113) Lord Winklebottom Investigates (2022)

Set in what passes for early 20th century England, we play as Lord Winklebottom, a gentlemen giraffe who also happens to be a world class detective. Together, with our stalwart hippopotamus life mate, Dr. Frumple, we're invited to a party hosted by a reclusive friend ours where he intends to announce something big. After a brief point and click tutorial in which we ruin tea and help an old sea dog sober up, we're off to our reclusive friend's island, where things aren't always as the seem. Once we arrive on the island, we discover that our erstwhile host, Aristotle Gilfrey, has been found dead, and now it's up to us to figure out who did it and, more importantly, why?

The story is your standard murder/ mystery affair, though the team makes good use of the cast of animals in order to make things unique and interesting. Things such as our protagonists propensity to eat foliage and Aristotle having a network of water filled tubes to explore his house since he's an axolotl go a long way to establish the game's identity and help to flesh out the characters and world. A good murder mystery story has to rely on facts, generally grounded in our understanding of the world, in order to effectively sell the mystery angle, and Lord Winklebottom does well to explore the absurd comedy that comes from setting and then subverting those expectations.

As with any point and click adventure game, a certain suspension of disbelief is needed in order to solve some of the more out there puzzles, such as a rather novel idea to scare the murderer into confessing by faking a seance. And of course speaking to the ghost that was actually summoned by the fake seance is the most logical way to move forward. In most games, the train of logic required to figure some puzzles out cna be incredibly hard to follow, but here, even though they're equally ridiculous, they work much better due to the established absurdism on display. While the revelation of who the killer is comes almost out of nowhere, it's presented in a way that's so dumb and charming that I couldn't help but laugh at it.

The game features beautifully illustrated backgrounds and characters, and the voicework on display is charmingly perfect. Even with a literal killer on the loose, the game does well to lean into the absurdist comedy as much as it can. Though, by virtue of being a murder mystery game, it's contents skew a bit toward the darker and more grim, it's colorful, playful, and humorous enough for most audiences. I could see a child playing this with a parent and having a wonderful time. My biggest gripe would be the linear nature and lack of replay value, but the humor on display makes it a much more palatable option than most of its contemporaries.