You arrive at a dark and dilapidated house. Letting yourself in, you make your way to a machine that will let you hear and see the events of The Incident At Galley House, where eleven people died. Through your investigation, you'll need to determine who was where and at what time in order to get to the bottom of the mystery of what happened.

The Incident At Galley House is a new title by Evil Trout Inc, creators of The Roottrees Are Dead, and William Rous, who created the original text-based murder mystery Type Help that The Incident At Galley House is based on. For fans of the original game, while a lot of the puzzles and problem-solving are the same, this new package will give you more than a few reasons to revisit this mystery.

Replace a text box with these interesting and unusual machines as you investigate Galley House The Incident At Galley House Is A Puzzle Where You Have To Find All The Pieces

The gateway into the murder mystery of The Incident At Galley House is through this mysterious machine. With it, you can program a timecode, location, and the numbers of the victims that you believe were present and peer into the past to hear the events as they played out.

You start with nothing but a few confirmed scenarios and a list of blank victim profiles numbered one through eleven. The very first scene you receive is one of Victim 1 and Victim 11 conversing on Quail Road leading up to the Galley House.

Through context clues, you'll begin to learn about how Victim 11 has worked for Rupert Galley for many years, and how Victim 1 received an invitation to come to Galley House but isn't familiar with the family. The conversation ends with Victim 1 heading to the entrance, and Victim 11 returning to the house separately.

Pause scenes, take notes, save text, and more to keep the story straight

Being a fly on the wall of all of these conversations, you'll learn more about the house and its many rooms, the current residents and guests of the house, and the events that transpired that led to the death of them all.

Pay Close Attention To Mentions Of People, Places, And Things

The kind of information you're able to glean from a conversation will begin with perhaps learning the names of each of the characters, then beginning to understand their relationships. As you're seeking more information about scenes that took place, you'll have to start paying attention to characters mentioning that they made a phone call, or were in a room that used to be a library.

Starting playing The Incident At Galley House I began to pick up bits and piece of information, logging my own notes in the game's tools, but it wasn't long before I was starting to intricately track eleven peoples movements across time and place, comparing them with others, and even seeking out time codes where there was only one or two characters missing to figure out what they might have been up to.

The result of this investigation led to six pages of handwritten notes, and a spreadsheet with color coordination for key events. If you're a fan of a game that really pushes you to pay attention to the finer details to get to the bottom of a mystery, then The Incident At Galley House is a great place to be.

I want to show off my spreadsheet, but don't want to spoil the game so you get this newspaper clipping instead

While I did end up creating separate notes, I was very impressed with the level of tracking that the game provides to you. You can rename the numbered characters as you learn their names, add house locations as you learn them to your tracker, and view recovered scenes in chronological order, view the events as they happened in order to a specific room, and even track a specific character's path through the house.

There were a number of times where I got stuck looking at the puzzle from the direction of chronological order, but taking some time to shift my approach to discovering where a single character was in a previously undiscovered location would normally get me back on track.

Text-Based Mystery To Fully Visual Representations

Remastering a text-based adventure with a full user interface, tracking tools, and more does mean that there are some elements that are inherently easier. Such as knowing from the voice acting that Victim 10 is a woman from the moment you hear her voice, or understanding which room the fireplace is in because you can clearly see it.

Rous and Evil Trout Inc have done a fantastic job adding new elements that will continue to contribute to the mystery to draw you further in now that you can see everything. While these Victims can be heard, they are silhouettes until you are able to pair them with one of the many victim profiles that you're provided near the start of the game. There might be multiple characters you're hearing from, but unless there's a specific mention of a spilled wine glass or wheelchair, you might not be able to put a name to a face.

The game also fully reimagines the way that you seek to input a code to search for a scene. In the text-based game, you'd need to type out the timecode, location, and numbers of those you believed were present in a scene. Now the machine has a dial for the time, a long list of the possible locations as you discover them, and large mechanical dials to engage for anyone you believe is in a scene.

Visually, it's a very appealing display; not having to type out exactly what I want did lead me into silly situations where I might have changed the time code and people involved for a room flipping the switch to be told there's no scene, and then realizing I forgot to also change the location.

Track events by timeline, who is involved, or where the event takes place

Maybe it was just the way I set up my spreadsheet, but I almost feel like I would have had an easier time entering in the codes as it was in the original game.

The Incident At Galley House Review | Final Thoughts

After learning of the release of The Incident At Galley House, I spent a few hours on Type Help, immediately fell in love with the story and concept of gameplay, and waited for the remaster's release. From start to finish, I had an incredible time on this journey.

I did have a frustrating number of times where I was intending to do one thing, but forgot to alter some setting along the way, but when I realized what I had done, I could course correct.

The conclusion to the story was a lot of fun and very satisfying, and I've already recommended it to a number of similarly puzzle-minded friends.

If you, or your friends, are into unraveling a mystery one scene at a time, building out your knowledge of a series of events with satisfyingly drip-fed clues, then it's well worth spending the dozen hours or so diving deep into The Incident At Galley House. Ultimately, if you're not sure if this story will be for you, do what I did and check out Type Help for free and play it for an hour or so.

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The Incident At Galley House was purchased by the reviewer for PC - All screenshots were taken over the course of the 12 hour review