Разработчик: The Moonwalls
Описание
OVERVIEW
Bohemian Killing is a narrative-driven courtroom drama, offering players almost unlimited possibilities of solving the lawsuit, thanks to the complete integration of gameplay and narrated story. It is also the first law-themed game made by a real-life lawyer!STORYLINE
Welcome to Paris of the late 19th century. The aftermath of the Great Revolution offered a new start for each and every citizen, regardless of social class. Alfred Ethon, a young inventor of Gypsy origin, benefits from the change, becoming a symbol of success thanks to his hard work and innovative projects, well ahead of their time.Soon, a young woman is brutally murdered - a maid working for an impoverished Lord, a relic of the old French regime. Is Alfred Ethon to be blamed for the murder? The evidence points towards him... But you can change that.
As you stand before the court, all you can count on is your own intellect and creativity. But how does that look in practice?
GAMEPLAY
Gameplay in Bohemian Killing is a combination of a courtroom drama, and a walking simulator. It can be classified as a first person experience, or a first person interactive story adventure game.The story is set within two time frames. In the present, you find yourself locked up in the courtroom. You're getting acquainted with the evidence, witness testimony and questions posed by the Judge. Each question triggers a flashback - and begins your testimony. During the flashback you find yourself in a Parisian district, with each of your decisions, interactions and action affecting Alfred Ethons' testimony and the final verdict.
To help you in your testimony, you'll have access to all the evidence gathered on the case - expert opinions, reports and witness testimonies. Each of them can be (but doesn't have to be!) refuted in a number of different ways.
In the Evidence menu you can familiarize yourself with testimonies of witnesses, forensic expertises, physical evidences, etc. They are grouped into appropriate categories, making them easy to find.
Sample:
A neighbor testified that at approximately 10 p.m. he passed you in the entrance of the tenement house, noticing that your clothes were covered in blood? Try testifying that your neighbor lies and prove that he has a reason to do so. Or maybe you'll get into a bar fight just a few minutes before, so that you can testify that the blood the neighbor saw was yours, and not the victim's? Or maybe you will cut yourself while shaving, covering your clothes with blood that the neighbor sees later? But what if the court finds your time of shaving conspicuous and torments you with even more questions? How will you get out of this?
With a wide range of possibilities that can lead to several standard endings and one additional hidden one, the game doesn't consider any path "a bad one", ensuring that each playthrough will be different.
To adjust the game to the preferences of each player, two modes are available:
- In the Standard mode, the outcome depends entirely on your creativity and ability to solve logical problems. You will suffer the consequences of your own actions.
- In the Story mode, your attorney will advise you as you progress along, commenting on your decisions and choices, preventing you from acting in a way that might prove to be harmful in the eyes of the court.
VOICE ACTING
The main character of the game is played and dubbed by a world-class film and voice actor, Stephane Cornicard!Stephane Cornicard studied in France, at the prestigious Colby College in the US, and at Goldsmith College in the UK. He played in numerous blockbusters such as “Spectre,” the most recent Bond film, or Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan”.
His career as a voice actor is no less impressive and includes Syphon Filter, Primal, Metal Gear Solid, and the Dragon Age and Total War series. He currently teaches drama at the Actor’s Centre in London.
Поддерживаемые языки: english, polish, japanese, french, italian, german, spanish - spain
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: Microsoft Windows 7 32bit
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1,66 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon HD 7500G/Intel HD Graphics 3000
- Storage: 8 GB available space
Mac
- OS: Mac OS X 10.8.5
- Processor: Intel Core i5 1.7
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon HD 7500G/Intel HD Graphics 3000
- Storage: 8 GB available space
Отзывы пользователей
This could have been so good. I love the concept, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Lost interest by the end of it, and had no desire to go back and explore the other endings.
I rate Bohemian Killing 2.5/5. This is a good idea done somewhat badly. Bohemian Killing is an unusual first-person-perspective game wherein you play a sociopathic defendant during a murder trial taking place in Paris in the year 1894. The gameplay is, in effect, a representation of you defending yourself during a trial by lying about what took place on the night in question.
