Are you a fan of intriguing storylines, detective work and drinking beer? Active Fungus Studios brings all these together with their release of ‘Inspector Schmidt – A Bavarian Tale’. While you might not usually find me playing a game like this, it has broadened my perspective and had me constantly wondering if I was on the right trail to find the suspect.

Inspector Schmidt – A Bavarian Tale is set in the upper Bavarian state village of Wolpertshofen, in 1866. You arrive at the village as Valentine Schmidt, a medical student gathering information for his colleague, Dr Drechler’s, incomplete report, when an unexpected death rocks the community, amidst a dangerous group of criminals, the Pascolini, running around and causing widespread fear. It is up to you to use your detective skills, find clues and question the townspeople to bring the murderer to justice before all hell breaks loose in the village. With names such as Mr Griesbacher, Pastor Bayerle and Loibl, the characters are easy to find but you may find it a bit tricky to remember their names which will have you running around the huge map for a bit till you find the right person as there is no clear indicator of who is who. Overall, though, the narrative was pretty decent, and I really got intrigued by its direction after a while.

While the main objective of the game is quite simple; bring the murderer to justice before all hell breaks loose amongst the people, there are eleven different endings where the decisions you make sway the narrative. When interrogating a suspect there are three ways you can respond: on the offensive, sarcastic or showing empathy. Certain responses however are a roll of the dice which is where your skills come into play, some responses will show a symbol next to them, which when chosen, will take you to a dice game.

To keep it simple, in the middle is where your roll is displayed, the top number is the one you want to roll a number equal to or above and the bottom is how many points you have to aid you if you don’t reach said top desired number. If you run out of points at the bottom before the middle four values individually reach that top value then you lose the dice game and the response you chose will hurt the conversation.

As far as skills go you have charisma, empathy, gut feeling, acumen, agility, dexterity and strength which are all upgradeable. All starting on eight, as you gain XP you get points which you can be used to increase those stats to help you in the dice games. Being a single-player-only title, there are no modes but more side quests you can do after the main story which has you running back and forth to different people and are really easy to complete. As much as I found the game and its story enjoyable the fights could have been better. By this, I mean, that all you have to do to win a fight is run up behind them and spam punch before you inevitably knock them out.

While there are some minor bugs like NPCs skating across the village randomly getting stuck in a rock and making me have to restart my progress from the last save and desyncing of dialogue on the screen to the character, I did find that the controls feel very smooth and simple for a third-person RPG. Peculiarly, you can’t jump or sprint which is a tad annoying, meaning you can’t vault over fences or logs and must jog the long way around.

The detective mode is pretty good, the game gives you a “hint” when there are clues in the area. When you press “F” it puts you into this P.O.V. where you look around for these green markers/clues but is zoomed in a fair amount and isn’t adjustable. Also available to you is a “fight” mode with the normal punch and block but I didn’t find the need to use this as I couldn’t find that many bad guys to have to defend myself against other than the odd one or two or randomly running into a robber’s camp in the middle of the woods.

For what it is, Inspector Schmidt has amazing graphics of soft pastel colours; from the beautiful scenery to the detailed interiors of the houses you can see through windows, it really shows how much love went into this game. The soft sounds of the guitar complement the look of the 1800s that the developers were going for, as well as this the environmental sound work is next level. From hearing the birds chirping across the field, and the rustling of the leaves as you run through the bushes all the way to the locals having a few drinks at the inn truly add to the experience.

Ignoring the minor bugs and issues, Active Fungus Studios undoubtedly put a lot of effort and love into this title. While there could certainly be improvements, I do believe this is a really good game to get your brain critically thinking while also having a nice relaxing cup of hot chocolate on a rainy day. So go get out there detectives, bring reform back to the village and watch out for those darn Pascolini.

Written by: Larry