Have You Played... The Sexy Brutale?
One party, many deaths
Over on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast Matthew has recommended (a couple of times, I think) a book called The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. It is a murder mystery where the main character lives through the same day seven times, as seven different people at a party, until they figure out who murders Evelyn Hardcastle every night.
It is a very good and original book and yet I would not be surprised if Turton had gotten the idea from The Sexy Brutale.
The Sexy Brutale is a time-loop mystery where you (a priest) are trapped in the same 12 hours at a masked party in a mansion-slash-casino, where all the guests keep getting murdered. Think the sort of house that contains a theatre, a bar, and a vivarian with a huge man-eating tarantula.
The game, therefore, is learning the timings of everything so that you can gradually save each of the victims. Doing so gives you access to their mask, which gives you a new ability - one that will probably be instrumental in saving the next prospective deado.
It's a very clever interlocking thing of beauty, a perfectly timed puzzlebox that puts me in mind of Outer Wilds.
It can get very tricky, and a bit frustrating if you spend almost all of your 12 hour time limit trecking over to discover a new puzzle, only to have no idea what to do when you get there. But if you like puzzles, and puzzles that you've probably never seen the like of before, I'm sure you'll find The Sexy Brutale a real joy.
