Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? is one that has me torn in two. Call it a good gameplay experience, but as a game with Murder mystery Game as part of the feature, the storytelling is abysmal, the character's performance was awkwardly raw, and the plot puzzles are far-fetched and uninteresting. To say it's been a terrible experience, the overall experience is smooth and comfortable, with some of Wales Interactive's similar FMV titles to show for it.

The plot of this game is more classic in Murder mystery Game, through advancing a twisted and deformed family party quiz, arguing with different characters, layer by layer to find the truth, the player himself only need to make a choice to decide the direction of the story, can be in a very relaxing environment to advance the game. FMV makes the game's graphic quality is unquestionable, and the smooth overload of multi-chat window makes the game more immersive, as if the player is really in a family meeting. The characters are either arrogant, mean-spirited, or grotesquely narcissistic and exaggerated, which may be a good experience if you like this kind of dramatic sense. The different branches of the game are capable of spinning off some brand new plots, and the ability to skip readings after first playthrough, as well as the ability to indicate if there is new content when skipping through, optimizes the experience considerably compared to Wales Interactive's previous work.

The faults of Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? are numerous. In addition to the game's interface feeling very cheap and spartan, the scenarios in FMV are very monotonous, the game's sound is overall rather small, and you could almost call it a lack of musical performances. The level of performance by the actors seems a bit stiff and contrived and slightly awkward, and the overall plot of the game is relatively bland and boring, with little gameplay being the most fatal problem of the game. The questions in the party quiz that drive the plot are quite moronic and uninteresting at many points, the logic of many of the characters' behavior in the game is broken and confusing, and many of the characters' words lack credibility and persuasiveness, and the emotional portrayal is even worse, making it extremely difficult for players to empathize with them. Despite its attempts to create a tense atmosphere, the game fails completely. As a multi-playthrough game, the game has quite a bit of repetitive content over the course of multiple playthroughs, as well as the inability to save and load freely, only being able to read from fixed archive points, and not being able to select chapters through the flow of the process is a common issue in Wales Interactive's games, but the experience that it brings to the player is still abysmal, and fortunately, the game doesn't last very long as a whole.

The game is filled with a very large number of puns and dark humor in the English language, and objectively it may be possible to learn a few things, but I can't really think of anything good to say about this one, other than the overall more relaxed playing environment and the shorter game time. I would only recommend this one to gamers who are very interested in Murder mystery Game, family party quizzes, and FMV games to try out, even though many of these groups will probably experience an abysmal gaming experience. If you are very demanding in terms of plot and characterization, please decide carefully whether or not you want to try this game.

If you are just interested in point and click adventures go here: The Adventure Library

Is this game a masterpiece? No, but it is a competently produced FMV adventure. The visuals are like from a Netflix series, the audio is easily understandable, there are subtitles in different languages, there are no long loading times, and you don't see that the game consists of 100s of video clips stitched together. Actually, it just looks/sounds like a series on TV, I had two of my family members coming in the room during my play, watching a bit and asking what series this is.

The story is a murder mystery. Your uncle got poisoned by one of six family members - and of course they had all a reason and the means to do it. So you have to collect evidence and then accuse one of them, and to be able to do so you have to play through the game multiple times (discovered evidence stays discovered, and the playthroughs are all a little bit different. Still, while the first, second or third time is fun, it does become a bit repetitive then...). You can also save your uncle if you discover what poison he got, because he is not (yet) dead when a round begins.

Conclusion:
FMV whodunnit. Play through the story multiple times to discover who from your psychotic family tried to kill your uncle Marcus.

Another FMV filmed during the lockdown. This murder mystery story starts off with Abby, a young woman whose mother mostly controls her life. She got a video call from her uncle entrusting her with a huge task by telling her he was poisoned by one of the family members during a meeting they had not long ago. Abby's mission is to question everyone during the group video call that they initiating to celebrate her mother's birthday. Time is limited and she needs to find out who did it as soon as she can or, uncle Marcus will die.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2822273293

I thoroughly enjoyed the game, I liked the main character Abby, she is very cute, and her aunt June was an amazing actress, she was savage. The others were good as well, all of them are likable even their mother and her silly singing.
The gameplay is quite nice, you get to question the family members in each round, and each one has a different outcome and evidence.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2822275328

It has a high reply value as collecting the evidence adds up each time you play and question the people, you can't accuse anyone unless their evidence meter adds up and is enough to accuse them.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2822293516

Pros:
+FMV game.
+Choices and consequences.
+Invistigation.
+Good acting.
+Choices are timed by default but there is an option to pause them.
+Characters evidence meter.
+Multiple endings.
+High replay value.
+Steam achievements.