What you do during most of the game determines what lies you will say in court and how effectively you defend yourself. This is not exactly a mystery game, at least not fully; the game makes it clear that your sadistic A-hole character is definitely guilty. What you must do is figure out the nature of the crime (as you cannot fully remember what happened) and how to try and get away with it now that you are testifying in court. It isn’t as fun as it sounds though because this game doesn’t really give you a great deal of freedom concerning how to act (or it otherwise ignores your antics).
Good things about this game:
+ Fantastic music with a strong musical theme. There is a soundtrack available on steam but altogether it is only about 15 minutes long. The full 3 dollar cost was worth it to me though given how much I like this game’s music.
+ Fairly good voice acting throughout though the game does, in terms of dialogue, do a lot of telling and explaining rather than actually showing.
Mediocre things about this game:
+/- The graphics and lighting are generally very good and atmospheric (I particularly liked the sexy female statues throughout and the opulent furniture and ritzy locales). However your character does not appear in reflections (even in mirrors) and there is no way to turn off the crosshair/dot and the inactive mouse cursor shows up in the graphics of the game distractingly as a small but bright visual glitch which floats around the screen depending on where you look.
+/- I appreciate that this game has, for a change, many different endings (I think 9 endings) but this is counterbalanced by the fact that this game is also extremely short and repetitive. I would have liked at least part of this game be about trying to avoid having to even go to court by planting evidence on others or by altering the crime scene but no, everything in this game takes place after you have already been arrested and have begun to testify in your own defense (from a criminal’s perspective, things would have already gone very, very badly to get to this point).
Bad things about this game:
- The controls cannot be rebound to alternate keys.
- This is a very short game overall and only becomes longer if you try to exhaustively go through and get every single ending and/or achievement the game has (which I think would be a truly tedious exercise).
- There are many un-skippable sequences throughout. While not a problem the first time through, these un-skippable segments get very repetitive and irritating if you replay the game. Similarly, this game has frequent loading screens for apparently no good reason. There’s no reason in this day and age for a game to be broken up into such small locales.
- There are several minor bugs. The game froze up on me once, returning me to the desktop. The dialogue skip option vanished during part of another play through and would not function. The game often prevents you from returning to the main menu whenever you want and instead makes you wait a little while (especially during un-skippable scenes/sections).
-Your character moves about as fast as most characters tend to in most walking simulator type games; very, very slowly.
- The game can be a little funny while doing stupid stuff the first few times through but this humor wears off quickly. The game also largely ignores completely insane and irrational behavior. For example, if you ride an elevator up and down repeatedly for no reason or do the same thing over and over, the game makes no comment about your clearly irrational and obsessive-compulsive behavior. This game won’t let you behave like a raving lunatic (or rather ignores the fact that you do) nor will it let you claim that you killed characters whom you did not in fact kill.
- If your testimony consists, bizarrely, of merely going to bed for the night there is also no difference in the resultant courtroom dialogue between saying that and telling a bunch of elaborate but irrelevant lies, causing the game to feel unfinished. Only very specific behaviors at specific times will net you alternate endings and the alternate dialogue which goes with them. This lack of flexibility gets very frustrating as the game misses what should have been its core objective: to allow the player to have fun screwing around as they try different things out to see what the (hopefully humorous) results will be.
- Ultimately, I found the game’s story (and all its different iterations) rather uninteresting and dull, especially after the first few times through.
It was an interesting idea and I really wanted to like it, but I found it... more irritating than enjoyable. The thought of going back through to do multiple play throughs on this to get the other achievements does not appeal.
Try to get it on offer, but for ten pounds I would say this game is well worth it.
Many of the mechanics are janky, and I had a hard time figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing when I first played it. But after many hours with it, I enjoyed teasing out the story from the information given, and playing around with all the freedom the game gives you to do what you want.
