Murderous Muses Review (PS5)

Whoever didn’t do it, stop being so suspicious!

Man, D’Avekki Studios really ruined me on FMV games. They started right out with a high quality game and just kept at it. Plus, I love murder mysteries (which two of their previous games focused on), I enjoy how the characters and stories are written, and I like how the supernatural aspects of their stories are handled. So when I saw the reveal of Murderous Muses I kept my eye on it (rip Pocket Dreadfuls) and when it got a release date I knew I was going to play it right away. So did D’Avekki Studios keep their reputation of making the best FMVs going with Murderous Muses or did this become their first dud.

Welcome to your new job! Well, temporary job but still. Thanks to your maybe-friend Sasha, you got a job as a security guard for an art gallery dedicated to a painter by the name of Mordechai Grey. He lived on the island Mirlhaven and a lot of his paintings depict the island. However, he was murdered in his loft almost a year ago and his murderer was never found. There are suspects though, six of them to be exact. Mordechai was painting six (now famous) portraits leading up to his murder and it’s believed one of them is his murderer as the evidence suggests that his killer knew him. With the anniversary of his death coming up, as well as the opening of the art gallery and Mordechai’s case being opened up again, perhaps you can figure out who killed Mordechai before your three days are up.

The suspects? There’s the twin Sunday, who is strangely missing her other half Monday, who’s an up and coming tennis star; Otto a womanizing ventriloquist whose jokes don’t exactly align with today’s climate anymore; Dominique the burlesque dancer who can’t seem to leave off of Mirlhaven no matter what she does; Lilith the last undertaker still on Mirlhaven who also has either a dark sense of humor or a dark secret; Catherine the Vice Justice who isn’t as virtuous as her public image puts out; and lastly Xavier the perfectionist surgeon turned perfectionist clockmaker.

Murderous Muses is split between Day and Night phases. During the day, you’re tasked with hanging paintings. Every day the art gallery will get six boxes with the paintings in them and all you have to do is correctly hang them up. This is actually pretty easy to do. The plaques are pretty straight forward with what painting goes there and once you’re on a day with that painting it just takes a quick look to determine where it goes. There is only one painting that requires you to read the short blurb about it due to it being too dark to really tell what it’s supposed to be. Each painting also has some narration you can listen to who is voiced by someone named Jamie. She’ll talk about whatever the painting is depicting and this acts as a way for you to get some lore on Mirlhaven and get a picture on how that island was like. It was honestly interesting hearing about Mirlhaven and some of the people that lived there. Once you hang all the paintings and got your fill of the lore, it’s ready to turn on the TV to progress to the next phase.

The Night phase is pretty different. You do start out in a tutorial for what you’ll mainly be doing, but let’s start with the art gallery. Instead of the calm Jamie, the art gallery guide is replaced by someone named Higgins. You do get to learn who Higgins is as you play more, but he tells you that his narration is the truth of what Mirlhaven was actually like. While Jamie’s narration does have a nugget of truth to it, Higgins tells you the whole truth and it can be shocking (though there is one that is a bit cringey). A lot of Higgins’ lore bits are pretty interesting especially when you compare it to what Jamie said. Mirlhaven may have wanted to bury those aspects of its community, but it lives on despite their efforts.

Onto the actual meat of Murderous Muses, the room that normally displayed the famous portraits and the town’s famous bell has been transformed into a hallway. Once you watch an episode of an Unsolved Mysteries show to get an important piece of evidence to keep in mind, you’ll then get access to a big room with a bunch of empty displays. The plaques also have topics (akin to dialogue choices) instead of the painting’s title and it changes after you place a portrait and watch the memory that plays out. So what do you do here? Well there’s a wall with each suspect on them with three topics under their name. As you can probably guess, you need to watch all three topics, but you need to watch them in order (which is a bit harder to guess on your own). You do this by putting the portrait of the suspect over a plaque with the topic you need and you’ll get to see a video displaying Mordechai’s memory of when he himself asked a question regarding that topic or when it just came up in conversation. Of course, you can just put the portraits over topics you just want to see if you want. Once you watch all three memories in order this will then unlock a police interview which can definitely help you out.

However, it’s not as easy as you probably think. You can’t just watch all the available memories. As you’re seeing the memories of Mordechai, the paintings don’t come to live without strange undulating marbles known as The Eyes of Mordechai being socketed onto the portraits. Each night each portrait starts with six of these Eyes, only letting you see six memories for each suspect. There is a way to give a portrait more by recycling two Eyes to get one you can socket in any portrait you want. So if you want to see more memories from say…Lilith you can by this method. It’s also best to either use all the Eyes or recycle them before ending the Night phase (the Eyes in your inventory carries over each night) as otherwise you’ll be wasting them.

That’s not all though, as it also does get a little harder after the first night. Before you go on to Night 2 and 3, Sasha asks you to set out a portrait for one reason or another. You can either choose the portrait or the game will (I’m assuming) and that portrait won’t be there for you to use during the Night phase. You pretty much have to decide who is less suspicious and least likely to be the murderer on the first night.

Starting out it’s a bit confusing, even the tutorial is a bit confusing, but once you get into the main game it does become clearer. Well, unless you managed to miss the piece of paper that tells you how to get the detective interview videos like I did on the first night. Missing that paper will make you confused for longer before you figure it out (or find the paper).