Cons
-No manual save.

I liked the concept of the game, I'd love to find more investigation FMVs. Recommended to FMV lovers and people who enjoy mystery games.

Other reviews:
The Bunker Review
Late Shift Review
The Shapeshifting Detective
Dark Nights with Poe and Munro
The Complex Review
I Saw Black Clouds Review
Five Dates

𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑐𝘩𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑚𝑦 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝐹𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑎'𝑠 𝐶𝘩𝑜𝑖𝑐𝑒

Warning: This is NOT a deduction game and it does NOT reward logical thinking! It's a simple decision game that rewards mindless replaying until you get all the decision "right".

I am reluctantly giving this a thumbs down. I actually really enjoyed this, well, some of it. It's well produced, the writing is great, the characters engaging. But had I known how flawed the gameplay was I wouldn't have bought this.

You need to solve a mystery. Doing this involves repeat playthroughs, and your evidence is saved for each future playthrough.

If you have good deductive reasoning you can actually solve it very early on. There are two key clues you can garner that tell you who the culprit is. Unfortunately, the game doesn't let you accuse the real killer of the crime. Instead you need to gather evidence. However finding the right piece of evidence involves a lot of trial and error as you try to figure out which dialogue option you have to say to which character at which point in the story.

There's a skip button that in theory is supposed to let you skip past things you've already watched, but it doesn't work consistently, so you end up re-watching the same bits of dialogue over, and over, and over again.

If the game just let me accuse whoever I wanted at the end of a playthrough this would have been fine. But instead I forced myself to re-play this game half a dozen times until I found the right bit of evidence that let me accuse the person I had already deduced hours ago was the real killer.

Very frustrating. Although its a testament to how good the writing and story is that I felt compelled to do this in the first place.

Here's how I solved the case early on We know Nan was in Bradley's bedroom early in the morning, we also know from Toby that Bradley was tearing his room apart early in the morning. From this we can deduce the poison was stolen early, and only Nan was seen in the bedroom before then. As an added bonus, Nan fails to mention the first aid kit when she tells you about Marcus' burn. . Even knowing all this I still needed to play roughly 3-4 hours to finally accuse the real killer of the crime.

A fairly entertaining FMV whodunnit in which the player controls the actions of Abby, an insecure young English woman with a very unlikeable family. She must navigate a quiz, traditionally played annually with her kin via a conference call, and figure out which of them tried to poison Marcus, the American uncle she dotes upon.

This kind of game doesn't normally resonate with me, so I was surprised to find myself captivated, even though it requires repeat playthroughs to solve. This is largely in part due to a quality cast (Al Weaver who plays Toby is particularly brilliant) and some legitimately hilarious endings, whether you end up accusing the right person or not.

The first playthrough is pretty short (40 minutes or so), with subsequent ones usually becoming shorter as sections become skippable and new scenes are unlocked here and there. Consequently, repeat playthroughs aren't too daunting. It's probably best played on the living room TV with family or friends for maximum entertainment, but I suppose it still works if you're on your own in front of a computer screen.

Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? is difficult not to recommend really because I did enjoy it, but it is more of an interactive TV show than a video game. Additionally, it has limited replay value, so be sure to factor these points into any purchase decision.

Follow Volcanic Reviews for Nobel in Literature winner reviews. I'm super duper cereal.

Originally posted by Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden:

Volcanic Reviews gjorde mitt liv oändligt mycket bättre.
Volcanic Reviews made my life infinitely better.

Tonight is about family and fun, the two Fs. Don't let me add another!
- Felicity, your mom in the game

Having already played a game or two from this publisher, I had high hopes going into this one. I am happy to report my expectations were met and then some!

Who pressed mute on Uncle Marcus? is a whodunnit in the FMV format, which Wales Interactive specializes and fairly excels in. You play as Abbie, a woman in her mid twenties, trying to figure out during an online family gathering who poisoned her uncle.

The list of suspects is not that big but every single one of them is your own family. This puts you in a precarious situation to say the least. Remember the last time you wanted to know something your sister, brother or mother was hiding from you? How well or easy did that go? ...Exactly!

The clock is ticking and your uncle has precious little time left. Will you be able to uncover who did it? Will your uncle survive? Was it all a hoax? Or are there sinister forces at play? I will say no more!


The writing is simply brilliant. It easily captures the bitterness and animosity that can fester for literally a lifetime only among family members - not an easy thing to write about or convey in a script.

It does so in such a lighthearted and witty manner that at times I found myself grinning and at others laughing out loud.

The banter is top notch here and the bitter sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, and aunts hardly hold back, especially the aunts -the so-called grownups - actually!

