Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game with a very particular description that CATER to my OWN SPECIFIC interests, so here we go.

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what to expect from EXPELLED!

This is part of the "Overboard!" games (now just two!: Overboard! and Expelled!) in the sense that they are narrative games about a mystery to solve, and where clues can be accumulated through multiple playthroughs

You play as Verity, a 16 years old girl at an all girls school in the 1920s. The game starts with the headmistress expelling you for throwing another student out of a window

As Overboard! the tone is more humorous than serious but there are plenty of serious themes

Verity will then narrate to her father what really happened

Like Overboard! the game as a limited time for Verity to play/replay the events: the accident happens at around 7am, and you have till 4pm to show the headmistress and the whole school that you are innocent

You can click on different locations in the school, and do differnt things (talk with characters, steal things, pickpocket, put clues into other's pockets etc.) and you can decide to frame someone, trick, lie, tell the truth, be the best girl ever or the worst girl ever, find secret etc.

The game also has an "evil" counter, the more mean, trickster-like and bossy you are the more your counter rises (and there will be certain consequences)

I won't go into details into the story, as there are a lot of surprises, just know that the game is not over once you fail once, as you restart with all your previous knowledge stored into your diary

I played more or less 6 hours and managed to solve the main mystery, but not yet some secondary ones

Some queer subtext, up to you if some love confession is romantic love or not, I decided to interpret it as such

This is not meant to be an objective review of these games. This list is based exclusively on how much I enjoyed the game, and even then, I wouldn't even really say I disliked playing a game until tier D. So not even S is a 100% endorsement. It's just the games that made me personally go "Damn, that was really really good!!!" as I watched the credits role.

If you want to know my more detailed thoughts, send me an Ask.

Return of the Obra Dinn, 2018

The maritime mystery game Return of the Obra Dinn by Lucas Pope is almost entirely subversive for a detective game. Everything in the game from its core premise to  hyper stylized presentation, is all ambitious and experimental. Every person aboard the Obra Dinn has mysteriously died and you assume the role of an insurance investigator piecing together the horrific events using a magic watch that delivers to you a front seat viewing of a vignette of each person’s demise. Using these dioramas of death, you are charged with recording the manner of death of each and each crewmember and passenger aboard the ship.

Return of the Obra Dinn and its addictively satisfying detective puzzle gameplay left me hungry for more. Playing the game instilled in me a deep love for a good mystery and a desire to solve them. While I love games like Disco Elysium, which stars detectives as its protagonists, the investigation was never really the point. Moreover, a love for the unconventional detective was entrenched in my heart and as an interactive medium, video games are perfect for aspiring would-be detectives.

Overboard! , 2021

The year is 1935, aboard the S.S. Hook, Veronica Villensy throws her husband overboard under the foggy shade of night. In Inkle’s devilishly clever puzzle/visual novel, Overboard! you have eight hours before reaching the ports of New York and in that limited time you must relieve yourself from suspicion and guilt for your husband’s death at any cost. It’s a sort of anti-detective puzzle about getting away with murder which forces you to learn your fellow passenger’s schedules, plant evidence, and be consistently careful with your language lest your words betray you much later.

The DNA of time loop games such as Majora’s Mask and The Sexy Brutale is woven into the gameplay loop of Overboard! It’s a fairly short game taking around 2-3 hours to finish the story but at the benefit of allowing an immense amount of player agency. There is a wide variety of solutions to evading the mighty hand of justice, you are free to travel around the ship on a whim with no direction from the game itself. The only hint system is visiting the chapel and praying to God which is both cleverly diegetic and hilarious.

The nonlinearity of your objective incentivizes logical thinking and experimentation. The puzzle is rewarding much like learning each map and NPC routines in the Hitman: World of Assassination trilogy is. At first you clumsily trip over your words when Major Singh interrogates you but eventually you can get away with murder in style along with netting some pocket money from the life insurance if you pull it all off just right!

The nonlinearity of each puzzle in Overboard! is incredibly refreshing, it just feels organic and natural. Going achievement hunting in this game is its own little puzzle and I still haven’t figured out some of the little secrets it hides from us. It’s a game I can’t put down and haven’t yet been able to stop thinking about and I really recommend giving it a shot since it’s only $15 and only $6 if you catch it on sale.

Pentiment, 2022

Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment was my favorite game of 2022 and enraptured me for long nights as I obsessed over its rich dialogue and gorgeous medieval illumination manuscript inspired art. So much love and research was put into the historical setting, it takes place in 16th Century Bavaria within the town of Tassing is filled with life and character. You play as Andreas Maler, an artist working in an abbey on a hill and whilst attempting to finish your masterpiece, your co-worker and friend, Brother Piero, is falsely accused of the murder of a wealthy Baron who was staying in town. You are sprung into action as you only have a limited amount of time to clear Brother Piero’s name.

You are given a limited amount of time to wander around town, attempting to conduct interviews, deduce motives, and eventually gather enough evidence to bring the culprit to justice. Because of the impending trial, time is ever so precious in Pentiment and you will never have enough time to do everything you want at your leisure. Every moment dwelling on conversation or recreation is time you could have spent digging for answers. In order to pin a suspect you must hone in on what you think is most beneficial for your case like a true detective.

Brother Piero’s freedom is always at the cost of another’s conviction, in Pentiment you must push the blame onto someone else. During your investigations, you find that Sister Matilda, a nun at the abbey, had been assaulted by the late Baron many years ago. This is one of the clearest motives in the game but most physical evidence points in other directions, all the while every nun in the abbey will assure you of her innocence.

