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"Murderous Muses" is a short (2-3h per playthrough) but replayable detective-style puzzle game focused on short video clips with real actors (FMV). It features an interesting narrative with cosmic horror elements, deliciously weird characters, and many surprises, but the graphics outside of the FMV content are extremely crude.
1. Story & Setting
You play the single night guard of an art gallery that exhibits paintings of an artist who was murdered a year ago. While the circle of suspects could be narrowed down to the six people he last painted portraits of, the killer never got caught. As you spend your nights in the gallery, the paintings come to life and seem to show you memories of the artist, mainly snippets of conversations that he had with the models.
These conversations are short, and you never hear the artist himself. Often they start as a response to something that the artist may have said. They cover a wide range of topics, and you'll gradually unveil that almost all characters have something to hide. Also, over time, elements of cosmic horror are gradually seeping into the game. You'll never see anything scary or even just supernatural, but the information that you get about the characters and the small island they inhabit make it very clear that these are far from "normal" people and places.
After three nights, the game will end and you get the opportunity to accuse one of the suspects of murdering the artists, based on the information you have learned throughout the game. Some elements of the story are randomized and every suspect could end up being the killer.
I found the characters very interesting, and enjoyed replaying the game several times until I had unveiled their complete story arcs. The horror elements are skillfully wrought into the story and contribute to an eerie (though never frightening or scary) atmosphere. The writing succeeds in portraying the characters' emotions and delivering the occasional witticism, even though it is mostly focused on providing information.
2. Gameplay & Mechanics
The game is effectively one big "whodunit" puzzle, with a few optional puzzles on the side. There's also a "collectathlon" element to seeing all the videos, which should appeal to completionists.
It's a bit hard to talk about this game's mechanics because one reason why I had so much fun with it, is that I deliberately ignored the instructional in-game "Stuck? Keep watching..." video and experimented with the environment to figure things out myself. After unraveling the game's puzzle structure, it does become rather formulaic and potentially less enjoyable. I therefore recommend watching this video only if you're really stuck, and I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment, so I'll remain vague here.
The game is divided into three nights. Each night, you'll have the opportunity to hear the suspects talk about several topics, which are somewhat randomized. You're supposed to figure out how to obtain information from specific subjects about specific topics, and once you do, you get additional information that will help you find the killer. However, hearing a suspect's thoughts consumes a limited resource called "eyes", and you won't be able to ask everyone about everything in a single playthrough.
Additionally, you will have to remove one of the six suspects for each of the last two nights, i.e. one of them will not be available for "questioning" (but you get to choose which one).
There are optional puzzles in the game that give you more "eyes" and access to more information. These are very easy, but get repetitive very quickly, as there's only a handful of them and you'll see three different ones in each playthrough. Another optional puzzle revolves around assigning other paintings to spaces with their names during daytime, this is also very easy - especially since you need only about 3 playthroughs to see all the paintings and learn the correct associations.
After the third night, you will (if you played well) have accumulated enough knowledge to safely determine the killer, whom you can then accuse. This ends the game. If your accusation was wrong, then the real killer gets revealed.
The game offers good replayability by randomizing the killer, the crucial information that will reveal them, and some of the topics you can "ask" about. There are also a few secrets to discover. The "infinite replayability" mentioned in the product description is, however, an exaggeration. Once you've understood the game's puzzle structure (which shouldn't take more than 3 playthroughs), you'll always know what to do in order to reliably find the murderer. Though if you're interested in finding all the juicy little details, then this can keep you engaged for another dozen playthroughs, but you'll then see a lot of repetition. A special area in the game tracks how much you have revealed about each character and what you might still be missing, it also offers you a way to view statements about related topics in chronological order.
3. Graphics & Presentation
The FMV clips are competently filmed and acted. Visually there's not a lot to them, as most of them just show a person sitting on a green couch and talking into the camera, but the characters, their clothing, and their make-up are very distinct. The game also mixes things up a bit by varying the suspects' postures, as well as the viewing distance and camera angle.
However, the gallery - a 3D environment that you move around in between the video clips - is horribly crude. With its muddy, detail-less textures and primitive lighting, it looks like a 3D game from more than 20 years ago. I'm not too fond of the paintings either - the filter that was used to create the painterly style, removes contrast and distorts the image so much that I often couldn't determine what exactly I'm looking at in my inventory, even on a 43" monitor.
The sound effects are fairly primitive as well, but they get the job done and fit the respective action. There is background music, but I found it too obtrusive and a bit annoying as time went on, so I muted it.
The actors generally deliver good performances, though there wasn't much opportunity to truly shine since there's no interaction and barely any dramatic scenes. Some elements might be a bit overdone, but I think they still fit the atmosphere.
4. Usability & Accessibility
The game's settings include selectors for resolution and screen mode, a vsync toggle, sliders for FOV and brightness, and a head bob toggle. Bloom, chromatic aberration, and ambient occlusion can be toggled on or off individually. Four separate volume sliders are provided. Subtitles can be switchen on or off, and changed in size (but not color or background).
The game is controlled with mouse and keyboard. Unfortunately there is no way to rebind keyboard controls. Movement is fixed to WASD, not even arrow keys work. Your input never needs to be particularly quick or precise, but this is still a deplorable omission in an otherwise well-rounded product.
All video clips are skippable (a crucial feature for FMV games), and most can be repeated as well.
There is only one save state, which gets overwritten automatically whenever you take an action.
5. Conclusion
I liked this game a lot and recommend it to fans of puzzle games, slow-burning cosmic horror, and full-motion video, provided that they can accept the very crude implementation of the 3D world.
The game currently has "Mixed" reviews, and I think that's underselling it - but I can understand where this is coming from. The lack of explicit handholding (which I appreciated) apparently left many players confused as to what to do, though the in-game instructional video (added in a recent patch) should address that. Additionally, the inclusion of a crude 3D world, by developers cherished for traditional FMV games, may have caught many fans on the wrong foot. But I think it's definitely worth a shot.