Apple Crumble: A delicious Knives Out-inspired puzzle that lets you snoop on your family | games

SSomeone wants to kill grandma. At this he took out the knives–Inspired puzzle game, each member of your family is suspicious in their own way: your uptight mother, your “uncle having a midlife crisis” and especially that stranger in your bedroom. Yikes!

Although Apple Crumble remains a mystery, it is mechanically different from Happy Broccoli Games’ previous game, Duck Detective, in which the player solves crimes in a small office. Here you are pretty much intruding into your family home. “I love the idea of ​​having a walking slide where you can open every drawer, every door, and see what’s behind it,” says founder and creative director Anika Marr. As you learn more about the various injustices and troubles of your family members, the mystery slowly unravels.

After Duck Detective, the team wanted to make a “sad granny” game – something that might come as a surprise after the humor of the studio’s previous games. Marr says Apple Crumble starts out comedic, but the tone changes throughout the game; It gets a little more serious and sad: “I felt very emotionally connected to my grandmother’s death. There’s some baggage there and I thought it would be fun to explore that.”

You will pick up the plot by searching objects. Lots of things. Apple Crumble’s storytelling extends to the various fairy tales found throughout the house. “There’s a movie script written by a midlife-crisis uncle who’s convinced he’s going to get money from investors and be huge,” Marr says. “Just a lot of little details that I hope will make the world seem believable.”

This depth of hidden detail also applies to the art style, which was partly inspired by the concept art for the movie Puss in Boots. “In the film and in conceptual art, they use a lot of these paint splatters,” Marr says. “From a distance, it’s not immediately obvious, but when you look at it, you’re like, ‘Wow, there’s so many different colors in this.'” Your eyes blend them together and make it look more natural. Less clinical. More interesting to look at. It ended up being a lot more work than I thought it would be, but I think it was worth it.

Marr is currently finalizing the script and will soon begin the process of recording the voice actors. Happy Broccoli books the actors together so they can compete with each other. After all, with Granny’s killer among them, there are a lot of arguments to be recorded.