$0.99The Deed Play the murderer, not the detective
Plan a perfect crime at the family estate, then talk your way past the Inspector before your choices catch up with you.
Is The Deed worth it?
The Deed is worth it if…
- you want to play the murderer for once instead of the detective
- you like short games you can finish in an evening and replay with different plans
- you enjoy branching stories where even small dialogue choices change the ending
- you have a taste for dark comedy and country-house murder plots
- you prefer a puzzle that challenges you over one that punishes you
Screenshots
A murder mystery from the wrong side
Most whodunits ask who did it. The Deed hands you the rope. You play Arran Bruce, the estranged son returning to Dunshiel House, where his father plans to cut him out of the will in favour of his sister. It is a dark, sly twist on the classic country-house murder, played with a straight face and a healthy dose of gallows humour. The family is awful, the house is gloomy, and the whole thing knows exactly how ridiculous and how grim it is at once.
Ten weapons, one very guilty house
The planning is the game. A rope, a candlestick, rat poison, ten household items in all, and each choice matters, because the weapon you use shapes who becomes a suspect. Then you decide who takes the fall: father, mother, the maid, the butler. Plant the evidence in the right room, raise the Inspector's suspicions, and someone else hangs for your crime. Every run takes minutes, and a different combination of weapon, scapegoat and hiding place gives you a different ending.
Outsmarting the Inspector
Here is the fun part for anyone who usually plays detective: this time you are building the false trail instead of following it. Every little thing counts against you: where you were, what you said at dinner, how far from the body you were found, whether your planted evidence holds up. You spend the whole game thinking one step ahead of an investigator, which is exactly the thrill of a detective story, just pointed the other way. And if you would rather not frame anyone at all, some endings let the crime pass for something else entirely.
A story where every line counts
This is a visual novel at heart: you read your way through Dunshiel House, and what you say shapes what happens. Choices matter from the very first scene, and small ones ripple further than you expect. Even refusing to take off your coat when the maid greets you can open up an ending you would otherwise never see. The dinner table conversation is mandatory, and what you say there follows you all the way to the interrogation. Between conversations, the house itself carries the story: a gloomy, oppressive place with a fittingly uneasy soundtrack, where each family member has their own room and their own secrets. With seven endings to find, you will want more than one pass through it.
How long does one run take?
How long does a playthrough take?
Very little. A single run lasts roughly five to ten minutes: explore the house, pick your two items, get through dinner, do the deed, face the Inspector. The game is built for repeats rather than one long session, and you can save anywhere, so you can reach the weapon choice, save, and reload to try a different combination without replaying the whole evening. Seeing every ending takes a few hours at most.
Is it hard to get away with murder?
Honestly, no. The game is easy: as long as your plan holds together logically, dodging the Inspector is not much of a challenge, and the save system lets you undo any mistake. The appeal is less about difficulty and more about experimenting: trying a new weapon, a new scapegoat, a new answer under questioning, and watching the story bend around your choices.
Does it hold up over multiple playthroughs?
For a few runs, definitely. The first playthroughs are the best, when you are still discovering how your choices connect to the endings. After that, the scenes repeat, and later runs mostly mean changing one or two decisions in an evening you have already seen. Come for two or three satisfying runs and the pleasure of a clever plan coming together, not for endless variety.
Can you play it more than once without redoing everything?
Yes. The game has save and load with multiple slots, so you can save right before a key decision and branch from there instead of replaying the whole story. You will still sit through familiar scenes like the dinner on a fresh run, but for hunting down specific endings it saves a lot of time.
