I can't say I finished this game happily. I'm leaving this game feeling a little defeated and hollow. And no, I don't feel like any particular theory or the ending explanation really justifies it. I hear tell by reading other less-than-happy reviews that if you wanted the original (and ironically, better written version of this game) mystery - the free to play game Type Help is the way to go. I'm going to play that one now instead. Still, it seems most people were happy enough with this game as it currently sits at an 'overwhelmingly postive', and for that, I am happy. Love you devs, please, please keep going and make more great games. I'm happy to support but this one just didn't land for me.

Extremely solid puzzle mystery game. The gameplay with the machine is very novel and does a great job at making you want to learn everything you can about what happened at the house and its inhabitants. I've played the original so it's hard to judge this one fresh, but I'd say it did a fantastic job of updating it to a more "fully-fledged" game, with the voice acting, soundtrack and artwork making many story sequences hit a lot harder. A part of me prefers the simple and dry text adventure of Type Help, but The Incident at Galley House is a wonderful experience on its own for newcomers and returning players alike.

The Incident at Galley House is a really lovely infogathering game; the puzzles are good, though a little simpler than Roottrees, and every time I felt stymied I immediately went Oh Duh when I realized - it never felt unfair. I do like the presentation it has a lot also, and the growing dread as you realize what's going on is really really fantastic. I usually think of games like this as existing in a triangle between Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds, and Riven; on that graph, this is very close to obra dinn, and on the outer wilds side of the dividing line rather than the Riven one. If you like Obra Dinn, I really strongly recommend this game.

One of the best deduction games since Return of the Obra Dinn

Chef's kiss! What an amazing game that takes a simple game mechanic and turns it into a completely riveting, addictive, smart, beautiful, and heartbreaking game. I can't wait to replay it again soon - perfection.