It seems like we make a good team. - Abbie
Like a seagull and a jet engine! - June, your aunt in the game

Uncomfortable silence. My favorite! - June, your aunt in the game

There's too many to list but here's another!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3049805768


There's a healthy variety of personalities on display and no one's exactly perfect. These are real people we see here, not cardboard cutouts.

There's a few twists here and there. Trying to pinpoint the culprit proves elusive as the evidence is scarce and a bit conflicting. This plays well into the mystery and keeps you guessing. Is it her? Is it him? No, no, the evidence is too perfect to be true.

Stuff like that makes for an enjoyable playthrough, and I needed to do a lot of them to piece together enough evidence to start naming a suspect. Then I rinse and repeat, while keeping my progress (i.e. gathered Evidence), and see if it leads to someone else.


The way the mystery is solved is to gather all information from everyone.

The best way to go about that IMHO is to have the same trio of people in the same conversation; one being you, the other being the person who poses the questions in this round of the quiz and the third being the person you team up with and get information from.

This should be done enough times until you see the All Evidence Found screen.

Then you move onto a different trio maybe with the same person to team up with but with a different 'round master'.

• Great script
  
• A brain teaser of a mystery. Not too difficult if you're a fan of Murder She Wrote like me!
  
• Very good cast. Not as superb as Five Dates' cast but very close.
  
• Skippable scenes. This makes reruns much faster.
  
• High-quality production
  
• When I finally unlocked those last few achievements and watched the true ending, I LOVE IT! Those reruns were worth the extra couple of hours to get there!

• The keyboard control scheme is a little un-intuitive.
  I find it way easier to use the AWSD keys, which are conveniently situated close to the other keys you need for the game: E for Evidence, TAB to skip, and ESC to quit.
  Instead, the game makes you use the arrow keys, too far to the right. It also forces you to use ENTER instead of SPACE to confirm.
  Neither are good choices, considering that now you need both hands on the keyboard to play a FMV or one hand and keep moving it around. Or use the mouse plus one hand on the keyboard, which is the most convenient in the current setting yet not ideal.
  
  
• There's one long scene in particular that you cannot skip near the end of each run. It would be better to have this scene be skipped like all the others.
  
  
• Gathering the information necessary to accuse the last suspect is frustrating.
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3050132113
  
  
• This is probably a plot hole. Mild !SPOILER!
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3049293918

The game has 17 achievements and they can take some time to get but not too much.

Fair warning though: Don't reveal the hidden achievements. There's one that has a humongous (I love this silly word!) spoiler. In fact, almost all the hidden achievements' images reveal too much. They are hidden though and are only shown when you unlock them. So if you did see them before you unlocked them, any and all spoilers would be totally on you!


If you want a fun half a dozen hours or so watching and actively participating in a murder mystery with tons of witty banter, then you know what you should do. Wishlist this game now and purchase it when you're good and ready!

Originally posted by Elizabeth II, Former Queen of the United Kingdom:

Reading Volcanic Reviews once a week made me live longer.

RIP, she passed away at the tender age of ten-thousand and six. An undisclosed source -me- claims on condition of anonymity that she didn't read Volcanic Reviews the month it happened. Henceforth, her health had started to decline.

Like other Wales Interactive games this is well produced, the script and the acting are good.
But despite a well-presented and intriguing premise it misses the gameplay mark.

What should be a game of sleuthing and deducing becomes a slog of grinding and guessing. You make choices with no context for which is right or wrong, you search for "evidence" with no logical path for getting there, and worst of all you're expected to fail and do the same thing over and over again until you find the "right" way of going about it.

From the outside the wrapping looks very nice, tied up with a bow - but once you open this up you find a hollow shell of a game that succeeds in taking the "detective" out of "detective work" and the fun out of, well, all of it.

Everything was decent to good in terms of characters, performance, tone, etc. The only problem is the game part. If you pick random choices vs trying to use any kind of thought/skill you would have about the same success rate. You don't use observation or deduction to solve this mystery, you just hope that the people you talk to say something useful based on your seemingly arbitrary choices.

Come on girl, give me the hot goss from last week’s meeting.

The majority of us have family members where we can not stand them at all. And sometimes it’s most of your family apart from one or two of them. While most of the time this means avoiding them, trying to not get too annoyed during gatherings, and avoid arguments, some take it to the extreme. I don’t mean putting hot sauce in their drink or deleting their Pokemon save file. Cold. Blooded. Murder.

