Clever environmental puzzles and a thrilling sense of discovery make The Sexy Brutale a cool experience... once
The ideas found in The Sexy Brutale were always up my alley from word one. An adventure/puzzle game where you learn about the environment and behaviors of it's inhabitants to move past obstacles is typically a great pitch to get my attention. And while the game is good, and the puzzles are neat, the formula is very one-note. Where I was hoping for a Dishonored-like experience where my path could look very different compared to someone else's, The Sexy Brutale's only got one answer for you, and that's great the first time, and the first time only.
The titular Sexy Brutale is an elaborate mansion/casino where an annual masquerade party is held for the friends of the eccentric Marquis to play cards, see a show, and have a merry time being waited on by the faithful staff. Except this year it's all going horribly wrong as the staff are murdering the guests through increasingly creative means. The only guest who seems to be aware of this is preacher Lafcadio Boone - or at least he's dressed like one - who is woken up by an ethereal bloody girl who gives him a mask and pocket watch that lets him reverse time and tasks him with preventing the deaths of the other victims. Every twelve hours, nine minutes of real time, the clock will rewind him back to the start of the day to try it all again, and one by one Boone tries to figure out the method to counteract the deaths of his friends.
The main hook of the game is learning the routine of the guests and staff as the day unfolds in the mansion until you're ready to execute on a plan to save your target or targets. The pocket watch allows you to sync up to any working clock you find and use that as your new starting point for the day as you progress further into the mansion, and oftentimes it is beneficial to restart the day several times just to get all the information you can. In the very beginning, the amount of stuff it seems like you can do feels staggering, but soon it all gets boiled down into a few basic actions. Boone can open most doors - although some are arbitrarily blocked through mysterious means - he can peer through the keyhole to check a room before entering it, he can stop and try to listen for any sounds in nearby areas, or he can interact with some things he finds, like switches or books.
The biggest rush the game can give you is the feeling of discovery when you figure out a routine, or see a staff member hide a key item you need in a secret compartment you didn't know was there, or overhear two people discussing the password to a room you cannot enter. Learning new information to each puzzle is a thrill, and when you put all of this information together into the run you need to make to save the day, it feels awesome. Boone is hindered by not being able to be in the same room as anyone else, staff or guest, by time stopping and the mask of the other person chasing you out, but once you learn the patterns and routes of everyone, avoiding people is easy. As you save more people, you will gain their masks, and with them more abilities and skills to progress further into the mansion, creating a bit of a 'Metroidvania' feel to the game.
Also helping you keep track, every action made by every person in the mansion happens at the same time every day, giving you audio and visual clues as to the order of every day. The sound of a gun will always be heard at the same time, the lights will dim at the same time, someone will be thrown out a window at the same time, creating road map of actions that help put the whole day together. All of this happening at the same time can take it's toll on the game as well, however, as I found it hit or miss on how well the game picked up on any action I made if there was something else happening. Opening doors especially seemed to lag a second or two, or not happen at all, multiple times through the game. For something that's only around six or seven hours to finish, this happened enough times for me to really notice it.
The other slight downer here is that there appears to be only one solution to each scenario as far as I could see. Many of the missions seems like they could be prevented several different ways, but there never seemed to actually be any other ways of stopping the murder than the one I used. I spent a long time trying to find a way to get to the drinks to swap out the poison one with a clean one to prevent one of the early murders, only to flip a switch to see what it did and solve that scenario without even knowing it, as there was no way to manipulate the drinks. There only being one solution is fine, most puzzles only have one solution after all, but I was hoping for more replayability and variation from playthrough to playthrough.
The quirky art style and fun, jazzy music of The Sexy Brutale give it an edge over other puzzle games, in addition to it's cool ideas and world. Coupled with a weird story that really goes some places in the last third of the game, The Sexy Brutale is a fun, engaging experience worth your time, as long as you're not looking to replay it any time soon.