This game came out earlier in 2017 on Xbox One, PS4, and Steam: http://www.thesexybrutalegame.com/. I finished it the other day on Xbox and I'll easily give this game a 5/5 score and say it will probably be among the top games of 2017 for me.
It's co-developed by Tequila Works (the guys who just made RiME!!!) and Cavalier Game Studios. It is an indie puzzle game reminiscent of Majora's Mask and Dead Rising. The Sexy Brutale doesn't have big sprawling dungeons or sword combat like Majora's Mask, nor does it have zombies or RPG elements like Dead Rising 1. It's instead primarily an indie puzzle game, but the core premise and game play structure take very heavy inspiration from both of those ground-breaking, wonderful games.
The way The Sexy Brutale works is as follows:
You wake up in a casino mansion called The Sexy Brutale at 12pm on Saturday. You have only five minutes of real-time game play before it becomes 5pm in the game, and then the clock resets to 12pm and you wake up again, reliving the day. Again and again and again. The goal during each "day" of game play is to save a guest from being murdered. After you solve/prevent the first murder, the entire day opens up to you and the cycle starts going from 12pm to 12am (after which the day resets to 12pm). The game is broken up into chapters, each of them played in the same casino mansion, each of them tasking you to solve/prevent a different murder. You need to a) Find out how that person was murdered, and b) Equipped with that information, find out how to prevent their murder. Really the best way to describe the game is Majora's Mask meets Dead Rising 1 meets murder mystery meets indie puzzle game.
The way to solve those mysteries and prevent the murder of those guests? You do so multiple ways: collecting intel on their whereabouts, eavesdropping on conversations to find out personality traits, motives, plans, and other secrets, collecting items to solve puzzles, and using various powers (each of which you gain whenever you solve and prevent a new murder).
To collect intel on the whereabouts of each guest or staff member in the mansion you need to peek through door keyholes to spy on those guests and staff members. Any time you discover that a particular character is in a particular room or hallway at a particular time, that gets recorded in your map. And when you view your map, you can use the left and right buttons on the d-pad to swing the clock left and right to get a visual understanding of where the guests and staff members are moving throughout the day.
For example: you might peek through the keyhole of a door and find out that an important guest happens to be in the library of the mansion at 2pm. But you need to find out where he will be after 2pm, and you also want to know where he was before 2pm, to get an idea of how he was murdered and how to prevent the murder. So you stay where you are, follow him for the rest of the day, then reset the clock to 12pm and try to figure out which room he might have been in before 2pm.
You don't just collect intel on people's whereabouts. You can also eavesdrop on people, and glean from their conversations important tidbits like their motives, moods, plans, secrets, etc...
Combine that intelligence gathering with general puzzle solving (i.e. finding items, combining items, unlocking doors, etc...) and using various powers (whenever you solve/prevent a murder, you gain a new power that you can leverage when solving/preventing the next murder).
-----------------
The game has an extraordinary amount of attention to detail. Each room in the casino mansion is meticulously crafted and has its own identity. Colourful rugs and paintings and bookshelves and other knickknacks give almost every room a unique feel. And there are interesting stories/lore behind almost every major room in the mansion, and further still interesting stories/lore that connect all of the guests and staff members. Every murder that you solve/prevent unlocks more of the mystery behind the mansion, and when you solve the final chapter of the game, a wave of understanding completely washes over the gamer.
The game is almost perfect, from top to bottom. The game isn't a normal open-world or 3D third-person game. It's more of an isometric game like Link To The Past was on SNES. Each room has a distinct visual flair. The overall graphics / art style look beautiful. And the music and presentation are fantastic.
The only weakness in the game that I can think of, is that on Xbox One the game is janky whenevery you are opening a new door. I often have to push A multiple times to do so. And there is no collectible tracking (for the deck of cards at least). Very very minor issues though. This is still among the best puzzle games I have ever played. This game needs more love. And I can imagine it's definitely going to be in my top 10 of 2017.
It's co-developed by Tequila Works (the guys who just made RiME!!!) and Cavalier Game Studios. It is an indie puzzle game reminiscent of Majora's Mask and Dead Rising. The Sexy Brutale doesn't have big sprawling dungeons or sword combat like Majora's Mask, nor does it have zombies or RPG elements like Dead Rising 1. It's instead primarily an indie puzzle game, but the core premise and game play structure take very heavy inspiration from both of those ground-breaking, wonderful games.
The way The Sexy Brutale works is as follows:
You wake up in a casino mansion called The Sexy Brutale at 12pm on Saturday. You have only five minutes of real-time game play before it becomes 5pm in the game, and then the clock resets to 12pm and you wake up again, reliving the day. Again and again and again. The goal during each "day" of game play is to save a guest from being murdered. After you solve/prevent the first murder, the entire day opens up to you and the cycle starts going from 12pm to 12am (after which the day resets to 12pm). The game is broken up into chapters, each of them played in the same casino mansion, each of them tasking you to solve/prevent a different murder. You need to a) Find out how that person was murdered, and b) Equipped with that information, find out how to prevent their murder. Really the best way to describe the game is Majora's Mask meets Dead Rising 1 meets murder mystery meets indie puzzle game.
The way to solve those mysteries and prevent the murder of those guests? You do so multiple ways: collecting intel on their whereabouts, eavesdropping on conversations to find out personality traits, motives, plans, and other secrets, collecting items to solve puzzles, and using various powers (each of which you gain whenever you solve and prevent a new murder).
To collect intel on the whereabouts of each guest or staff member in the mansion you need to peek through door keyholes to spy on those guests and staff members. Any time you discover that a particular character is in a particular room or hallway at a particular time, that gets recorded in your map. And when you view your map, you can use the left and right buttons on the d-pad to swing the clock left and right to get a visual understanding of where the guests and staff members are moving throughout the day.
For example: you might peek through the keyhole of a door and find out that an important guest happens to be in the library of the mansion at 2pm. But you need to find out where he will be after 2pm, and you also want to know where he was before 2pm, to get an idea of how he was murdered and how to prevent the murder. So you stay where you are, follow him for the rest of the day, then reset the clock to 12pm and try to figure out which room he might have been in before 2pm.
You don't just collect intel on people's whereabouts. You can also eavesdrop on people, and glean from their conversations important tidbits like their motives, moods, plans, secrets, etc...
Combine that intelligence gathering with general puzzle solving (i.e. finding items, combining items, unlocking doors, etc...) and using various powers (whenever you solve/prevent a murder, you gain a new power that you can leverage when solving/preventing the next murder).
-----------------
The game has an extraordinary amount of attention to detail. Each room in the casino mansion is meticulously crafted and has its own identity. Colourful rugs and paintings and bookshelves and other knickknacks give almost every room a unique feel. And there are interesting stories/lore behind almost every major room in the mansion, and further still interesting stories/lore that connect all of the guests and staff members. Every murder that you solve/prevent unlocks more of the mystery behind the mansion, and when you solve the final chapter of the game, a wave of understanding completely washes over the gamer.
The game is almost perfect, from top to bottom. The game isn't a normal open-world or 3D third-person game. It's more of an isometric game like Link To The Past was on SNES. Each room has a distinct visual flair. The overall graphics / art style look beautiful. And the music and presentation are fantastic.
The only weakness in the game that I can think of, is that on Xbox One the game is janky whenevery you are opening a new door. I often have to push A multiple times to do so. And there is no collectible tracking (for the deck of cards at least). Very very minor issues though. This is still among the best puzzle games I have ever played. This game needs more love. And I can imagine it's definitely going to be in my top 10 of 2017.