Have you ever played a game which mas made it feel like you’re watching a show/movie? Or if you’ve felt like you’re a part of it all yourself?
Well, that’s exactly how you feel putting your detective skills to the test in The Incident at Galley House, which has you investigate a mystery decades later, with the help of a mysterious machine which allows you to take a look back into the past, and find out what really happened that rainy night in 1936 at Galley House.
Though I’ve never really played other mystery games, The Incident at Galley House certainly left a very positive mark, and set the bar high for what a true mystery and social deduction title should be like.
The amount of revelations and new information to discover is addictive and makes it impossible to not stay for the long ride
Games of all different genres are addictive for many reasons, and the case for The Incident at Galley House is simply the new scenes, and information which you’ll slowly unlock as you start to build up a stronger understanding of what happened that night, and who might have been responsible for all of it. What was great about it was the ridiculous amount of scenes and clues there really were to discover, it was packed full of so much content which made the experience more exciting and interesting with each newly discovered mystery.
Whilst some free clues were given to players throughout the whole game, most had to be solved by taking note of important information during interactions which either contained a clue to a persons current or future whereabouts, new locations yet to be discovered, or even just learning more about the characters which would be worthy to remember.
The notes section helped a lot and was great for keeping note of any important information which might be useful in the future. That paired with the excellent voice acting and amazingly designed mansion, made for an extremely immersive experience, feeling like you were right there within the halls of Galley House when the lifeless bodies fell to the floor.
With each new revelation, it was extremely hard to just drop the game even if it felt like you weren’t learning anything exciting or groundbreaking, the unsolved answers and mysteries almost had a natural grip onto us, pulling us back into the game to stay until all of the interactions, discoveries, and events connected together to finally reveal piece-by-piece what really happened that night. With all of that said, it was the main reason why all throughout it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, one which most others that played it felt too – if the thousands of overwhelmingly positive reviews are anything to go by.
If immersion is what you’re looking for – look no further
Immersion can be something massively impactful when executed right, I mean, who doesn’t want to feel like they’re right in the game themselves? It can be the difference between an 8/10 game, and a 9/10 game, so I think it’s a given that most people who really want to get the most out of their money want a really immersive game to place themselves in a virtual world for a few hours. For games specifically of the horror and mystery genre – they can take immersion levels to the max since they’re such a huge aspect to the total quality and success of a game.
Learning more about the characters via scenes really helped with that too, since we were able to witness exactly what happened between all of the characters at different times of the day, we knew exactly what happened, and where any important events happened. It was a mix between being inside the mansion and witnessing everything through our own eyes, whilst being an innocent bystander as we snoop around watching all of their interactions, (which technically the latter was what we were doing), but The Incident at Galley House did an excellent job at making us feel like we were switching between the two continuously.
Whilst The Incident at Galley House didn’t feature groundbreaking immersion levels – it certainly did an excellent job of making it feel like we were right there within the mansions walls, which was largely down to the great voice acting and sound effects. As a lot of games tell you right before you start the playthrough – you should play this game with headphones to maximize the full haunting experience that Galley House has to offer.