The concept is brilliant, the execution is uneven. But I think the concept is strong enough that it shines through and makes this game a lot of fun, even when it's confusing or clunky. I also really enjoy the French accents on display, but your mileage may vary there.
I'd recommend picking this game up and being patient with it. Expect to be confused at first. Once you've figured out what the actual crime is, you can then start weaving your lies and planning the story you want to tell. Maybe, for your first playthrough, aim for a confession. I would advise not resorting to guides unless you have to, but there are many good ones that may help you get through something confusing or janky so that you can continue to enjoy playing around with the game. For £9.99, I would say go for it. I had a lot of fun and hopefully you will too.
Yes, we are giving this a "no" after only ten minutes of play. There was no "dead zone" for the look-direction joystick, so we kept turning slowly to the right. The aiming reticle was some kind of jagged box of lines, and clearly not what they intended. It acted like we had saved a game when we had never played it, and kept ignoring our requests to "save and exit to desktop."
Too buggy to play. Don't waste your time.
Bohemian Killing is a walking simulator.
The main character committed a crime and now he must defend himself in the court.
Bohemian Killing shifts between the place where the crime took place and the area around, here you control the protagonist and you can walk around and interact with people and items, and the courtroom.
Some special things happen at special times, you can not skip time, like going to sleep for 1 hour. You have to do stuff eg. shave - 5 minutes , shower - 15 minutes and so on. It is an absolutely annoying!
One playthrough does not takes long but it becomes boring after the 2nd playthrough. Besides of beeing boring and the annoying time skip mechanic be prepared for too many loading screens, bugs where you could get stuck and bad voice acting.
The graphics are okay and the music is fine.
The basic idea of Bohemian Killing is good but its execution is bad. I had not really fun with it. 12,99 € is too much for it. Not recommended!
Sounds 7/10
Graphics 6/10
Gameplay 2/10
Atmosphere 2/10
If you liked my review, please feel free to follow me and/or my curator group:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Ov3RT4K3R/myworkshopfiles/?section=guides
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Bohemian Killing is a short first-person adventure game that revolves around a fictitious murder trial in 19th-century France. I cannot recommend this game because it has a tiny game world, an abundance of loading screens, scripting bugs, limited choices and laughable voice acting. The basic idea sounds promising, but its execution is lacking. And the whole thing doesn't really look or sound pleasant, to boot.
Story and gameplay
Bohemian Killing is presented as a narrative-driven courtroom drama. You play as one Alfred Ethon, who has committed a murder in cold blood and is on trial for that crime in 19th-century Paris, France. The prosecution has stated the evidence against you, i.e. when and where you were spotted on the day of the murder. Now it's up to you to testify.
To that goal, the game puts you in a Parisian street where you can enter an apartment building, a hotel and a bar. In these places, you can gather evidence and manipulate objects in order to falsely demonstrate that you didn't commit the murder in cold blood.
After your testimony, you're returned to your cell. You can escape from prison or await the court's verdict. Your actions lead to one of nine possible endings for the game.
Unfortunately, all this sounds a lot more exciting than it is. Altogether, the three buildings consist of less than ten actual rooms, all of which are very small. And, as the developer of the game has written so clearly in a Steam guide he made to accompany his game, there are only six events in the game that will define the final outcome.
The developer claims his game "[offers] players almost unlimited possibilities of solving the lawsuit", but in reality, there are only eight possible outcomes for the trial: you've admitted that you did it (with five possible verdicts as a result, depending on the circumstances), you've failed to make your case, or you've framed your father or your boss.
This is even more clear from the part of the developer's guide that describes how to achieve the nine possible endings for the game. First, he describes in detail how to get one of them. Then, in order to get the other endings, he instructs you to tell exactly the same story to the judge, except for just one or two actions that you have to do differently.
Graphics and sound
Bohemian Killing's graphics aren't very pretty. I've seen plenty of Unity-based games with much better graphics. Trust me when I tell you you won't feel the urge to reach for that screenshot button at all.
