Preview: Blue Toad Murder Files (PS3)

As Relentless Software’s first self published title, they’ve chosen the route of a PSN download with this exclusive episodic title. With a website (Click Here) recently going live they’re keen to get the word out. When discussing the origins of Blue Toad David Amor, Executive Director of Relentless says, “On the day about sixty of us split up into groups and independently came up with lots of different ideas. When we re-convened in the afternoon I noticed that several groups had come up with variations on Murder Mystery games. Each person then voted on the ideas and it became clear that a Murder Mystery game was both something that people wanted to work on and people wanted to play.”

The look of Blue Toad certainly makes it stand out. A unique cartoon style fitting with the story and just oozing charm. Puzzles seem to be an integral part of the experience with you, the player, selecting areas on a map in the hope of solving the crime. Characters can be questioned, so you’ll need to find out if somebody has an airtight alibi or is mysteriously missing at a specific time. And at the end of each episode you’ll not only be interviewed by the Chief Inspector on the days events, but also need to point at your lead suspect.

Paul Woodridge, the design director had a good hand in the puzzles of Blue Toad. “After the plot for an episode had been developed we would divide it into sections and try to find a puzzle for each one”, he says. “If we weren’t able to think of one we’d make changes to the script and try again. Ruben, one of our designers, has been our puzzle man and once he’s got the basic idea for a puzzle he’ll do a paper prototype and challenge the members of the team with it. It’s a way to quickly test out and refine an idea before implementing it in code.”

The first episode of Blue Toad Murder Files is still a long way off, 17th December 2009 to be precise, what’s been shown so far though is that it’s definitely one to watch.

Words by Adam Gulliver