The Incident At Galley House review
To investigate the deaths at the Galley house, you'll first have to familiarise yourself with the machine. By inputting a time code, location, and the reference numbers for the people present, you'll be able to view that moment. Or, more accurately, hear it. Although you can occasionally pick out clues from the background art, and assign avatars to the hazy shadows once you've figured out which of the photographs in your inventory they correspond to, it's most important to pay attention to what they're saying.
The whole mystery unspools in these aural moments: people arguing and suddenly discovering dead bodies, the thunderstorm a constant accompaniment. It's a game that is predominantly a listening experience. Which is why it's surprising that The Incident at Galley House began life as Type Help, a text-based browser game.
Although the puzzling itself has been expanded, this transformation is predominantly a case study in the power of UI. I found Galley House's story to be solidly "pretty good," but combined with this upgraded presentation - the clunk of the strange machine, the generator flickering out every so often, the voice acting and audio design - I spent plenty of time genuinely creeped out. This isn't something I've experienced while simply reading, but it's also not something I've experienced in any of the other games that Galley House is inspired by, like Return of the Obra Dinn or The Roottrees are Dead.