There is only one piece of music that repeats the whole time. It isn't exactly a great song, though it isn't terrible either, but it does get annoying after so many times.
The voice acting sounds terrible. Mind you, the voice actors do try to give a decent performance, but they were instructed to speak English in a snooty manner, with a distorted voice and with an exaggeratedly thick French accent. It makes every line of dialogue sound ridiculous, which gets tiresome soon.
Technical issues
Bohemian Killing is a short and simple game, so I don't understand why we have to look at a loading screen every ten seconds or so. You notice this immediately after launching the game. You see a loading screen, then the game menu where you click 'new game', another loading screen, you're asked to look at your watch (optional), to click on a book (optional) and then click on a door, which results in another loading screen. And it goes on like that. Every time you open a door and every time you find a piece of evidence, you have to sit through a loading screen. Absurd.
I've come across several scripting bugs, as well. On my second playthrough, I could pick up one of the pieces of evidence (a glove) over and over. I'd get the cutscene, but then the glove was back where I had just picked it up. This meant I couldn't pick up a follow-up piece of evidence (the other glove), although this worked fine on my first playthrough.
The achievement for finding one of the pieces of evidence (the suitcase) didn't unlock, no matter how often I picked it up (tried it four times). Both endings I got even mentioned that I took the suitcase.
On both playthroughs, I checked the hotel guest book and got the 'graphology expertise', but the ending unfolded as if I didn't have that piece of evidence. This meant I wasn't able to get the specific ending I was going for.
On Steam's extra features
Bohemian Killing has 6 Steam Trading Cards. You'll get 3 while running the game.
The 22 Steam Achievements are awarded for finding each of the 13 pieces of evidence and for unlocking each of the 9 endings. According to comments from other players and my own experience (see 'Technical issues' above), the achievements can be quite buggy, so if you're a completionist you may get very frustrated with Bohemian Killing. I for one can't imagine sitting through pretty much the same game seven more times to unlock all the endings. Some of the dialogue is unskippable and the dialogue that is skippable, has to be skipped one sentence at a time. In short, this isn't a particularly fun game to 100%.
The idea is pretty interesting, but it has a few bugs that break the game that made me give up after my second ending:
- Once the judge appeared and pushed me onto a table which rendered me unable to move
- Once the game froze while the judge appeared
- Once, after my lawyer explained one of the evidences found, and I was supposed to resume my testimony, instead I appeared in my cell without being able to interact with anything. I couldn't even summon the menu.
Aside from those:
- The game really needs an option to "wait X minutes" without the need to do an activity. Or at the very least, have more activities and in more places.
- There should be an option to skip a single line of dialog during the courtroom scenes
- You have no way of knowing how most of your actions will affect your testimony, so you basically have to go by trial and error, which makes a victory feel like it's not an accomplishment
Dissapointing mess of a game
Positive
+ Concept of the story is interesting
Negative
- Got stuck in a vent - twice, couldn't get out, reloaded a game, appeared in a completely different place, still couldn't get out.
- What's up with a blur when looking down ? Sometimes you have to look down, and you can't see anything
- the world is static for the most part, except few things that are actually moving, and even animations are very limited.
- The whole product just feels unpolished - you can't skip some cut scenes, some you can, sometimes only by a single line.
- What's with the lens flare and special effects? It's overused.
- Horrible input lag on controller
Overall, i have no urge to play it again, there is really nothing great about it.
Bohemian Killing is unique in the fact that you kill a woman at the start of the game and in the next scene, you're on trial for that very same killing. The goal of the game is to lie your way out of being sentenced to death by the Guillotine because the facts of the case puts you at the scene of the crime.
Pros:
Graphics are decent
Non-linear
Real time
Well optimized
Simple controls
Developers are actively updating and answering questions
Multiple endings
Cons:
Very short
Clunky animations
There are nine different endings ranging from death to being able to frame someone else for the murder. The game keeps track of your decisions and depending on what you tell the court, it will play into the final decision by the judge. If you tell a lie that contradicts the facts of the case, the judge will call you on it and it'll count against you. If you tell a lie that fits the facts, you've taken a step towards exonerating yourself. This is the best thing about this game.
