A short story in the form of a point & click adventure, Murder left me with a furrowed brow as I retread the brief tale that it told in my mind. It’s but a few moments in time, set in a futuristic cyberpunk city, that leaves so much unanswered, and gives pause for thought.
Admittedly, the first thought might well be “Is that it?” At under 30 minutes long – and a suitable £2/$3 price point to reflect this – it has brevity as both an advantage and a handicap. There are ideas included within it that really want more time to breathe, certainly with regard to the familiar sci-fi tropes surrounding what sentient life is and what that means for humanity.
It’s to this backdrop that the final stages of a murder investigation play out. We don’t see the police department butting their heads up against the brick wall, as they lurch around without a shred of evidence and barely any clues, but following another such murder, Lieutenant Motomeru Minori’s investigation comes to a head. It’s all too conveniently staged, and demonstrates that all we have to look at from this world is a relatively shallow layer behind which a potential depth that could be explored with a larger game hides.
Whether or not any of this is ‘real’ is another matter though, and perhaps one of the more fascinating conundrums to come out of this. This distant future features Star Trek-like holodeck VR, a neural interface that let Minori plug herself into artificial creations world, but also the unsettling dreams, occasional visual distortions and disturbances that make you doubt what exactly is going on, especially in the final stages of the story.
Peter Moorhead, the author and developer, sites a number of inspirations behind the story, including Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell), Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) and the novels of Neal Stephenson. However, visually at least, you have a pixel art style that’s reminiscent of the early 90s point & click adventures, but with a pristine presentation that brings the cityscape outside Minori’s apartment to life in a manner that’s reminiscent of Blade Runner.
The point & click trappings don’t mean that you’ll see inventory-based puzzles though, as the actual gameplay is minimal at best. There are points where you can explore the environment a little, look at a handful of objects or talk to people, but you’re generally drawn from one key story point and interaction to the next in order, quickly passing from one scene to the next.
What strength there is to the plot is bolstered by some good performances from the small cast of voice actors, while the world as a whole is lent a great atmosphere by the synth heavy soundtrack.
Even though I’ve mulled the story over in my head as I’ve been writing this article, I’m still not entirely sure what to think of Murder. It leaves a lot of threads hanging as you come to its conclusion, and in many ways it’s unsatisfying because of that, but as a short story, it has to do that. The power it has isn’t necessarily in explaining every aspect to you, but in feeding you several ideas and scenarios that will stay with and have you thinking about them long after you’ve finished playing.