First clues uncovered to The Murder of Ava Munroe

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Noir-steeped, 1940s Hollywood deduction mystery unveiled by the creator of The Biggleboss Incident

It took Adam Bunker five years to create The Biggleboss Incident, the comedic workplace conspiracy adventure released earlier this year. Hoping to significantly cut down on the time it takes for a follow-up, the indie developer has already gone back to the drawing board for a much different new project, The Murder of Ava Munroe.

It's 1949, crime is rampant in Hollywood, and the stench of corruption "hangs over the city like smog." Jack Baylor is one of the rare honest cops – or at least, he was until he was set up for a fall and kicked off the force. Now disgraced for something he didn't do, Jack operates as a private eye, and when "budding movie starlet Ava Monroe" goes missing, he's "reluctantly drawn into the case of a lifetime." The stakes aren't just professional but personal for Jack, as the actress is his own "one-time flame." To track down her whereabouts, he'll need to follow the trail beyond the ritz of Tinseltown to the city’s filthy underbelly, where he'll encounter a "who’s who of crooked politicians, dirty cops, and sleazy movie moguls." 

All that sounds potentially very conventional, but The Murder of Ava Munroe shares very little in common with its predecessor. Gone are the time- and resource-intensive third-person perspective, character animations, movie files and open exploration, replaced here with a much more streamlined, slideshow-style first-person presentation. The contemporary office setting of The Biggleboss Incident will be replaced by "movie studios, seedy nightclubs, and opulent mansions," while the comedic tone gives way to a still-cozy but more serious "twisty detective noir mystery set in the dark heart of 1940s Hollywood" that is "oozing with atmosphere" as you seek to untangle a "web of lies, glamour, and corruption." 

The gameplay too is significantly different, inspired by popular deduction games like The Case of the Golden Idol and The Roottrees Are Dead, as well as classic detective fiction from the likes of Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler. Within each of the twenty-five-plus locations there will more than fifteen fully voiced characters to interrogate, objects to examine and puzzles to solve in close-up panels. Every "clue, suspect, and piece of evidence unlocks new connections, questions, and locations," with key "deduction words" being automatically noted down in your files. The bulk of the mystery-solving will take place between the protagonist's interactive detective board and fill-in-the-blank "deduction statements" that piece the narrative together. You'll also be called upon to make smart choices that can have "game-changing" consequences, lest you find yourself getting "caught up in something much bigger than you bargained for."

While production on The Murder of Ava Munroe is still in the early stages and likely a year or more away from completion, the game can already be wishlisted on Steam. Before its arrival on Windows, Mac and iOS, we can expect a playable demo at some point, and as with the previous game, you can follow this one's progress through the developer's popular Point & Click Devlog on YouTube, which chronicles his experiences along the way.