You have to take special care in keeping track of the time. Ten minutes in real time is ten minutes in game time as well, so you want to tell a story in a way that will fit the facts. If the facts say that someone saw you at the hotel at 10pm then you want to be at the hotel at 10 pm, however, there is some leeway so you don't have to be perfect.
The graphics are okay, nothing to get excited about but the animations are terrible. It doesn't look like much time was taken on the them. Couple that with the fact that it only took me about 6 to 7 hours to find all nine endings, well, this is obviously a very short game.
At the time of this review, Bohemian Killing was selling for $12.99. I don't think it's worth it at that price because of the short length of the game. However, I do recommend it, but I suggest that you wait for a sale.
Overall the gameplay of Bohemian Killing is very interesting, there's many different paths to take and several endings for those paths. The world is beautiful and immersive, though I was wishing for a bit bigger area to roam around in. It's certainly big enough for the story, but I'd have loved to just wander about the streets a bit more, if for no other gameplay reason than to pass the time (which is an important factor in the game: certain things happen at certain times, and the time you do things affect your testimony)
One playthrough of the game is not very long, but I like to keep coming back to this game every now and then to do something different. The voice-acting is good, though I'd prefer actual French with subtitles over English with French accents.
It's a great little game, though I'd say the current price tag is a bit steep. If you find it for less than 5-7e or so, I definitely recommend it.
A great premise for a game which allows you to craft an alibi for a murder you did commit. A nice variety of options and it doesn't hold your hand when you're doing something stupid, like contradicting sworn testimony from others. I thought that the framework of the game was very well done, it flows and rewards intelligence and planning.
However the implementation is frustrating. The graphics are subpar and the opening murder scene has some atrocious character models. While I enjoyed being left to my own devices in how I crafted my alibi for the night, it would have been nice to have some cues as to who I am framing and why certain actions will lead to framing certain people. Also, part of the case relies on how much the judge trusts you and while you get a note implying that his trust level has changed you don't know whether his trust goes up or down.
Overall- worth a play through if you like novel games and are prepared to work through some rough edges but probably not worth the replay for all the endings.
Last point- bonus for the scene when you quit saying court is ajourned for the day. Nice touch.
I really tried to enjoy this game. I liked the atmosphere (Paris, French accents -lovely, lovely- and so on) but I ended up getting bored right on my second playthrough. Sometimes I didn't know what I was supposed to do or where to go, and that made me want to stop playing it.
I think the concept is amazing but it was quite fuzzy at the beggining. The first time I played it, I was looking around pressing this and that, and the judge was like "why were you trying to enter to somebody else's house?" WELL, I DON'T KNOW. I'M EXPERIMENTING (I ended up going to jail there.) Then I had a vague idea of what to do, but still, every time I pressed something just to "see" what it did, the judge remembered that and made me fail my testimony (It was fun though.)
Also, it's a little bit expensive (imo), but that's not a big deal, sales are always our saviours.
Anyway, I'd love to play more games like this one, the idea is cool! I like the thought that it's up to me whether I save myself or end up under the guillotine.
Bohemian Killing is basically what could be a very promising start in a detective game. The game is rough, make no mistake about that. This is more like a beta. The characters move kind of sluggishly, the character models don't look so great, the game takes place in about 4 small areas, the game has a lot of loading for being so small, and the narration gets annoying quickly, because he narrates literally everything.
Despite all that I enjoyed this game. I got it on sale for $2, if i had paid more I would have been pretty upset though. I love the idea that you are charged with committing a murder and have to convince the judge by actual evidence that you are innocent. You have to constantly remember that as you tell your story you literally are doing just that, telling a story, you aren't going back in time to change events. So, if you tell the judge oh I didn't murder them I was asleep the whole time. Well that isn't going to fly, because witnesses and other evidence place you at the crime. Instead your goal is to read through all the evidence and then try and craft a reason for each one.