You play as Abigail, or Abby as she’s nicknamed, and most of her family are just terrible. Everyone basically hates everyone else and it seems each gathering turns into a nest of arguments. At least for Abby, the only one in her family she likes is her Uncle Marcus and her Nan (which her Nan is the only one out of the bunch who is sweet to everyone despite her causing some annoyance when she doesn’t understand tech or the recent teen slang). You jump into the situation on Abby’s Mom’s birthday. Every year on her mom’s birthday they have a tradition of getting together and doing a family quiz. Of course, it doesn’t always end well, but they still do it every year even if they have to do it through video calls so everyone can be there.

However, right before Abby joins in on the call, Uncle Marcus rings her up. Marcus has been poisoned. Yous see, there was a family business meeting last week and there were arguments. Uncle Marcus was given the family business and the family wanted Marcus to do what they wanted and Marcus wouldn’t budge. It turns out that Marcus was poisoned, which he seems to narrow it down to someone in the family, and he will die that day unless he gets the right antidote. Which is a problem as he has no idea what he was poisoned with and he wasn’t able to catch it in time for the doctors to have time to figure it out either. Why is Uncle Marcus trusting Abby though? Abby was the only one in the family to not make it to the meeting, due to her job, so that automatically rules her out. It also helps that she likes her Uncle too and she wants to find out who poisoned him as well. It’s all up to you to figure out what he was poisoned with, find the proof, and find who did it.

Throughout your playthroughs (and yes I mean multiple), you’ll need to figure out what happened and what they were all doing without bring up any suspicions. There are six possible suspects: your terrible Mom, your sweet Nan, your sister Lottie, and your two cousins Bradley and Toby. While us the players don’t really know these characters starting out and had to do catch up to be on the same page as Abby and the others, I did enjoy the characters here. Yah the majority are the usual annoying family members, but I did enjoy the dynamic they have with each other and how they acted with Abby. There were also some reveals about them that I liked as well, and some of the jokes do land.

Anyway, you’ll be participating in the family quiz for a couple rounds. Each round has someone asking a couple questions and the rest of the family gets into teams of two, which is convenient for what you need to do. This is mainly where the choices you’ll be able to choose from comes in. You get to choose who you want to team up with, or more truthfully who you want to question about the last family meeting. You’ll discuss what the asker wants you to answer and the possible answer, which us the player won’t really know so you get to pick which one sounds like it would be right (or is right for the questions involving math). You will also have a chance to pry at your teammate about the meeting or to get them to talk more, either when there’s some downtime between questions or during the questions as you can either pry for some gossip or answer (and generally there is a piece of evidence down both paths). Though, some pieces of evidence can require doing a specific sequence of choices to get It or require you to get a certain piece of evidence in a previous playthrough (or in the same playthrough) to get it.

At the end of your playthrough is when Uncle Marcus is knocking on Death’s door. You actually do get to see how close Marcus is from dying as the game goes along, and he does pop up to talk to Abby every so often (and cause some suspicion as the other family members wonder what Abby was doing). While you can guess what poison Marcus was poisoned with, you still need to figure out who gave it to him and you have a chance at accusing someone at the end whether Marcus survives or not. However, you will have to replay the game multiple times to be able to have enough evidence to accuse someone. This is due to you not being able to get a lot in one playthrough and you’ll be missing out on some if you pick the wrong choice. This also means you’ll be watching the same scenes over and over again, and even more if you don’t take notes on which person you teamed up with each round and how much evidence you still need from them (as you do get a helpful screen showing how many pieces of evidence that part has and roughly where it will be in the conversation in relation to the other pieces of evidence). Thankfully, you can skip scenes that you already saw, but I found that it really only counts if you went down the exact same path you previously did as it won’t skip scenes that is the same no matter what. Also the skip button can also be used to pick the choice you want, which can be very annoying if you accidentally press it one too many times and have to wait until your next playthrough to get to that part again (though this isn’t as annoying if you still need evidence found in the next round).

Also on deducing who did it, I do like how you’ll find out why your different family members would want to kill Marcus, how they would know about the poison, and possibly when they could have done it. Though, the real culprit only has two conversation bits/evidence that will blatantly point to them. I do feel it would have helped a bit if they had more evidence pieces to them which can be dismissed early on as just a coincidence, but come around in full circle once you find the damning evidence that puts it all together.

Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus is a toss up on whether it’s worth getting or not. I actually did like the characters here, I liked a lot of the jokes that were here, and the acting for the most part was pretty good (I’d say Marcus was the only one that had some bad moments). The story was also enjoyable and I liked getting to know the family more as I played, not to mention that this is not a mystery game where the culprit is someone you would have had no idea about. Though, honestly, I would have preferred if we got a normal, 5-6 hour, FMV whodunnit where you didn’t have to replay it over and over to gather all the evidence; but for having to film during lockdowns the game is still enjoyable most of the time.