"The Incident at Galley House" has been contained!

So posh...

What kind of freaky Jordan Peele movie is The Incident at Galley House turning out to be?! After playing through the first three hours, I slowly started to realise what was going on in this story. I was able to figure out most scenes fairly easily. Sometimes there was some guesswork and trial and error involved, though never so much as to become frustrating. I'm absolutely loving this game, and it has a good chance to stealing the #2 spot in this year's top ten.

Not as complicated as it looks...

Yet there are some things that bother me. The backgrounds, the actual rooms of Galley House, and the character avatars as well, are too static. You hear these people opening doors, rummaging through drawers, moving furniture, handling items... However, you never actually see any of that interaction. The characters just stand there and pop up in different places in the rooms a bit. Also, whenever they sit or lie down, the avatars you chose for them turn back into empty silhouettes, with a little picture of their face in a kind of thought balloon hovering above them. Even when they die, they just keep standing there seemingly without a worry in the world while every one else freaks out. I guess it was too much to have all those different positions for all the possible avatars drawn up. 

Vworp-vworp-vworp...

While there's no rewarding jingle when you get a series of deductions right, as was the case in similar games like Obra Dinn and Roottrees, the reward here is the distortion effect, transporting you to a scene in the past. whenever you get a coordinate correct. That always felt so good after a series of error buzzes from the machine each time you try a combination.

Lots of bedrooms in this house...

I finished the game in a little under 11 hours. But I can't really write a playthrough post without spoiling too much. So I won't and leave it at saying that I thought I would be done after about 9 hours, only for the game to still have some surprises left! Now I'm sad it's over, and - same as with Obra Dinn - I wish the developers would make a new game, a new story, with this same gameplay mechanic because it was so much fun! 

You can find the The Incident at Galley House on Steam!

New playthrough: "The Incident at Galley House"!

New game!

Usually I write my first playthrough post after the first hour into a game. This time, however, I was sucked in so deep, I'm already three hours along and I had a difficult time turning off The Incident at Galley House to return to my actual life. I'm extremely thankful for all donations I received through buymeacoffee.com/johnnynys for my reviews and playthrough posts, which allowed me to buy this new indie deduction game by Evil Trout, the developers of The Roottrees Are Dead!

Looks quite a lot like TR-49...

I'm an investigator sent to Galley House, where a bunch of dead bodies turned up which I have to identify. Using a technological device using coordinates made up of a timeline position, a room abbreviation and numbers referring to designated persons present in that moment, I can watch and listen to scenes from the past. Each scene holds clues to put together new coordinates for other scenes. The main goal is to find ALL scenes for ALL timeline positions to know where EACH person was at ANY given time and place.

Let's find out who these silhouettes are...

The gameplay feels like a combination of Return of the Obra Dinn, TR-49, and the board games Clue and Who is it? When watching the scenes, you can pause them whenever you want and open up an in-game notebook to jot down some leads. This way, I'm keeping a track of all coordinates (they highlight blue when they are correct and you've seen the flashbacks) and a list of characters. After three hours of playing, I think I have identified everyone and also discovered what they look like, but I'm still missing one last name. In any case, the scenes keep coming as I deduce new coordinates, and this experience is so addictive I can't wait to dive back into this mystery. Because strange things seem to be occurring in this Galley House, with three people already found dead, and I certainly don't yet have a clue what's going on exactly.

You can find the The Incident at Galley House on Steam!