Planned Release Date: To be announced

About This Game

Sleuth Saga: Under Starless Skies is a murder-mystery visual novel adventure game set in a detailed fictional world with a focus on wild political conspiracy and far-reaching intrigue, featuring vibrant hand-drawn artwork and an original soundtrack designed to evoke a blend of several key influences.

When a sudden, shocking murder draws jaded ex-detective Lukas Egret and peppy young photographer Faith Emery together, the two stumble across the beginnings of a breadcrumb trail which seems to imply that a dark shadow of conspiracy looms over their whole country.

The young and thriving nation of Libertia may view itself as a pillar of freedom, but it remains trapped by the dark realities of its settlers’ history, with consequences bubbling to the surface again and again as this new world desperately attempts to rewrite the truth.

Inspired in both tone and presentation by revisionist and post-classical Western films with an original soundtrack that reflects this, Sleuth Saga hopes to be a stylish marriage between these dark “Old West” themes and a player-solved murder-mystery game.

In the course of designing Sleuth Saga: Under Starless Skies, a vast and comprehensive world has taken shape, with extensive care taken to ensure a core foundation of pseudo-realist history - both the nation of Libertia and the wider world are mired in decades of international relations and major historical events that define the paths taken to reach the stories we want to tell, and this game is intended to serve as but a small slice of this elaborate universe.

Whilst investigating for important clues, always search every seemingly unrelated nook and cranny - after all, you never know what interesting tidbits of context you might stumble across, and Faith is quite the diligent note-maker! Using this “notes” system, players can find and learn interesting details about the world and characters through exploration, gaining a deeper appreciation for the stage on which this mystery unravels.

Solving a scheme as large as the one afoot in Sleuth Saga comes one step at a time - across a five episode story - so expect familiar contradiction-finding and puzzle-solving gameplay inspired by staples of the genre like Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, and Professor Layton, but with new depth, reimagined and supported by additional elements:

• Investigate to find crucial clues and encounter witnesses.

• Question those you come across to gather accounts, then refute anything that doesn't fit the facts.

• Debate against more stubborn opponents, choosing both your argument and evidence carefully.

• Switch between characters to utilise the correct investigative approach and techniques.

Use these methods to produce your most critical report, unravelling the web to find the thread of truth that exposes the culprit!

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Implied off-screen killing, occasional blood, depiction of corpses. No depictions of actual serious violence. All depicted / implied violence is in a cartoonish and heavily stylised visual presentation and is not realistic.