As I’ve mentioned before, I simply adore the text-based storytelling games by Inkle and so just had to get this one. Unfortunately, while Heaven’s Vault had the problem of being too long and too ambitious, this one has the opposite problem of being far too short and too simple. You can be done with pretty much all the content in a couple of hours and even a simple first win will take no more than an hour. I do like the premise but there’s just too little content and the production values are somewhat lackluster as well.

We’re on the eve of the Second World War and a steamer is carrying passengers from England to New York. One night, there is a murder and we all know how this story goes. Except that here you are in control of the murderess Veronica Villensey who has just tossed her husband Malcolm overboard the night before and your objective is to help her get away with it. You have eight hours before the other passengers realize that Malcolm is missing and hold an inquiry. To do so, you go around the different sections of the ship, the S.S. Hook, talk to the passengers and crew members, and gather objects, all to manipulate the situation to fit your purposes. Naturally each character have secrets and stories of their own and this information is useful in getting others to do what you want. At the end of each run, you get a news article summarizing the results with Veronica either being imprisoned for murder or various levels of getting away with it.

Things can be confusing the very first time you play the game as even Veronica isn’t sure if she really did push her husband overboard or it was just a bad dream. Veronica is also privy to information that the player doesn’t know including who’s who on the ship so it’s almost certain that she will end up being accused of murder and caught before you understand how this is supposed to work. The second time around getting away with it should be a cinch because there are only like six characters to talk to on the ship and very few key pieces of evidences that could link Veronica to the crime. There are constraints in the timing, and for some actions you need to know exactly what to prioritize to get to it before the other characters do. But overall there’s just very little content in the game and I would struggle to find enough unique things to do on board the ship to fill the full eight hours available.

The best part of the game is probably the writing for the character of Veronica. She truly is a wicked murderess who is not only unrepentant but seems to be having fun doing it. She has a sarcastic sense of humor as she contemplates what she’s done and even in her conversations with God! The other characters are alright but none of them are truly that interesting to me and even their so-called hidden secrets are a little lame. Snippets of the conversation reference the tense pre-war atmosphere but there’s not really that much text here either. Inkle made this in three months and it’s not bad for what it offers. Yet there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a disappointingly small and short game.