The Deed

Review

You play as Arran Bruce, part of a noble dynasty which goes back hundreds of years, and you’ve returned to the family home, Dunshiel House. It’s a place which doesn’t hold many happy memories for you growing up. It’s a miserable night, the raining is siling down and you’ve got to face your family whom you’ve not seen for many years. It’s your father’s fiftieth birthday but it’s not the real reason you’ve decided to come back to the family home.

Because you’ve left the ancestral home to lead a normal life away from the abuse of your father and the craziness of your sister. Your father has decided to remove you from his will, instead leaving it all to your sister (sandwich short of a picnic comes to mind). This is something which you’re not going to accept, so you need to remove your sister from the equation and get yourself re-installed on your fathers will.

To do this you must murder your sister, leaving you the sole heir.  However, if you’re caught then you’ll not get re-installed on the will, and you’ll end up spending what years you have left in behind bars. So, you’ll have to devise a plan to murder her, planting evidence to frame someone else within the household and removing any doubt that you had anything to do with it.

The game starts with you on a train and it explains who you are, where you’re going and why you’re going there, after which you be taken to Dunshiel House by George, the longtime butler of your family. After a brief chat you enter the house and are greeted by the maid, Sofia, who offers to take your coat. It’s from this point that you’ll need to start making choices as you interact with the characters within the house. There are three options to choose from with each interaction and your choice will have an affect later in the game.

There are several sections within the game: Homecoming, Dinner is Served, Doing the Deed and Interview. Homecoming is from entering the house, where you’ll be able to move around, talk and search for objects which can be used to murder your sister or for planting evidence. You can only carry two objects, one to be used as a weapon, the other for planting as evidence. It’s probably best not to pick anything up straight away; search the house and devise a plan with what’s available. You do get asked to confirm if you’d like to take an object and once you do you are committed to taking it. Once you’ve chosen two objects, then you’re stuck with them as you move on to the next section, Dinner is Served.

You’ll sit down with your family while Sofia and George serve you all, and you’ll be given options to reply to the chat over dinner, and like before, they may have an affect later. Once dinner is over and done with, then it’s on to Doing the Deed; this is where you need to plant the evidence in the room of the person you want to frame for the murder you’re about to commit. Once you’ve placed the evidence then the only thing to do is go and kill your sister with your weapon of choice. You can also use your bare hands to do the deed if you so wish, but you’ll have some explaining to do when searched by the Chief Inspector.

The final section is the Interview; everyone is questioned by the Chief Inspector, Winston Lewis. With everyone gathered in the parlour, he tells everyone that he’s done some searching and can find no signs of forced entry or anything, and concludes that the killer is probably in this room. After questioning everyone else, it’s your turn; this is where your prior interactions and replies to everyone in the house will be scrutinised by the Inspector as he tries to piece together your movements and actions. Once he’s done questioning you, he’ll let you know if he has any concerns about you and whether or not you’re a suspect. If you manage to shift the blame on to someone else while removing any doubts it was you, then you may just get away with murder and with any luck be restored to your father’s will as sole heir.

There isn’t much in the way of options; you can press F1 to get to the options, where you can check the box to the options you’d like. Under General tab there’s Launch in Full Screen, Reduce Screen Flickering, Play BGM and ME and Play BGS and SE. There’s also a Gamepad and Keyboard tabs where you can re-bind any keys or buttons. You can also use ATL+ENTER to go full screen or to play the game in a small window.

I did have a couple little problems while playing the game; trying to take a screenshot through Steam by pressing F12 caused the game to crash back in desktop. Another was the games options, where my cursor would disappear, making it hard to navigate and select anything through the different options and tabs. I played the game using an Xbox360 pad which worked well, I would have liked to have changed a button or two but as it was a pain (at least for me), I left it as is and soon got used to the default buttons, so not that big of a problem.

I’ve enjoyed playing the game; a play-through can be rather short, especially once you’ve been through the game. However, it does have some replayability with the multiple responses to interactions with everyone, the multiple ways of killing your sister and multiple ways of framing someone to take the fall for your crime. Just make sure you plant your evidence; I had forgotten to do so and when searched by the inspector he found a pair of women's panties on me, which I then had to explain - fun game!

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!