Good Gate Media and Wales Interactive are back once again with another captivating FMV title. This time we follow Abigail, a 20-something solicitor who may just have the worst family ever. This is evident from the get-go as your Uncle Marcus explains that someone in the family has poisoned him. He doesn’t have long left and needs you to use the upcoming family Zoom quiz in honour of your mother’s birthday to unravel the mystery and find out who the baddie is.
It’s a pretty simple set-up and is portrayed in an over-the-top manner as you’ve come to expect from these FMV titles. Like Bloodshore before it, this is pretty short and a full run will only take you around an hour, so it doesn’t waste any time in getting to the point. In each round of the quiz, you can choose to partner up with different family members. When you do, you’ll enter a private chat with them where you can grill them on what went on during a family meet up recently that you didn’t attend.
It’s a small cast, but each one has a distinct and unique character. You’ve got her mother, who appears to loath everyone else in the family – especially you. There’s the self-obsessed sister, who is only interested in her career as an influencer. An Aunt, who is a bitter drunk. The Gran, a sweet old lady and two cousins, one who is obsessed with killers and death itself and the other who is travelling around the world on a humanitarian mission and needs everyone to know about it.
Everyone plays their role brilliantly, with plenty of humour and wit across almost every scene. It can be difficult to strike the right balance in an FMV game. The best titles in the genre are campy and Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? gets this right. It’s hard to pick a favourite from the bunch, but if I had to narrow it down it would be between Gabrielle Glaister (Mother), who has run the gambit of UK soaps and Susannah Doyle (Aunt).
The game is designed with multiple playthroughs in mind. You can only accuse someone if you have enough evidence on them and gathering that in one run isn’t likely to happen. You may have teamed up with your brat of a sister in round four. But if you had chosen her in round two you could have unlocked a different conversation. In each round of the quiz, you’ll be answering multiple-choice questions and sometimes getting the answer wrong can be more beneficial as it takes the story in a different direction. A family tree and evidence hub can be found in the pause menu and you can refer back to this throughout your investigation.
One downside to the game is that the whole premise centres around Uncle Marcus’ impending death. You only have a short window to find the perp and while this is a cool narrative structure, multiple runs are generally required to find enough evidence to even accuse someone. This leads to it falling apart on subsequent runs as it’s hard to feel the same level of urgency. There is also no explanation as to why you would remember clues from previous runs, which is a minor gripe but it did stick out to me.
Overall this is another win for the FMV genre. The cast deliver some of the best over-the-top acting I have seen and it kept me in suspense right until the end. Some may be disappointed in the short run time but there is plenty of content to make going back for a second, third or fourth playthrough worthwhile. Zoom quizzes were a moment in time. A way to connect with our loved ones through an unprecedented time and it was really cool seeing that emulated in a game.
-Craig ✌️