Under a Gibbous Moon

A couple of weeks ago, I read about YouDunnit on Boing Boing. I went to the web site, downloaded it, and then promptly forgot about it. More recently, I found it when taking a look through my download folder. I fired it up (plays like a charm under Wine). It is a truly fascinating game.

The graphics are nothing to write home about, somewhere around Final Fantasy I level, but sepia toned. The game play is what really makes this game interesting. It is about a murder mystery, well not a mystery because you did it.

It also starts at the end of the story, when the detective has gathered everyone in the drawing room to revel the murderer. Your job, is to make sure that he doesn’t finger you.

The game is played in a series of levels that go progressively farther back in time. At each point you have to commit actions that implicate one of the other suspects. What makes this difficult is that while you do this, you have to interact with other people and things and, in order to preserve causality (your lie), you must remember what you did in the future so you can take the appropriate steps in the past.

This makes the game rather challenging (I still haven’t gotten all the way through it) and if you get caught in a lie, it’s time to start over from the beginning. Keeping a piece of paper handy to remember what you’ve done and to whom is defiantly a help here. The game can be very frustrating as it does a poor job of explaining what it is you’re supposed be doing it and how the game mechanics actually work but it doesn’t take very long to get the hang of it.

For the price of free, this game is a great find. It doesn’t rely on graphics but instead upon a unique game play style to hook you in.