Demo unleashed for The Barker & Mustard Files

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Announcements by Drew Onia
Published:

Noir-styled, point-and-click anthropomorphic animal mystery coming to Steam and itch.io

If any species would be good at following the trail of a missing person, you’d think it’d be dogs. We’ll find out whether that’s true soon in enough in Yes Yes Very Good Productions’ upcoming The Barker & Mustard Files, starring the titular “dashingly daring dynamic duo of dog detectives.”

More money, more problems, as the saying goes. Of course, having no money also comes with its share of complications, and detective duo Harvey Barker and Frank Mustard know this all too well. After doing “big-time work for small-time pay” for years, the pair’s luck changes when the “case of a lifetime” falls right into their laps. Lottery winner Stuart ‘Flappy’ Brown has gone missing, and they now have the chance to crack the case wide open. If they can avoid a couple of “trigger-happy, gun-toting thugs” and “the (sometimes literal) Vultures at the Scarlet City Police Department,” the detectives may finally get the recognition, and the paycheque, they deserve.

That may sound like a fairly traditional detective adventure, but here the entire cast of characters are animals. Using a stylized mix of cartoony characters and more realistic environments, The Barker & Mustard Files will send players pointing and clicking their way through the “lavish and opulent” Clydesdale Hotel, tasked with interviewing the cast of “suspicious sweeties and dubious degenerates” and solving a variety of puzzles within. No word on voice acting yet, but expect cool jazzy tunes to score the action and help set the noir-inspired mood. Clues and evidence are filed within Barker & Mustard’s oversized portable trunk for easy reference, and with the game’s built-in hint system and highlighted hotspots, the developer promises that pixel hunting will be non-existent. Critical choices will impact the outcome of the story, too, ensuring a degree of replayability to go back and try alternate paths.

The Barker & Mustard Files has no set release date, but there’s a demo already available for Windows PC, which can be downloaded from either Steam or itch.io.