Spend three nights in a cursed gallery solving the cold-case murder of Mordechai Grey, a tortured artist killed by one of six deadly muses. Hang portraits to see into the past, whilst solving puzzles and exploring ever-changing rooms. Will you be artful enough to catch the murderous muse?
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Pep's Detective Deep Dive - Game 9
A game of departures, of sorts. For developer D'avekki Studios, it's a departure from the "interactive movies" of their previous titles, as Murderous Muses is a fully-3D first-person puzzler that lets you wander around a spooky art gallery. And it's also a departure for everyone's favourite FMV actress Aislinn De'ath, as her character in this is A. blonde, and B. actually wearing shoes.
Murderous Muses has you play a night worker at the Argenta Gallery, on the small island community of Mirlhaven. By day, you hang up paintings and learn about the island's interesting, often macabre, history and customs. You quickly come to the realisation that something is very wrong with the place. One of D'avekki's key strengths in all of their games is their ability to world-build and add just the right amount of subtle horror. Even though their games are built mostly around just talking, there's a creeping dread to them, and it's way more effective for characters to imply all the cosmic horrors the D'avekkiverse holds rather than outright show them.
The main part of the game takes place at night, where you must solve the murder of renowned painter Mordechai Grey. Grey was murdered by one of his final six portrait subjects, and as you watch FMV clips of their portrait sessions (via spooky magic, don't worry about it) it becomes clear that they all have pretty solid motives for it. As with The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, the killer is randomised every playthrough, but with Murderous Muses there's a lot more reason to do multiple playthroughs. During each of the game's three nights, there's a puzzle to solve, and solving the puzzle unlocks a room where you can pick up one of several urns. Placing the urn in the designated area unlocks extra videos, centred around the mysterious and sinister young girl, Kira. Kira seems to be at the centre of all the weird goings-on on the island, so if you're invested in the game's story it's well worth unlocking all of her videos, too.
Side note: Kira is played by Rachel Cowles, daughter of the game's creators, and has appeared in every single D'avekki game. Seeing her grown up a bit in this, compared to the other games, was quite sweet. For a child actor, especially in FMV games, her performances have always been pretty damn good (even if she overdoes the vocal fry way too much here).
So how do you figure out who the murderer is? Each night, the six suspects will have three words underneath their paintings. These three words are also placed on empty spaces in the gallery. Place the suspect's portrait on the empty space above each word, and you'll unlock a short clip of the suspect talking to Mordechai about that word and how it relates to them.
These clips are where you learn all about the characters, their lives, and how they're connected with Mordechai. An undertaker with an unusual appetite, a cancelled comedian (and his creepy puppet), a pair of tennis-playing twins... even for a D'avekki game, the motley crew of maybe-murderers assembled here is a particularly unlikeable bunch.
Watch three clips in the correct order as dictated under the suspect's portrait (which takes a bit of puzzling - the word under a portrait changes after you watch a clip, but they change in a specific order), and you unlock clips of police interviews. You're given a clue at the start of each night (in a fun cameo by Poe & Munro's Klemens Koehring) as to how Mordechai was murdered, and by using these clues you can determine whether each suspect is guilty or innocent in their police interview. If you decide a suspect is innocent, you can rule them out, and whichever suspect has three "guilty" interview answers at the end of the three nights is the killer. Simple!
The game only has one real problem, but it's a big one. My explanation of the game up above is a better tutorial than anything the game actually tells you. The game gives you a tutorial room which does a very poor job of actually explaining the mechanics, then the only other guidance you get is one other video guide, tucked away in a corner of the gallery that most players won't find on their first playthrough. Without a guide, most players will absolutely fumble through their first playthrough and most likely guess the wrong suspect - I got it wrong and the killer turned out to be the person I suspected second-least! Luckily, the game has a lot of replayability, and there's no real penalty for fucking up. After a couple of playthroughs, solving the murder actually becomes secondary to trying to unlock every clip and unravelling the mysteries of Mirlhaven Island.
As usual with D'avekki games, the acting is pretty strong all around. It's no surprise to say that Aislinn De'ath is the standout as undertaker Lilith, showing a lot of unexpected vulnerability in her performance. Also, my heart skipped a beat when I saw bonafide FMV legend Rupert Booth's name in the credits. There's even a part where he says "if I was to show you this...", which I swear was written deliberately. Rikki Stone also puts in great performance as the disgraced comedian Otto - he's a barrel of barely-suppressed rage and is very (intentionally) creepy.
Though it seems confusing from the outside, once you get to grips on what to do this becomes a very enjoyable, even relaxing, little puzzle game.
I've now played every D'avekki game released thus far! Safe to say I've become quite the fan of this studio, and they've definitely helped to develop a fondness for FMV that I never knew I had. I eagerly anticipate whatever comes next from them.
