The Sexy Brutale is easily one of the best games of 2017, a year that has already been a superb one for gaming. I could think of no better game than to kick off our new video series, From Indie With Love, where I look at some of my favorite and often underappreciated indie games.
How it Begins
You wake up in a mysterious room deep within a luxurious mansion. There’s a fireplace roaring in the corner, a grandfather clock ticking away, and a faint green glow from which there appears to be no source. Deeper within the mansion’s foreboding interior is a casino and theater, and the arbitrary library and intricate hidden passages. You, playing as Lafcadio Boone, don’t know any of this yet though. Boone is too concerned by the bloodied white mask affixed to his face.
As you pick yourself up off the ground, a woman emerges from a pool of blood, herself dripping in the thick red ooze. Rather than dragging you off to God-knows where, she instead asks for your help. “Several people are about to die tonight,” she tells you, “and it’s up to you to save them.” She hands you a broken pocket watch as your only aid, and instructs you to go to the chapel where world renowned clock-maker Reginald Sixpence is about to meet his own maker. You rush to save him, but find an employee of the casino is already pointing a gun at him. He pulls the trigger and walks away. You’re too late.
But that’s not how time works in The Sexy Brutale. Time is on your side. As quickly as you woke up, you’re knocked out again. You wake up moments later in that same spot. “Try again” the bloody woman pleads. “Learn Sixpence’s routine, and that of the murderer, and you can save him.”
That is where this gem really begins.
