Bohemian Killing

My first honest reaction to Bohemian Killing was something close to quiet awe at the audacity of the setup. You are Alfred Ethon, a Gypsy inventor in a steampunk 1894 Paris, and the game opens with you committing the murder you are about to be tried for. There is no mystery to solve. The mystery is how to lie your way out of it. That inversion -- guilty protagonist, player-as-defense-strategist -- is so rare in games that just articulating it out loud makes the whole thing sound worth playing. The structure runs on two interlocked timelines. In the courtroom, the judge presents evidence: witness statements, expert reports, the murder weapon (yours), and the testimony of a neighbor who saw you covered in blood that night. Each question kicks you into a first-person flashback of the evening in question, and everything you physically do in that Parisian street scene shapes what Alfred narrates back in court. You can lie, frame a neighbor, claim insanity, manufacture an alibi by visiting a bar twice, or simply reenact the night truthfully and accept the guillotine. The game reports a dozen regular endings plus a hidden one, and the idea of sculpting your own version of events through physical interaction rather than dialogue menus is genuinely clever. The soundtrack -- composed by Marcin Maslanka -- carries real period weight, and the French-accented voice work does more atmospheric heavy lifting than the visuals manage. The problems are real, though, and they pile up fast on repeat runs. The game runs in real time: roughly three hours of in-game evening compress into the actual time you spend walking. When you need five minutes to pass, you are stuck shaving badly or reading a newspaper at a fixed, uncontrollable pace. The judge physically materializes inside your flashback to interrupt you, then vanishes awkwardly when you skip dialogue. Loading screens sandwich every courtroom transition. Movement has been described as feeling closer to swimming than walking, and some players reported character-freezing bugs requiring full restarts. The repetitive narration -- Alfred dutifully informing the judge about every staircase he climbed -- wears thin on a second or third attempt at a different ending. Critics have noted that the endings themselves begin to blur together after three or four runs, and the re-run structure reveals how thin the reactive content actually is beneath the concept. This is the work of essentially one person, Marcin Makaj -- a practicing lawyer who funded the project himself after a crowdfunding campaign fell short. That context matters. The legal authenticity feels real because it is, the thematic weight around class and racism in Belle Epoque Paris is handled with care, and the idea of inventing your own alibi through environmental interaction is something even much larger studios have not tried. But the craft does not yet match the concept. The steampunk Paris environment has warmth in its color palette, while character models feel stiff and out of place against it. The writing has ambition that occasionally outpaces the pacing. If you are the kind of player who reads the premise of a small indie and buys in on pure concept -- and I am often that player -- Bohemian Killing has enough strange, singular energy to justify a single playthrough. Chase a second ending and you will start to feel the seams. For narrative-first players who can forgive rough edges in service of an original idea, this one is worth an afternoon. Everyone else should know what they are walking into.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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