Saint John's Eve Festival Bonfire

Convincing the archdeacon (the head of the trial) of Sister Matilda’s guilt is perhaps the easiest of all the suspects to accomplish and Pentiment will not tell you outwardly that Matilda didn’t do it but it doesn’t have to. In a clever subversion, the game never tells you if you caught the culprit in the end. Pentiment, brilliantly, left me to wonder if I made the right choices as the totality of the lethal consequences of my actions weighed on my mind. You can easily convince the archdeacon of someone’s guilt but are you able to convince yourself?

The brutality of the executions should not be understated. You look on helplessly as someone you convicted meets an unwieldy end as they plead, cry, and eventually die. The executioner’s sword rises and falls as it lodges itself into the neck again and again until the head breaks free from the neck. Whether you like it or not, your choices matter in Pentiment and the consequences stare you down with a harsh disposition.

While playing Pentiment I was continually reminded of a line from Rian Johnson’s murder mystery film Knives Out. The titular detective Benoit Blanc (he’s so me by the way) notes that, “...the complexity and the gray lie not in the truth but what you do with the truth once you have it.” The complexity of truth is captured beautifully by Pentiment. In many regards it is a conventional mystery but by weaponizing the player’s need for clear answers it infected my mind for many hours after the credits rolled along with the minds of many others. There are fierce debates and chatter surrounding who really did the killing. Pentiment wasn’t as well talked about as it deserved, with all the games releasing it was overlooked by most. Well, it isn’t exactly for everyone but for the price of $20 it gave me a wealth of dialogue to mull over and wonder about.

Phasmophobia, 2022

A multiplayer ghost hunting spookfest is not exactly what you’d think of when discussing detective games but Kinetic Game’s Phasmophobia is deeply investigative by nature. Intense inspection is at the beating heart of the game with an important twist. Where ordinarily a detective chases after a suspect after the fact, here your suspect is reacting to your every move and can (and will) kill you on a whim. In the game you and up to three other friends venture into a haunted house and gather evidence and clues to determine which of the twenty four ghosts in the game is currently residing in your location. 

You and your team will wander out of the safety of your van and into cold, darkened rooms to find clues by checking thermometers, speaking into spirit boxes, and throwing salt all over the floor in hopes of getting the ghost to step in it. Not only can you gather evidence with your camera and UV lights but another layer in your investigation is the behavior of the ghost. Knowing how aggressive each ghost is or how fast it is, is a tremendous asset in your deductive arsenal. The more you know, the more you can whittle the possibilities down until you have your culprit.

But finding the ghost and gathering evidence is just one thing, surviving the ghost is another. Being in the dark and bearing witness to paranormal activity will deplete your sanity and eventually the ghost will target you for a hunt. The front door slamming shut marks the beginning of a hunt, the ghost will manifest physically and chase you down and kill you if you don’t hide in time.

Corpse of my friend, deceased. Moments before I run out of the house in terror.

Phasmophobia is a dangerous balancing act of facing your fears by delving into the darkness in order to find clues and trying desperately to find the ghost type as fast as you can so you can get the hell out of there. The reactivity of the ghost keeps you on edge as you wander the halls gathering data. Speaking into the spirit box may prompt a raspy whisper into your ear or the candle you just lit may be blown out moments after. More interestingly though, is the voice recognition AI that takes advantage of the communication players rely upon. Everything from saying you’re scared to a simple curse word can lead to the ghost favoring you as prey. Even players who stay in the van for too long get targeted by the ghost!

Within Phasmophobia is one of the most unique investigative experiences on the market and definitely a one of a kind multiplayer experience. The comfort of having a buddy to share your terrors with is stripped away when they stop responding to your radio! It’s truly unlike anything I’ve ever played and the developers are constantly updating it, two big thumbs up from the afterlife. 

The satisfaction from my first time getting away with murder in Overboard! and the despair when I find out I had the ghost type completely wrong in Phasmophobia are some of my most memorable experiences in gaming! And Pentiment proved to be one of the most well written games I’ve had the pleasure of reading. I sincerely hope you check them out if you haven’t already! They’re all pretty cheap anyway. And once again begging for recommendations in the comments/reblogs so if you know any good, and hopefully weird, detective games let me know! Thanks in advance everyone and I’ll catch you on the flip side :P

Game 10: Overboard! Jan2025 Overboard! is an interesting concept of a game, but one that kinda breaks itself at it's limits that it can never truly be as interesting as it wanted too. I say this because there is a lot you can do in Overboard to cover your tracks or gaslight others, but ultimately the game really just has three different endings. Either you get arrested, kill someone, or frame someone for murder. It's not even to the point that you get many options to frame others either as you can really only do that with two different people.

Due to it's limited outcome, the potential the game had for "getting away with murder" is more about the puzzle rather than social engineering. If you don't hit certain beats it doesn't matter that you manipulate others, and more so there is only one real right answer to truly get away with murder. This makes the game lean more on the gimmick of learning the ins and outs of people's schedules and right times to take action over actual deceit. Not exactly a problem in it's own right, but it does cause a lot of the game to feel tedious over feeling interesting. No matter what I do I still have to answer the door man's questions correctly, and I'm still missing an earring and have a previous relation with the captain of the crew. These are not bad things mind you, but it is something that makes going through the game over and over and over again tedious in the sense that I heard this dialogue before and have to pay enough attention to get to the correct dialogue that I didn't pick last time. Add that together with the numerous ways to get to two different endings consistently, and one correct way to get the true ending makes the game feel a bit defeated at that point.

Continue reading Expelled! announced, the next Overboard! game from inkle is a school-themed investigation releasing on March 12th

I think I should enjoy Overboard! more than I do. The only explanation I can think of as to why I got bored of it pretty fast is that the timeloop is too short. You wake up and do the "messy up your cabin" routine, and then less than ten minutes later you're waking up again and doing the whole routine again.