Detective Ridelle embarks on Windows PC

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Demo also available for puzzle-filled visual novel-styled first-person murder mystery on Steam

The Orient Express may be the most famous, but it's not the only luxury train where murder takes place on board. The next such traveling mystery can be found in PuzzLab's newly released visual novel-styled adventure, Detective Ridelle.

The game's eponymous heroine is a "confident, self-assured" private detective who is good at what she does, though her people skills leave a little something to be desired. One day she receives a train ticket and an anonymous letter claiming a crime will be committed on board this every evening. Accepting the challenge, Ridelle arrives to find that everything seems fairly normal, except for the escape-room-style puzzles presented to them by the train's waiter, Preston. After a few increasingly suspicious brain-teasers, events take a dramatic turn for the worse when a murder is committed. Now Ridelle, with help from her new acquaintance Lucy, a "bubbly young woman who wears her heart on her sleeve, must search for clues, solve a multitude of puzzles, and interrogate the diverse cast of characters, all of whom "seem to have something to hide."

Successfully Kickstarted earlier this year, Detective Ridelle is blend of free-roaming first-person investigation and visual novel-style storytelling, with a large heaping of puzzle solving on top. There are over twenty logic-based conundrums to deal with along the way, each of them conceived by a real-world escape room designer. The biggest puzzle, however, is figuring out whodunit over the course of a single evening. As you make your way through the train's various hand-drawn cars and cabins, you'll need to interact with the cast of "crazy" characters, from the game-obsessed little girl named Holly to the unhelpfully snobby Penelope, in order to weed out truth from lies and identify the culprit "before it's too late."

If a "cozy," puzzle-filled murder mystery sounds like your cup of tea, you can get rolling right away, as Detective Ridelle is available now on Steam for Windows PC. If you'd like to try it out first, you can do that as well in the playable demo, which offers three different scenarios to choose from, set at various times throughout the game.

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