D’Avekki Studios planning Murderous Muses

Written by Jack Allin — October 6, 2021 at 10:22

The husband-and-wife team at D’Avekki Studios will soon be back with another new FMV adventure, and this time they're bringing some 3D exploration and procedurally generated mystery elements along with them in the form of Murderous Muses. 

Years ago a tortured and polarizing artist named Mordechai Grey was killed by "one of six deadly muses." In order to solve this cold case long after the fact, you must now spend three nights in a "cursed gallery where mysterious rooms appear at night and portraits come to life." These paintings reveal "conversations and events that took place before the murder," and only by exploring the gallery's "ever-changing rooms," solving both environmental and more abstract puzzles, and paying careful attention to what you see and hear along the way will be you able to "catch the murderous muse."

The developers have established themselves at the forefront of the recent FMV renaissance with The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, The Shapeshifting Detective and Dark Nights with Poe & Munro. This game, inspired by genre classics such as Under a Killing Moon and Phantasmagoria, has live-action elements as well, but in between players will be able to wander the various rooms and hallways in free-roaming, first-person 3D. The bigger twist is that rather than having just one path or even just one possible killer, Murderous Muses is set in a procedurally generated environment, with the culprit, gallery layout and clues randomized at the start of each game, ensuring an "infinitely replayable" experience.

There is no firm release date scheduled just yet, but Murderous Muses is due to arrive on Steam for Windows and Mac sometime next year, along with console releases for PlayStation, Xbox and Switch platforms. A VR version of the game is also being considered farther down the line.