Review for Death Off the Cuff – Remastered
Decades after her death, Agatha Christie is still regarded as one of the foremost mystery authors to grace the genre and holds the world record for bestselling fiction writer. Naturally, admiration goes hand in hand with satire and good-natured riffs, setting the stage for Simon Christiansen’s Death Off the Cuff, a charming interactive story that was originally released as a text-only entry in the 2010 Interactive Fiction Competition but has recently been “remastered” with art and closing music exclusively for PC on Steam.
Death Off the Cuff stars the famed French detective Antoine Saint Germain, an obvious nod to Hercule Poirot, as a sleuth in a spot of bother. Specifically, while he has arrived at the final denouement of his investigation into the murder of Colonel John McClaren at the Seafront Hotel and gathered all the appropriate parties accordingly, he still doesn’t actually know whodunit. Never mind! He knows that the guilty party invariably breaks down and confesses, so with a clever bit of monologuing and some delightfully cooperative suspects, Monsieur Saint Germain is determined to bluff his way to unraveling this case – eventually.
Each character is an amusingly over-the-top take on a traditional mystery trope, and they’re all extremely willing to explain themselves at length when Saint Germain gives even the slightest hint of having figured out their secrets, as his reputation precedes him. We start out with the hotel owner, the loyal employee, the novelist, the foreign count and the successful doctor, but they all prove to have double lives, and everyone will reveal their façades when successfully prompted. They’re not the deepest or best-written characters to grace a murder mystery, but for fans of Christie and her imitators in the detective genre, these archetypes are already well known by a variety of other names and will feel instantly familiar here.
The game is laid out like you’re reading a book, with one page of text on the left and an illustration on the right. Everything you type that is relevant to the plot advances the story, but you can always click and drag the bottom corner of the current page to flip back to a previous sequence if you’ve forgotten something or want to check on a particular detail. (There’s also a complete transcript of what’s transpired available from the main menu.)
Full sentences aren’t necessary; just type in what you want to look at or a verb and the object you want to use it on and the game takes it from there. There are also a few keyboard shortcuts that the tutorial walks you through if you want, such as “x” to examine. Certain hoverwords will pop up in conversation that offer additional descriptions, but they’re not strictly necessary to use, and indeed aren’t even highlighted in the text.
Typing a person’s name once will result in a description of them at the moment, and doing so again will prompt a comment from Saint Germain about them and make them the focus of your subsequent keywords. This means you’ll continue talking about them until you deliberately shift the conversation away or change your focus of attention. Sometimes the character will voluntarily respond to these comments in dialogue, and occasionally the detective will ask them explicit questions, though as the player you don't confront anyone directly, merely direct the topics of conversation.
In between your monologuing and interjected comments from the suspects, you can also interact with previously identified items in your immediate surroundings, such as a couch or the clock. Most of these interactions are simply for flavor rather than being necessary to drive the story forward, however. You are free to type anything you want to instruct Saint Germain to do, but there is of course a reasonable limit. You can’t just instruct him to jump on a horse and ride out of the hotel.
The text parser itself is fairly limited, but it’s also quite obvious what words are needed as most things you’ll want to look at or talk about have already been noted in the text. If the game doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do, you’ll simply get the message: “You can’t think of anything to say.” Then you can simply try again with no consequences.
Death Off the Cuff takes about two to three hours to complete, depending on how fast you read, with a manual save system if you wish to take a break. The game is very user-friendly for those (like me) who aren’t used to text adventures, offering a hint system – simply typing in “hint” will bring one up – and a great tutorial at the start. There’s even a walkthrough included for those who get really stuck, which is possible because hints strangely seem to stop working after a certain point.
While the game doesn’t include “puzzles” per se, the entire mystery is a giant puzzle to solve and it’s not always obvious what you’re supposed to do next. Luckily, you aren’t penalized for wrong choices or random guessing, and if in doubt you can always twirl your moustache! Just don’t expect it to be terribly useful, though there is a special Steam achievement for doing so.
Being a text adventure, the game isn’t too heavy on the art, but each major moment in the plot is accompanied by an illustration. The cartoony style is oddly akin to giving Quentin Blake access to Microsoft Paint – bright and just a little ragged with thick, bold lines – which works well with the satirical tone of the story. The default black text on sepia-toned pages is quite comfortable to read, but a variety of options are provided to accommodate your preferences of text size and font. The investigation plays out in complete silence, but there is a jazzy musical number now that plays over the end credits.
The game has multiple endings, including one for each suspect you accuse of being the murderer after learning their secret. However! That does not mean you are correct, and the outcome you reach is not necessarily a good one for all involved. Only one potential culprit will cop to the crime, and the true ending is certainly an interesting one, and quite satisfying for both Saint Germain and the player.
If you’re not a fan of traditional detective novels, you probably won’t be won over by this loving send-up of them. However, for those who are fond of the genre and of text adventures, it’s a fun diversion for a few hours. Even for those who have little experience with interactive fiction, the tutorial and overall user-friendliness make it easily accessible for beginners to enjoy. It isn’t particularly deep, but next time you’re looking for a light crime mystery on a rainy day, give Death Off the Cuff – Remastered a try for a few laughs.
