Overboard!

A murder mystery where you’re the murderer is ripe for intrigue and clever manipulation. Overboard! begins with a bang (not literally), pulling you into the dark web of secrets surrounding the shipmates you haven’t killed. Sadly, though, the structure of the game leads to repetition and fatigue, leaving it way less satisfying than it should have been.

Written and directed by Jon Ingold, this mystery sees you play a young socialite in 1935, whose tired of her husband and promptly deposits him into the sea. Waking up the next morning, she thinks about her upcoming freedom if she can just make it through the last day of the voyage avoiding suspicion. This is when you take over and the steward knocks on your cabin door. Your first decision is whether or not to let him into your room, and a dozen more choices await you over the course of the day that can lead to any number of conclusions.

Choices vary from whom you talk to, who you decide to make your friend, where you go on the ship and what items you have on your person. Should you act normal and go to the dining room for breakfast? Maybe scour the ship making sure you didn’t leave any clues behind? Or perhaps you should look up dirt on someone else in case they saw something. Heck, maybe forget all that and just sabotage your own fate. Each permutation of the game is a delight, replete with dramatic flare and charming dialogue. Each run-through of the game takes just five to ten minutes.

Other than the opening narration, there’s no voice acting, just some audible mumbling and sound effects with occasional light music. The graphics are simple but bright two-dimensional drawings of the ship and its characters.

Thankfully I reached about two-thirds of the potential endings within the first few hours of play, because boy does it get old fast. While you are allowed to rewind any scene once through playthrough, you cannot save your progress. So if you want to try a few different branching paths based on the same few hours of decisions, you have to go through the same dialogue and actions ad nauseum. Which would be tolerable, except many times you’ll find your ideas didn’t really change the outcome and you basically played the exact same version of the story three times in a row. There’s a fast-forward feature that will essentially push you through the same decisions you did last time (until you decide to stop it), but it’s still monotonous watching each scene play out repeatedly.

There is a hint system of sorts. You can go to the chapel and talk to a cross; God will then sarcastically answer your questions. But the hints are generally vague enough to not be particularly helpful. Once I got bored, I pulled up a walkthrough to find the final few endings and achievements. The game is so delightful that it was still fun to complete it this way. I only wish the game would have been designed to encourage me to do it on my own.

Forgive me, I didn't realize this game was up on IFDB, so this review is coming quite awhile after I initially played the game (also, I totally stole my review title from The Short Game podcast). That said, I might update it in the future, because even after putting 6 hours into a game where a single playthrough takes less than an hour, I still want to play more!

The time frame is pre-World War II. You play as the aptly named Veronica Villensey, a British starlet on her way via boat to America with her husband, whom she promptly pushes overboard to start the game. The deed is done, but can she get away with it?

Though the game has a fun graphical interface that you use to move around the ship, the primary game mechanic is text-based choices and dialogue trees. There are a number of characters on board that you can interact with, some may suspect you, some you might be able to use to cover up your crime. Who is manipulating who? And even if you can avoid prison, can you also collect on your husband's life insurance, and maybe another prize while you are at it?

The writing is excellent, the characters are colorful, and there are so many paths through the game that even after you achieve the "best" ending, you can play again and again to find other, quicker, or more interesting ways to victory. The NPCs have their own goals and move around on their own, and time is ticking while you are playing, so if you want to beat someone to a certain location, make sure that you don't dilly-dally. The game also features as fast forward function, so if you want to get back to a point later in the day to try something different, you don't have to go through each step to get there at normal speed. The game will remember the choices that you made on the last playthrough and let you get through them fast.

All around wonderful game from some of the true masters of the genre. Easily one of my favorites of all time.

Inkle's two subsequent games after their smash-hit 80 DAYS have been deliberate attempts to try something new: a sci-fi graphical adventure game and an Arthurian turn-based strategy respectively. Their latest, Overboard!, is the closest thing to a proper 80 DAYS sequel: a choice-based narrative filled with storylets and side-plots to uncover and explore, with a ticking time limit and zero chance to see it all in one go, a Groundhog Day-like "time loop" game. But of course on a much smaller scale, and focused much more on people (the staff and passengers onboard your transatlantic ship) and their secrets than places and modes of transport. Our deliciously evil player-character, Veronica Villensy, is absolutely brilliantly written, as are all the small cast of NPCs, and both music and graphics perfectly complement the whole 1930s jazz/brass/art deco era mood and tone. Flawless.