The year is 1935. There’s been a murder at sea, and no-one’s the wiser. For now.
Overboard! Is the latest interactive visual novel from inkle (developed over the course of six months using their specialist ink narrative game engine) and is an absolute delight. You play as Veronica Villansey, fading starlet and newlywed, who’s just bumped off her husband Malcolm. It’s up to you to keep her out of trouble until the boat docks in The New World in eight hours.
Over the course of the day you’re left to your own devices : kill the steward; pray to an uncaring God; bribe like mad - the boat is truly your oyster.
Of course, doing what you want is only fun when there’s a method to the madness, and your goals from the outset of each playthrough are listed at the top of the screen in a special menu after you obtain the ‘Good’ ending for the first time, keeping you focused on unearthing everything Overboard! has to offer and encouraging endless replays. For the record, I’m on my 34th as of this review. It’s just that good.
What keeps me coming back that much, you ask? Each line of dialogue is peppered with cutting wit from Jon Ingold, writer and narrative designer for the game, making every conversation a delight no matter how many times you see it (bear in mind that you can skip through familiar dialogue at the push of a button).
For all of its conversational cunning, Overboard! would be nothing more than a digitised Choose-Your-Own-Matricidal-Adventure book if not for Anastasia Wyatt’s glorious character designs. Although a lot of the game is spent staring at the cast in profile, Wyatt’s illustrations never make this a chore, breathing life into the relatively inanimate characters.
Each of these characters plays on a familiar murder mystery trope : Commander Anders, a charming seaman with a secret; Carstairs, a roguish gambler willing to risk it all, Lady Honoria, the bitter widow with a nose for secrets; the Major, an honourable old veteran seemingly unfazed by anything; Clarissa, the only one who seemed to care about Malcolm; and of course Veronica, a woman willing to do anything to get off the hook for her crime(s).
During my first playthrough, it was clear that I was only scratching the surface of what I could do, with my fellow passengers digging up incriminating information I didn’t even know about in the first end scene. And the second time. And the third.
The fourth time, my first taste of success in what turned out to be the ‘Best’ ending (you escape the blame for Malcolm’s death and net the life insurance to boot) was a bit of a fluke, as Veronica ended up doing time in half my subsequent attempts, and arrived in America without a penny to her name in the other half of them.
As far as accessibility goes, only the opening cutscene has any recorded dialogue, with Amelia Tyler lending her voice to Veronica’s recollection of the murder. Other than this, there is the option to restart any scene (bar the first and last) from the moment you enter reportedly once, though I found I could do it as often as I wanted on the Switch, which lessened the investment at times. At any time, you can rewind to the start of the story at 8am and remove all profanity, if you happen to want a 12-rated murder-fest.
Glitches like the endless scene restarts mentioned above were thankfully few in my time on the S.S Hook, but the game completely froze up during my 17th playthrough, which forced me to close the game and lose progress.
One issue, though not technically a glitch, is that when restarting a scene, you have to click to get rid of the screen displaying the time that blocks the action with a solid block of colour, which led to a few unintentional choices being made.
With playthroughs taking between 10 and 40 minutes, depending on whether you mess up so bad you opt for a watery grave or not, Overboard! need not be consumed all at once. Much like the bourbon biscuits Veronica can munch on in the restaurant, the game works best in small bursts, revealing more and more of its wider world to you as you go along.
Also, murder is thirsty work, you know? No shame in going for a dip in the ocean now and then. No doubt Veronica would agree.
+Cutting, witty dialogue
+Hours of replayability
+Charming and often vile cast
-Occasional leaps of logic in the plot
-Some glitches that can ruin playthroughs
7/10
Overboard! is a fantastic and fast-paced interactive visual novel with hours of hilarious content. If the bugs mentioned above get fixed on the Switch, I'd bump the score up to an 8.