I think it's brilliant. The problem with this game is that everything is tied time, but you can't speed up time without doing specific actions. Those actions don't always waste the correct amount of time, so you can overshoot events quite easily. I found myself literally just standing around waiting for time to pass...and it's real world time. It's a massive flaw in the game. You should just be able to say, oh and then i just stood around for however long you want and speed to that point. The other problem I had was that despite the mutliple ways you can convince the judges, it is a bit limited.
The evidence the court has against you is very specific, so you really need to follow that when you tell your tale. I tried to craft a scenario where it was self defense in my bedroom, which was a deadend. Eventually, I realized the reason the game wouldn't let me do that was because evidence clearly shows the victim had no blood in your bedroom. It would be nice if i could have done that and then the prosecutor accuses me of lying and then shows the evidence that I'm lying. After realizing my mistake I still was never able to get the self defense innocent verdict I wanted. I had to use the hint option in the game to realize what needed to be done. The best I could get was a crime of passion, which was fine by me.
So overally a playthrough will take about 90min, but it took me 5hrs of playing to figure out how to get even that defense to stick. You just constantly run through the same crime over and over again. Quite frankly though, I really enjoyed this. I love Paris, so i adored the setting, the music fits the murder mystery motiff perfectly, and I was pleasantly surprised at the different ways you could end your testimony, even if i felt constrained a bit too much by the evidence. I really wish this developer would get a lot of money so they can make an actual budgeted murder mystery game, i think it would be quite stellar.
Until then #Worth $2, I just can't recommend it for more then that, it's still just too rough of a game and too short.
Bohemian Killing is an adventure game by The Moonwalls developers where, as Alfred Ethon, a Parisian of the late 19th century, you are asked to produce a testimony about a killing you have presumably committed. The videogame shifts between the testimony itself, where you control the protagonist and interact with people and items from the murder's evening, and the courtroom, where the judge, the prosecutor and your attorney consider any new evidence brought to the case.
The gameplay can be best described as an hybrid between an adventure game and a walking simulator: you walk around the (small) map and interact with people and items in order to arrange a testimony in your favor. Time is also an important factor in Bohemian Killing: you have a watch to keep tab on it and means to advance it. This is due to the fact that the prosecution know that certain thing happened at a precise hour, so you must reconstruct your movements accordingly.
The main attraction of the game is discovering the multiple ways you can build up your own testimony, and see what verdict you can get for yourself. While getting a death sentence is remarkably easy, you can also try to get declare innocent or frame someone else. Replaying the game is a vital part of Bohemian Killing, and you are given the option to skip through dialogue you may already heard previously and ask your attorney to advise you during your testimony and give you hints about what to do.
Granted, Bohemian Killing isn't exactly such a big, multilayered adventure game, but, for its price tag, it does enough with its unique premise and can hook you up for several hours, especially if you are bent on unlocking all nine endings
I would say that this is a very intelligent game; it makes you think how to save Alfred Ethan (main hero) from the false accusation. It took me several attempts but I'm still trying to figure out how to get to the good ending.
I really like the storyline; which is splendid, and very dynamic; I like how it changes based on your choices during the game. There are some very good moments in the story; but I won't write about them because I wouldn't like to spoil the fun for other people.
Also the actor in the game is superb; but I think the dubbing is too quiet. I'm in my 50's, and I had to turn off the music to be able to hear the actor.
Graphics could be better, and people in the game look not very good either. But this is one of the most intelligent games I've ever seen. It's great because such games are rare now; when people like to play shooting games. Highly recommended!
TL;DR version:
- Not many games handle you control over a murderer who is making a testimony. Having to piece a story while adhering to the evidence collected by the authorities is a very nice twist on the usual take on the game of deduction. Huge plus for that.
- Being able to be wrong while piecing a story is refreshing. Too few games let you mess up. I can recall only two or three other games in the same genre that allow you to screw up.
