Miss Fisher and the Deathly Maze

I have a soft spot for games that know exactly what they are and commit to it without apology, and Miss Fisher and the Deathly Maze sits squarely in that category. Tin Man Games built a cozy, two-episode interactive gamebook around the Australian TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, set in the glamour and moral murkiness of 1920s Melbourne and the pearling town of Broome. If you have never heard of the show, the short version is: think Hercule Poirot with a feminist, jazz-loving, flirtatiously fearless protagonist named Phryne Fisher, and you are most of the way there. The game opens with a murder at the opera, which is such a classically perfect inciting event that it almost feels like a warm hug from the genre itself. From there, you move between locations, interview suspects, search environments for hidden clues, and feed those clues into a deduction screen where Phryne draws her conclusions by pairing testimonies against physical evidence. Episode 2, subtitled Cleopatra's Curse, shifts the setting to Broome and runs noticeably longer than the first, with a new optional hidden-object mini-game and nine additional unlockable outfits scattered across the scenery. That costume-hunting mechanic sounds frivolous but actually works as gentle motivation to examine corners you might otherwise ignore. The dialogue throughout carries Phryne's wit intact. You can flirt with Inspector Jack Robinson, tease your allies, and deliver the kind of dry one-liner that the character built her reputation on. Where the game earns its complaints is the deduction system. Reviewers across the board noted the same friction: you can only make a deduction when the game decides you are ready, clues you have already spotted remain locked behind invisible progress gates, and the pairing mechanic frequently devolves into matching items at random until something clicks. The mystery rarely challenges you to think. It guides you to the solution on a very short leash, which is a structural shame given how strong the writing around it is. There is also no meaningful way to undo a missed dialogue choice without restarting the episode from scratch, which stings when branching options disappear permanently. The art direction, credited to illustrator Lisa Jeong, carries a quiet Art Nouveau elegance that suits the era without ever feeling cluttered. Every painted background drips with period atmosphere, and the TV show's jazz soundtrack by Greg J Walker threads through every scene like smoke from a 1920s cigarette holder. For a narrative-first experience, this soundscape is doing serious emotional lifting, and Tin Man Games clearly understood that when they licensed it. The whole package originally won at the Australian Game Developer Awards in 2017, and the craft behind the presentation justifies that recognition even if the puzzle design does not. Coming in at roughly ninety minutes to two hours per episode, both episodes together represent an afternoon well spent if the source material already speaks to you. Outsiders to the show can still enjoy it, but they will miss the particular pleasure of hearing Phryne's voice rendered faithfully in text form. Worth noting: only two of five originally planned episodes ever released, so the overarching Murdoch Foyle storyline ends without resolution. That dangling thread is the most honest warning I can give you before you start.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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