One More Go

The Sexy Brutale follows the basic premise of a murder mystery, you’ve been invited to a party at the titular mansion casino where all the guests are getting bumped off one by one. Where it differs is that it’s pretty clear who is killing everyone, but not at all clear why. And so it falls to the player, Boone, to skulk around the mansion, following the would be deceased and somehow getting in the way. A death prevented is rewarded with a little exposition and a new ability, allowing Boone to delve deeper into the mystery and prevent yet more death.

What makes this game a little bit magic, is the mansion itself. An enormous clockwork structure that unfurls room by room, packed with details, secrets, and plenty of obstacles for players to stumble through. The Sexy Brutale plays out in realtime, spread over a 12 hour day, that is thankfully accelerated to play out in minutes, at the end of which players are thrust back to the beginning, armed with vital new information. The mansion’s guests each have their own objectives and routines to follow, all culminating in an unfortunate end. The more you witness, the more you understand, and the once abstract sounds of the mansion begin to hold more meaning. A gunshot, a ringing bell, smashed glass, reminders that whether Boone intervenes or not, everyone else will continue to play their part in The Sexy Brutale’s elaborate play.

It draws slight comparisons to a stage from the Hitman: World of Assassination series, and while the mansion here is just as intricately designed, it’s nowhere near as reactive to the chaos of the player’s involvement. The Sexy Brutale is closer to a Secret Cinema event or interactive theatre, with player’s roles limited to audience members rather than active participants. For the most part the script is set, with pre-determined solutions to each puzzles and few ways for players to twist the narrative. Playing within such constraints forces focus on the game’s narrative, with mastery coming from retreading the same rooms of the mansion, learning character pathways and navigating quickly to cut them off. Unfortunately, the demand for quick navigation opens the door for The Sexy Brutale‘s most glaring flaw.

I played The Sexy Brutale on Switch, and on that platform, it plays like an absolute pig. You may be forgiven for thinking that a game so centered on the passing of time may have been teasing the player with its constant pauses, but no, this particular mystery is down to poor optimisation. The game coming to a dead halt for far too long when entering a new indiscernible branch of the mansion, or the frame rate plummeting as you chase guests along their set paths. The Sexy Brutale is a mansion packed full of grisly murders, but nothing causes a shudder quite like an eruption of particle effects, or a player traversing rooms more quickly than the game can handle. Fortunately, it’s a fairly short experience, and so I was able to battle through the technical issues and enjoy The Sexy Brutale for what it is, a smart, concise narrative puzzler. For anyone who enjoys a good murder mystery, or exploring and learning everything about a single space, then The Sexy Brutale is absolutely worth checking out, just maybe not the Switch version.