OVERBOARD!

DEVELOPER Inkle Ltd. PRICE $21.50 AVAILABILITY Released WEBSITE https://www.inklestudios.com/overboard/

The murderer is … me! Yay, I solved it. Weirdly, although my surname is “Villensey” and the first scene is literally me pushing my husband off a ship, it took me a long moment to understand Overboard. It’s not your usual whodunnit. You’re not figuring out who the murderer is, you have to get away with the murder you committed and there wasn’t a lot of planning or forethought involved. It’s clearly still a mystery, though. There are a lot of things that Veronica is not telling you, up front. It took me a couple of playthroughs to even sleuth out my husband’s name.

Quickly, the experience becomes a time loop, like Russian Doll or Mars Underground. You’re only a day’s sail from your destination and there’s a lot of incriminating evidence to explain, hide or murder away. If someone accuses you on a first playthrough, cosh them on the second and dispose of their body. Then, when you need something they have later, keep them alive and seduce them, on a third. Characters follow set routines; you’ll find them at the same place and time, much like in The Last Express, or the Laura Bow mysteries.

Speaking of which, I had no idea how far from solving The Colonel’s Bequest I was, as a child. I certainly got some bad endings, but I remember reading a walkthrough (probably twenty) years later and realising how many clues I had overlooked. The text parser recognised the verb “smell”, for goodness sake. I missed a lot of cigarette smoke. Overboard is fun to play alongside (mild) spoilers. I finished it a couple of ways first, then scoured Steam’s forum for things to try. There are some weird achievements to discover, for sure.

I’d like to say the game is difficult, but it’s relatively straightforward; a test of your memory (or skill at discovering, then documenting, who is doing what, when). It’s also easy enough to achieve a first, somewhat less evil, ending, before things get significantly more convoluted. Characters have secrets and side quests (or wild goose chases) to occupy your time. A more complete picture of what has occurred on this voyage eventually becomes clear.

My favourite character is God. He’s like an in-game, in-world, hint guide. Why is he helping a murderer by suggesting how to hide evidence and drug nosy, old ladies? I think it’s possible he’s not actually God. In fact, at one point, he suggested I solve my current problem by killing everyone on board, which then got added to the checkbox list of goals to work towards over many games. A surprising number of people can be thrown overboard. It’s not really a spoiler, I promise. It’s more a comment on the kind of humour you can expect from this experience.

Overboard is a fascinating narrative experiment. It is difficult to play because turning up to a location even minutes late will foil all of your carefully planned schemes, requiring endless restarts. Developers have mitigated this in a couple of (not entirely adequate enough) ways, like with a fast forward button. I’m not sure how they could have improved upon this further. Possibly with the option for multiple saves with a clear list of conditions like, “I told Carstairs that Malcom was alive”. Did I? After all, covering up a badly planned murder gets complicated, fast.