Read my reviews for the other D'avekki Studios games here: The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, The Shapeshifting Detective, Dark Nights with Poe & Munro
A game of departures, of sorts. For developer D'avekki Studios, it's a departure from the "interactive movies" of their previous titles, as Murderous Muses is a fully-3D first-person puzzler that lets you wander around a spooky art gallery. And it's also a departure for everyone's favourite FMV actress Aislinn De'ath, as her character in this is A. blonde, and B. actually wearing shoes.
Murderous Muses has you play a night worker at the Argenta Gallery, on the small island community of Mirlhaven. By day, you hang up paintings and learn about the island's interesting, often macabre, history and customs. You quickly come to the realisation that something is very wrong with the place. One of D'avekki's key strengths in all of their games is their ability to world-build and add just the right amount of subtle horror. Even though their games are built mostly around just talking, there's a creeping dread to them, and it's way more effective for characters to imply all the cosmic horrors the D'avekkiverse holds rather than outright show them.
The main part of the game takes place at night, where you must solve the murder of renowned painter Mordechai Grey. Grey was murdered by one of his final six portrait subjects, and as you watch FMV clips of their portrait sessions (via spooky magic, don't worry about it) it becomes clear that they all have pretty solid motives for it. As with The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, the killer is randomised every playthrough, but with Murderous Muses there's a lot more reason to do multiple playthroughs. During each of the game's three nights, there's a puzzle to solve, and solving the puzzle unlocks a room where you can pick up one of several urns. Placing the urn in the designated area unlocks extra videos, centred around the mysterious and sinister young girl, Kira. Kira seems to be at the centre of all the weird goings-on on the island, so if you're invested in the game's story it's well worth unlocking all of her videos, too.
Side note: Kira is played by Rachel Cowles, daughter of the game's creators, and has appeared in every single D'avekki game. Seeing her grown up a bit in this, compared to the other games, was quite sweet. For a child actor, especially in FMV games, her performances have always been pretty damn good (even if she overdoes the vocal fry way too much here).
So how do you figure out who the murderer is? Each night, the six suspects will have three words underneath their paintings. These three words are also placed on empty spaces in the gallery. Place the suspect's portrait on the empty space above each word, and you'll unlock a short clip of the suspect talking to Mordechai about that word and how it relates to them.
These clips are where you learn all about the characters, their lives, and how they're connected with Mordechai. An undertaker with an unusual appetite, a cancelled comedian (and his creepy puppet), a pair of tennis-playing twins... even for a D'avekki game, the motley crew of maybe-murderers assembled here is a particularly unlikeable bunch.
Watch three clips in the correct order as dictated under the suspect's portrait (which takes a bit of puzzling - the word under a portrait changes after you watch a clip, but they change in a specific order), and you unlock clips of police interviews. You're given a clue at the start of each night (in a fun cameo by Poe & Munro's Klemens Koehring) as to how Mordechai was murdered, and by using these clues you can determine whether each suspect is guilty or innocent in their police interview. If you decide a suspect is innocent, you can rule them out, and whichever suspect has three "guilty" interview answers at the end of the three nights is the killer. Simple!
The game only has one real problem, but it's a big one. My explanation of the game up above is a better tutorial than anything the game actually tells you. The game gives you a tutorial room which does a very poor job of actually explaining the mechanics, then the only other guidance you get is one other video guide, tucked away in a corner of the gallery that most players won't find on their first playthrough. Without a guide, most players will absolutely fumble through their first playthrough and most likely guess the wrong suspect - I got it wrong and the killer turned out to be the person I suspected second-least! Luckily, the game has a lot of replayability, and there's no real penalty for fucking up. After a couple of playthroughs, solving the murder actually becomes secondary to trying to unlock every clip and unravelling the mysteries of Mirlhaven Island.
As usual with D'avekki games, the acting is pretty strong all around. It's no surprise to say that Aislinn De'ath is the standout as undertaker Lilith, showing a lot of unexpected vulnerability in her performance. Also, my heart skipped a beat when I saw bonafide FMV legend Rupert Booth's name in the credits. There's even a part where he says "if I was to show you this...", which I swear was written deliberately. Rikki Stone also puts in great performance as the disgraced comedian Otto - he's a barrel of barely-suppressed rage and is very (intentionally) creepy.
Though it seems confusing from the outside, once you get to grips on what to do this becomes a very enjoyable, even relaxing, little puzzle game.
I've now played every D'avekki game released thus far! Safe to say I've become quite the fan of this studio, and they've definitely helped to develop a fondness for FMV that I never knew I had. I eagerly anticipate whatever comes next from them.
Read my reviews for the other D'avekki Studios games here: The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, The Shapeshifting Detective, Dark Nights with Poe & Munro