Given that I’ve spent a fair amount of time in life reading a variety of mysteries, ranging from the classics to simply whatever I happened to bump into randomly, I do enjoy a decent mystery game. Sure, there are adaptations of more famous detectives, including the likes of Holmes and Poirot, but with the right story and ensemble I think anyone could likely make a decent one without that sort of literary pedigree. Murder By Death takes an interesting stab at the genre, featuring a collection of appropriately suspicious people who could all have their own motives, and a somewhat unique take involving using multiple characters to work things out… but where pacing and mechanics are concerned it unfortunately struggles a bit.

In concept there’s quite a lot here that works. Summoned to the estate of a wealthy aristocrat who has met an untimely demise, you’ll be charged with working out whodunnit. As you might expect, a pretty varied bunch of family and different associates are on-hand and everyone is a suspect, but one surprise is that you’ll enlist the aid of 2 of them to help you in your search for the truth. This break from the normal solo act of investigating actually opens up a different set of challenges, since different people have varying traits or even equipment that will help with specific tasks… but aside from trying not to pick two people who sound like they’d have overlapping skills, you’ll need to trust your gut and see how it goes in your first outing or two. It’s good that you have 3 people to switch between, because there’s a lot of ground to cover, and people to interrogate, but the clock is always ticking, so this won’t be easy.

Unfortunately, one area where the game could have used quite a bit more polish to make all of this less frustrating would be how it works mechanically. Aside from your characters plodding around at a pretty sluggish pace, your means of interacting with people and objects in the environment is sloppy at best. Whether that involves getting stuck as you accidentally trigger the wrong thing repeatedly when people and items are close to each other, or just wasting time navigating a crowded room with your Weeble Wobble-esque frame, the gameplay side of the experience drags the storytelling side down. It still may be of interest to would-be sleuths who like a good mystery, but while this is a pretty unique option, there are stronger overall titles in the genre out there.