Murder is Game Over: Deal Killer

Do you like murder mysteries? Do you like games that look like they were on the Super Nintendo? Are you a big fan of dogs? If so, then let me introduce you to Murder is Game Over: Deal Killer, a brand-new, budget-priced adventure game that combines the best elements of Agatha Christie and pixel graphics. It’s a case set in a snowed-in ski lodge and a detective and his trusty dog are the only ones that can crack it wide open. The game is afoot when I review Murder is Game Over: Deal Killer by HitherYon Games.

Let me set the scene: It’s high up in the Alps at a snowed-in ski lodge and there has been a murder. The victim is the mean and obnoxiously greedy CEO of a popular video game developer that is best known for screwing players over with microtransactions and loot boxes. The entire ski lodge is made up of his employees and children, all of which have a motive to kill the miserable old man.

What the suspects don’t realize is that a famous detective has been invited to the company party, and he’s here to get to the bottom of this murder. Wait ... did I say detective? What I mean is “detectives.” Plural. It’s actually a pair of crime solvers – a man and his dog, Cleo. The man will interrogate the suspects, while Cleo will find clues hidden around the hotel. It’s the perfect detective duo, and together they will have no problem solving this case in about two hours.

What we have here is one of those single-location crime thrillers. The type where we have to track down clues and gather up information from everybody in the hotel. If that wasn’t enough to deal with, there’s also a famous story about a ghost lady wearing a white gown, a supernatural mystery that gets intertwined with the crime caper. Throw in a whole cast of wacky characters and a few twists to keep your head spinning and you have the kind of snowed-in thriller that would have tickled Poirot’s comically large mustache.

A lot of the charm of this game is its 16-bit style. This is a murder mystery that looks like it could have launched alongside the Super Nintendo. The eight suspects are small and look great as pixel characters, and you’ll be able to see their faces close up every time you go to interrogate them. It’s a fun cast of colorful characters, too. It’s over-the-top and silly in all the right ways, so that we don’t even bat an eye when we learn that the big, tough bodyguard is afraid of clowns and that the heir to the software company is a man-child who spends all day watching this world’s version of Paw Patrol.

As an investigation, a lot of the gameplay boils down to questioning the suspects and sussing out clues, both big and small. Although you can play it like a traditional point and click adventure games, there aren’t really any puzzles to solve and the whole thing is about figuring out who had the motive for each of the crimes. This results in a game that is more about what is said than what is done. It’s important to pay attention to every word that is said, because a lot of it will come into play at the end, when you’ll need to use the clues and your own deduction to crack this case wide open.

Because of this structure, some might complain that it’s not all that exciting. You’re mostly confined to in and around the ski lodge, so there’s not much area to explore. This is a confined space mystery, which is good from a narrative perspective, but may not work as well as a 16-bit video game. There are only so many rooms to rummage through, so it won’t take long for the detective and Cleo to have this whole mystery wrapped up.

In fact, I was genuinely shocked at the short run time. You basically have enough time to interview the suspects two different times, and then the game is ready for you to spell everything out in the den with the fancy fireplace. Because the area is so limited and there aren’t that many suspects in play, I figured that the real emphasis would be on the story and the clues and maybe even the misdirection. I expected to typical twists and red herrings, but the murder mystery is surprisingly straight-forward. Sure, there’s some supernatural stuff that sends us on a fun side-quest, but once that’s resolved the game is in a big hurry to end.

It doesn’t help that the detective is the least interesting character in the game. I’m not even sure he has a name. You’ll spend most of your time playing as the more-established dog, Cleo, who is the only one that can locate clues. Typically, the detective is a larger-than-life figure that commands the room, like Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes and, most recently, Benoit Blanc. But this detective has no personality and gets completely overshadowed by the rest of the colorful characters. And no, it doesn’t help that he looks like a 15-year-old Archie.

It could be that some of this was addressed in the first game, 2022’s Murder is Game Over. Or maybe the detective is more fleshed out in last year’s sequel, Streaming Death. I don’t know, I haven’t played them. And the good news is that you can pick this game up and thoroughly enjoy the mystery without playing those previous episodes. Deal Killer does a good job of bringing you up to speed on the crucial bits of information from past games that are pertinent to this case. That said, playing through this third installment does make me want to go back and unravel the mysteries of the other two games.

As a murder mystery, Deal Killer is a little too straight-forward and wraps up right as things are starting to get good. I don’t mind being stuck in a single location, but I was hoping the game would do more with the space. It’s a fun adventure with an attractive price, but it’s a bit on the simple side and you probably won’t come back for seconds. You definitely won’t need the world’s greatest detective to solve this case, and that’s a shame.