One Night: Burlesque is a game that I just happened to see on the store page out of the corner of my eye. The mix of a murder mystery and a burlesque club was right up my alley. I was looking forward to a classic noir story, and the game was fairly inexpensive.

One Night is a visual novel, so the art carries a lot of the game. They go for a simple, cartoony style for the characters. I did find some of the faces looked kinda ugly. I think it was the eyes, they were a little too beady and spaced too far apart. The world is drenched in shades of gray and each character has a certain color associated with them. It’s usually included as a little pop of color on their outfit, like our main character, Holly, and her pink hair. Overall, the art does a fine job and looks similar to other visual novels I’ve seen. There’s no voice acting besides a few chirps from characters. The music for the game is the jazzy stuff you’d expected to hear at a burlesque club. It’s good.

The gameplay is mixed up just enough to keep you engaged. You spend a majority of your time reading text bubbles, but there are often breaks where you are tasked with mixing a drink or doing a quick time event. Holly is a mind reader and there’s a small mini game where you can read other character’s minds. The game is short enough that nothing ever gets stale. Actually this game is a little too short. It’s about an hour in length and you can speed through it. I checked to see if this was a mobile game ported to the PC, but I didn’t find it on the Android Store. I didn’t pay much for this game, but given it’s short length, it felt like it should’ve costed $2-5.

So, the story. Holly is a cabaret dancer with the ability to read minds. This game hits the ground running and doesn’t spend much time explaining the world’s lore. The whole game is set during one night at the burlesque house. Until half-way through the game I was under the assumption the game took place during the 20s or 40s, when burlesque houses were still a big deal, but then someone mentions the Internet, so this game is set in modern time. I also figured Holly’s ESP was some mutation unique to her, but apparently this world just has psychics. It does keep Holly from just willy nilly reading people without consequences, because people can sniff out your ability.

During Holly’s stage act she passes out and has a premonition about her best friend, Liz, being shot during her final stage show that evening. Having to sit out the rest of her shows, Holly hangs around the club trying to figure out which of the three people from Liz’s past will kill her tonight. You get help from a local detective and interrogate Liz’s ex-boyfriend, a creepy pastor, and a disgraced psychiatrist. The game gives you some hints as who the future culprit will be, but the final choice still felt like a crap shoot. The game dabbles with themes of self-fulfilling prophecies and the lies people tell themselves, but never really says anything profound. I also get the feeling this game was made by a development crew that didn’t speak English as a first language. It wasn’t too noticeable in the first few acts, but the last few acts had some misspelled words and poor grammar where I had to guess what the character was trying to say.

All in all, this game is not a waste of time, but it’s nothing worth writing home about either. The story leaves out certain bits of world building that makes you feel confused in the bad way. If you can catch this game on a sale and really like the idea of a burlesque club murder mystery, I’d recommend it I suppose. It could also work as a quick palette cleanser game between bigger time investments.