- More than one possible outcome and story combination, so there is quite a bit of freedom when making up your story.
- I like the accents, it does suit the location of the story too.
- Having the Judge appear during more important testimonies, asking you questions directly on the scene, is really neat feature. I mean, it feels unreal (in a positive way) and helps the narrative side of the game. I really liked that.
- Evidence files were very well done. The font, the visuals...
The actual review:
Bohemian Killing is a detective game in reverse.
You are the murderer. You got caught.
In traditional detective games you have to find pieces of the puzzle and fit them together to solve a mystery. In Bohemian Killing you are given all evidence gathered by the police at beginning of the game. With it in hand you have to make your testimony at the court - coming up with a believable explanation of what has happened.
But to make your story believable you must ensure it fits the facts: time, place and action. This is where Bohemian Killing turns into an adventure game. You present your testimony by walking places and performing certain actions. Sometimes the Judge will ask you a few questions, during such moments the game will "frezee" and screen will turn into black and white until the Judge gets his answers and the story resumes.
Bohemian Killing has a very interesting take on what you are doing: you don't create events. You are making UP a story (or, at the very least, the part where you are innocent). You CAN lie (which is usually what murderers do, don't they?) as long as nobody catches you on that. This also means that when playing for the first time you can mess up your testimony entirely, but in a game of deduction I find the possibility to be wrong to be A POSITIVE.
Game has its own internal clock, which tracks WHEN you do something - time is of the essence. Thankfully the in-game timer is fairly leisurely. In fact, it goes forward so slowly on its own that you will most likely find time-sinks quite useful. These are simple objects such as gazette or phone you can interact with. They serve as time-sinks and their purpose is to propel the timer to a desired moment in time. So don't be afraid that you will have to speedrun through the game because "the clock is ticking".
When starting the game gives you an attorney who does two things:
1. He reminds you of important events when they will appear, which helps planning out your next move or moves. It's very important when you start, not as much when you are on another run (it's nice that game features multiple endings and possible combinations in the story, which is a big deal because one full run can be fairly short in terms of playing time).
2. He gives you clues that can help you defend against the charges made by the prosecutor (by the way the prosecutor himself does really good job at introducting you to the game by explaining who you are, what you did and generally what's going on). The clues are a good way of directing you through the game, even if it can be a bit annoying at first that you have to explore the in-game world in order to gather knowledge of things "you" - the main character of the story - should know by now.
A side note on the evidence files themselves - I found them to be done very well. The font, the visuals... Suffice to say I liked going through them. The only flaw was no option to jump through different categories of evidences, which could help new players as some evidence is linked together, which forces you to jump back and forth between them.
I enjoyed the voice acting. The main characters' way of commenting on EVERYTHING he does gets annoying at some point, but it also does reinforce the feeling that you are testifying before the court. It's just the frequency of it that's a bit off (to a point that it gets hilarious). Another plus side of the voice acting is the actual French accent that fits well into where the action takes place (France) - it adds to the atmoshpere.
On the graphical side of things I can say that for the most part it serves its purpose, although the animations leave a lot to be desired (and I mean A LOT). It's fairly visible that everything was done by a very small team (or a single person, if I am not mistaken). The main reason why I am so forgiving about the visual side of the games is their gameplay. So if the graphics is very important to you - be warned.
The Bohemian Killing's biggest strength is how unique it is. It does have some flaws in terms of executing its excellent concept, but ultimately it was fun and interesting experience when I was pushing my brain cells to convince the Judge to my story.
Bohemian Killing is a walking simulator in which you must LIE to the court you are in, in order to get aquitted of a murder charge. Keep in mind the key word, LIE, as you have murdered the girl, so, instead of trying to prove your innocence in your testimony, which said testimony consists of walking from place to place in time of the events, and doing actions to explain or make the court believe that you are innnocent, you are instead trying to get the court to believe you didn't murder the girl in your testimony. This means, that you must keep track of things, the time, and the actions you do in order to make a believable lie as to not get convicted.
