The Incident at Galley House

Great game. Loved it

Made me cry

This game is really good if you want to sleuth your evening away

Solid mystery, though I wasn't a huge fan of the mysticism/sci-fi side of the mystery itself. I went in to it expecting a whodunnit but it's more about piecing together a timeline of events and uncovering what is going on here. The final act uses the game's internal rules very well and I thought it was very clever. 7/10 ish. respectable though maybe a little obtuse at times I wanted more tools for tracking people/bodies and people would be vague about their destination/origin which made me lean on the hint system a little bit more than I'd want to. That said, the hint system is pretty good and does a solid job of nudging you along before it eventually tells you the answer.

Saw another review suggest playing with the "show connections" setting turned off for a more immersive experience. So that's what I did, and as such, I have no idea what "show connections" would have done. The gameplay loop is essentially using a machine to enter a scene from the past, listen in on what people are saying, and try to figure out who is who, where they went next, how they died, etc. The main puzzle is finding every scene and working out how everyone moved between them. In that regard, the game is certainly an "Obra Dinn"-like deduction game, but its focus is more on keeping track of everyone's movements to find out where they went next. Their identities aren't that hard to find, though, since you listen in on their conversations. You still need to roughly know who is who to find every scene, but putting the correct name or picture on anyone doesn't seem to actually matter. The game never appeared to verify any of that, so it seems to be mostly for your own benefit. I think I got everything mapped correctly. I got all the achievements, saw the credits, and the post-credits scene. So I assume I "beat" the game, as much as one can. The story just ends once you've found all the scenes, rather than giving you any final verification that every name, picture, and other detail was filled in exactly as intended. I did get stuck a few times, but whenever I properly focused on the game, I could usually find at least one more scene to go to. There are a lot of subtle hints about where people are going next, who they are going to interact with, etc. Failing that, there would normally only be one or two people left to account for, at which point I could look for mentions of them in earlier scenes or brute-force their location. For example, I once had one person left for a time slot, so I just tried them in every room until I found the correct one. Maybe there are enough clues for every single location, but I didn't spot them... It's more than possible that I missed some. Overall, I found the game interesting, but much easier than Obra Dinn. Assuming you don't abuse the "three correct answers" mechanic in Obra Dinn, which makes it a lot easier. But if you only fill in details you are certain about, then Obra Dinn is harder and more engaging. The story wasn't as impactful as I would have liked, either. There are mysteries to uncover, but those mostly add to the puzzle of figuring out what happened rather than making the story itself more interesting. For me, finding every scene was more engaging than the actual events being revealed, although the story still plays a large part in making that puzzle work. The Incident at Galley House is more of a visual novel with puzzles sprinkled in to find the next scene than an investigation-type game. I'd give it an overall score of 7/10. The concept was interesting, but the story and deductions didn't execute it well enough for a higher score. Still a good game, though.

:Cinema Image: What an absolutely amazing game. I had learned about Type Help (the original game this is based on) a while back, I think around the time I finished The Roottrees Are Dead, and was saving it to play later until I found out that the same team was going to be making this remake of it. So I decided to wait until this release to keep myself totally blind on the story. And I'm very glad I did; I don't know if I would've connected with the story as much as I did if I had only played it in the text format. I think they've done an excellent job here juicing up Type Help with visuals, voice acting, a physical space and interactable machine, and similar notetaking/hint systems that were added to the Roottrees remake. Like many of the great investigative/deduction games that have come out in recent years, the story is fantastic and worth finding out for yourself so I won't talk about it much in this review. But it has a lot of twists and turns, keeping me curious about what was going on in this house until I finally pieced together part of the mystery right before the game more explicitly reveals it. It was SO satisfying figuring things out. I also found myself reeling when I realized what certain things meant for the characters in coming scenes, just apprehension for what I could tell was about to happen next, waiting for the pin to drop. I was sad for a couple of characters, kept going "aghhh... mannnn..." lol. And toward the end, when the revelations REALLY start hitting, oh man. That felt so sick. Lastly I want to say that I think they've done a great job keeping the game part feeling purposeful. With the addition of scenes and dialogue playing out as you discover them, it could've become a bit too visual novel-y, but needing to work out the codes to access those scenes and putting in info is well done, and the tactility (thought I was making up that word tbh) of flipping and switching the controls of the spectrometer is really nice. To me, Galley House is a must play for anyone who loves these types of mystery games.

Great game. Knew nothing going in, had a great time.

Just absolutely phenomenal. I never played Type Help as when I discovered Roottrees, I wanted to save my playthrough for this remake. I realise that Red Pearls of Borneo follows the design of this game, and what a wonderful game this was! A proper deduction and logic game that scratched that itch I've been waiting for since Roottrees. Well done again!

An absolute masterclass in deductive mystery games. It's in a league of it's own.

OH BOY this is the most fun game ive played all year. Its a database deduction game kind of like Obra dinn, Roottrees and TR-49. Where you try to figure out how everyone in the house died. To do this you need to use context clues to know which rooms have which people in it at a certain hour. If you get it all right you get to see a cutscene from that moment, where you can gleam new information. The atmosphere is great. The music is lovely. The voice acting is actually good (looking at you UNHEARD) Truly the best deduction game I've played in a long time. If you love any of the beforementioned game you will do yourself an favor by playing this game