On time: These murderers truly are proud of their work!
Late to the party: Boring collectibles.
Every day, the staff of The Sexy Brutale murders its guests --you and your friends-- in grisly and elaborate ways. A skinless woman takes you out of this horrible loop before disappearing in a puddle of blood. Now you continue to relive this same day, but this time learning the patterns of the mansion and subtly thwarting its plans.
In the Sexy Brutale lives are saved by slightly altering the environment. Replacing bullets with blanks, shutting one door, pulling a lever at the right moment. Since this requires intimately learning the movements of each character, it becomes a game of exploration as well as puzzle solving. They key is being at the right place at the right time and fortunately the right time repeats over and over.
The mansion opens up progressively as each guest saved gives you new powers. The zelda-like progression encapsulates each mission, limiting the amount of rooms and characters involved at once. Some abilities, however, are criminally underused; a later one has no effect other that uncovering codex entries. For the most part guests don't interact with each other, making each puzzle independent: what you do to save one guest doesn't affect the others. This sectioning also keeps things fresh and reduces the tedium that comes inherently from repeating the same day over and over. Waiting for things to happen can be tedious though. And while you can jump forward in time, you can only do so by standing in specific places and only to 4 or 8 PM. A time acceleration mechanic would've been welcomed.
What really gets old --quick-- is the excruciatingly long animation (plus loading time) when restarting the day. A pocket-watch running backwards is followed by your character laying in front of a clock, ever so slowly regaining consciousness. Taken together, it can take almost 30 seconds to gain control of the character. Technical issues also abound. Because the game loads each room separately, there's a very annoying delay every time you try to open a door or peak through the keyhole. Even still, some rooms fail to load and you are left in the dark for a few seconds. This loading issues are more pronounced in the Switch version of the game.
When loaded, the rooms are stunning. The mansion is heavily decorated with paintings and sculptures, and there's sitting areas everywhere. Seeing only one room at a time in a top-down perspective combines with the cartoony character models to create a boardgamey fill. Each area of the building has it's own distinct music and characteristic elements that underscore the personality of the guest whose demise will be found there. The heavy drinker sits in a seedy casino with a robotic croupier. The voodoo witch is surrounded by skeletons and books about the arcane. Their colourful masks are unique and have distinctive silhouettes.
Each level of the game succeeds in terms of characters, but it does nothing to progress the overall story. In fact, the plot is completely absent until a big chunk of interaction-free exposition right at the end that comes from nowhere and breaks the flow of the game. Sadly, even if the story is compelling, the delivery is not. It would've been much better to pepper bits and pieces as the game progressed or just don't have any of it. Truth be told, the game stands for its own based on mechanics and characters alone.
A fair amount of repetition is inherent in the premise, but The Sexy Brutale manages to reduce it to a minimum. Save from some minor annoyances, the masterful art and sound design, the charming characters and the challenging puzzles make for an experience you will want to relive.
