Inkle, the developer of nuanced, writerly games like 80 Days, Heaven’s Vault and Pendragon, has not only surprise-announced a new game, but released it. The game is Overboard! and as I’ve been finding out this week, it’s a lot of fun to play.
Overboard previewDeveloper: InklePublisher: InklePlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Released 2nd June – today! – on PC (Steam, GOG) and Switch for £11.39, and iOS for £6.
It’s a murder mystery but in reverse. You, in other words, are the murderer. You are Veronica Villensey, a fading starlet in the 1930s, and you’re sailing from England to New York with your husband in search of a new life. Money has deserted you back home. But the thing is, you don’t particularly like your husband, so you do the only reasonable thing and sling him overboard. Splosh! This is how the game begins.
How it unfolds from there, though, is up to you. You have roughly eight hours until the boat pulls into New York harbour in which to cover your tracks, stop people talking, and get away with murder.
This isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are several passengers and they’ve all seen or heard different things, and so need handling in different ways. Do you expose their secrets or blackmail them somehow? Or, simply, do you shut them up?
Whatever you decide, it takes time: time to research and time to experiment. And time, sadly, is the one thing you’re always running out of it. Every action drains it. Talk to someone and time ticks away; move around the ship and time ticks away; fall asleep on your bed and time obviously ticks away. It’s the great limiter, time, and there simply isn’t enough of it to do everything in one go.