Alongside the overarching plot of you finding out who the murderer is, it does also seem there are small stories with each of the suspects. Like with the twins, the painting sessions start out with both Monday and Sunday there, but then only Sunday is a suspect and the painting sessions quickly go to only including Sunday. You get to learn why that is and what happened to Monday. Or Dominque where you hear that there’s been thievery during her shows and that she may be cheating on her significant other. It’s interesting watching Mordechai’s memories and getting an understanding of the characters. Even though these characters seem boring, they are anything but and very interesting to learn about.

There are multiple aspects of the game that shuffles around so each playthrough can be unique. The killer is (of course) randomized, Sasha video calls (not counting her intro call) are randomized, paintings are randomized in multiple aspects including what paintings are in the playthrough, what paintings are already displayed, and where they’re placed in the art gallery; collectible urns and Sasha calls are randomized, the topics you need to see for the interview video, and lastly the layout of the memory rooms are changed (with some being annoying).

Murderous Muses does have collectibles that track through every playthrough. Other than the trackers for unique videos you’ve seen and possible paintings that can appear (thank goodness there isn’t an achievement to see them all), there are two main collectibles. Down the Staff Only door, you’ll be greeted with a hallway instead of a cramped break room. This hallway has six doors and, as you can probably guess, each door is for each of the characters. This not only has their portraits, where you get the commentary from Higgins, but also bonus paintings if you get the prerequisite first. It basically acts the same way as you would do to unlock the interrogation videos, but you don’t need to do them in order, you just need to view them. Some do need to be viewed on a specific Night to count though. I wouldn’t worry about getting these right away. From what I can tell, they tell you about their backstories in one place rather than having to remember and search through multiple memories.

The other collectible is in the room connected to this hallway. At first it’s just empty, empty portraits on the wall and empty pedestals. However, as you play you’ll find a puzzle each day as well as a locked door. These three puzzles are the same each playthrough, but they shuffle which day they appear and the solution in randomized for each try. Most are basically memory-based puzzles with one being that one where you try to figure out the code within five tries. Solving these will give you a key to unlock the door and you’ll not only get an urn, but a bonus video call where it seems you told Sasha your plights and a bonus topic for the portraits (free of charge). You do need to take the urn in that empty room with the pedestals and, after examining the urn for which pedestal it belongs to, you’ll get a memory featuring a girl named Kira. Who is she? Well, you’ll find out as you watch more memories.

This is also where you’ll be able to view the video calls you got from Sasha, with them being grouped up and labeled. As well as a tip hotline hidden away. This tip hotline will actually tell you who is innocent, however you need to pay six Eyes of Mordechai to be told one person that is for sure innocent and it can only be used once. Hopefully it’s someone that was on your suspect list and not someone that was obviously not it.

The only negative I see Murderous Muses having is that it’ll get repetitive after a couple of playthroughs. Not only in the gameplay section, but also in watching the videos. Though you can skip putting the paintings up and it does seem like there are way more unique video clips than their previous games. Plus, after your first playthrough you can pretty much guess the killer based on small details that were changed. Like on my second playthrough, I guessed the killer on Night 1 just based on a small changed detail that ultimately was unimportant to the evidence stacked against him.

I also did find it weird that sometimes a topic needed to unlock the interview video will show up twice under a suspect. I’m not sure if this was intended or not, but it can be annoying having to cycle the plaques to that topic again (especially if the repeats are together on the list).

To end on a positive note, the performance of everyone is wonderfully great. The cast was picked out well as their performances did feel like they were the characters they were playing as. It’s really easy to believe that they’re the characters they’re representing and the emotions that they’re displaying. They couldn’t have found better actors. I also really enjoyed Jamie and Higgins’ performances. You never get to see their faces, but their voices work really well as a museum/art gallery audio tour guides. They’re calming enough to fit within the atmosphere art galleries have, but not too much so you can focus on the information being told rather than being lulled to sleep. I also really liked how the paintings looked as they are pretty creepy (even though the portraits are really just a filter).

Verdict

D’Avekki Studios has done it again. Despite being pretty iffy on the game at the beginning, Murderous Muses really turned out to be an interesting game and might be my second favorite game from the studio. Yes it still has the same problem like their previous murder mystery games and topics needed to unlock the interview videos strangely repeat, but it’s honestly an interesting and entertaining FMV game. It’s as high quality as their previous games have been, exploring the art gallery and the mechanic of hanging paintings and seeing a memory play out was handled pretty well, it’s difficult enough where it’s challenging (bit not too challenging), and it’s so interesting to learn about Mirlhaven and the six suspects. Not to mention the performance of everyone is on point and the paintings are as haunting as the history of Mirlhaven is.

If you’ve been wanting a game that’s in the similar vein of The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker and The Shapeshifting Detective, but has more interactivity and puzzles, definitely pick up Murderous Muses. And if this would be your first D’Avekki Studios game, if you want some puzzle action in your murder mystery FMV you can’t go wrong with this one. If you’re looking for a high quality FMV game to sink your teeth into, but want more gameplay elements, I definitely recommend Murderous Muses