The court you are in, is listening to your testimony, so the Judge will make comments depending on what you do, and you must keep in mind exactly what you do, as it is recorded, and if the testimony seems contradictory or false, you will be convicted. The testimony, as I said before which is basically a walking simulator, could stand to do with some improvements such as expanded space, more actions.
But overall, for me, this game is fun, and challenges you to see if you can get away with a crime. However, this is not for everybody, as it is slow paced and you need to listen and keep track of a lot of things, the time of your actions, whether the actions can come together into a believable lie, etc. So buy this game if you enjoy creating and challenge to your intelligence, as well as if you have a lot of patience...if not, don't.
Great concept, terrible execution.
This game is not a courtroom game or deduction of evidence/witness testimonies. It is rather a walking simulator where you try to align your actions to the evidence and timeline of the prosecution. The way to advance time is the most infuriatingly annoying mechanic I have seen in a very long time. Say for example it is 9 and you want to pass time to 10 so that you can testify on something that happened at 10, instead of being able to skip time by saying 'I read a book for an hour' or something you need to run around silly and shave(5min), shower(15min), cook(10min) etc. So you are constantly just running around looking for objects to waste time. this mechanic is terrible.
You are also expected to play through the game multiple times. My first playthrough took me roughly 2 hours but the consecutive playthroughs will be much shorter (anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes depending on your actions) since 95% of the content is reused/skipped on multiple playthroughs. The dialogue and outcomes don't wary nearly enough even when testifying complete opposite stuff. In 1 testimony I simply stated I went to my apartment and went straight to bed and the prosecution tells the exact same lines about how I told lie after lie and how no one should believe my sob story of being a poor hated person. Something that never happened. I also managed to get a non-guilty verdict with a testimony that was utterly contradicting or completely ignored evidence/witnesses.
There also don't seem to be many ways to alter your testimony. The locations available are very small with few possible interactions. Overall I really like the concept but the execution misses the mark entirely.
Just to get this out of the way:
Gameplay-wise, this is a "walking simulator" for all intents and purposes.
You walk around and interact with items around you.
There are no direct puzzles and no action going on.
That said,
I love what this game was going for and the idea behind it!
Trying to uncover the mystery while simultanously building a believable alibi
is an interesting twist on things previously attempted in only a handful of other games,
such as Indigo Prophecy.
It's a fantastic concept -
- but the game is also somewhat rough around the edges.
The investigation parts of the game are narrated on the fly, with comments made
about almost every little thing you do.
For the most part this is good, but they did go much too far with it.
It got ridiculous hearing "then, I used the stairs" 3-4 times in a row,
while still going up the same stairwell.
Likewise, saying "then, I opened the door" for every time you do so
is reduntant and it does break the illusion simply with how ridiculous it is.
More importantly, as you are walking around, experimenting with the different interactions
and trying to build your narrative, you're never quite sure what consequences your actions will have
until after you perform them.
This would be fine if not for the fact that this is supposedly a man recounting the past.
A past he clearly remembers (or at least has to make others belive that he remembers), so
having these details obfuscated in such a way feels clumsy.
For example, if I had known that shaving would get my clothes covered in blood, I wouldn't
have shaved at that time. Instead, I didn't find that out until after the fact, and because of this
my alibi got needlessly convoluted as I changed into clean clothes and then had to figure out
an excuse for having bloodied them again at a later time.
The game is clearly intended for multiple playthroughs, and such things would be
more easily avoided when you have been through it a few times and know what to expect,
but I still feel that this should have been handled in a different manner.
Bohemian Killing also shows it's roots as a basic Unity-engine game on the technical side of things.
The control is quite sluggish, and I encountered a few minor bugs such as getting stuck on scenery for a moment
and similar hiccups.
Despite these flaws, however, I find the game as a whole quite interesting and
would love to have had more cases to play.
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | The Moonwalls |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 30.01.2025 |
| Metacritic | 55 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 58% положительных (79) |