The team behind the critically acclaimed The Roottrees Are Dead are back with The Incident at Galley House, a reimagining of William Rous’s puzzle-mystery game Type Help (2025). A game which has been cited as inspiration for recent titles such as TR-49 and The Ratline. It follows the same style of logic as Return of the Obra Dinn and The Roottrees are Dead, so if you’re familiar with either game, then you’ll know the style of puzzling to expect.
Type Help is a text-based game in which its story is told almost entirely through transcripts of dialogue that you must scour for information and unlock the narrative for you to progress. If you manage to successfully specify the location, the time and the people present, you unlock the dialogue that took place there. The plot unfolds with each unlock, showing you the clues you need to find the next scene and to eventually solve the mystery.
The game was quickly recognised as an innovation in storytelling, and fans of the genre quickly took to its unique mechanics and its captivating narrative, and it was soon nominated for a 2026 IGF Award for Excellence in Narrative. It’s important to understand Type Help’s origins and short history for you to appreciate the work that has been undertaken in such a short amount of time to bring it up to a much more visual and interactive experience, such as the one you will find in The Incident at Galley House.
These updates are expansive with beautiful stationary character visuals and detailed backgrounds created by artist Henning Ludvigsen, completely new atmospheric music by Paul Alexander, and the addition of full, expressive voice acting. It’s an impressive feat for Evil Trout Inc. to have managed to get this project finished in the space of time they have while also creating a much more interactive and memorable experience with all the additions that have been implemented.
Thankfully the plot holds up through all these changes and still manages to captivate through its esoteric and unnerving nature. At the start of the game we are introduced to John Hobbes, a man who has been mysteriously invited to Galley House by Rupert Galley. As soon as he is greeted by the owners, he is somewhat bemused, as no one knows a Rupert Galley and why John has been invited to their home by this unknown person.
As John is invited in, thanks to the bad weather, it becomes clear that not all is right in the house. As the story unfolds, people start to die, and instantly everyone forgets that those people existed. It’s a clever way to tell this type of story, especially in the nonlinear fashion it’s told in. As I played, more things became clear in the past when I learnt information in the future, and it was pleasing to see it coming together in a satisfying way.
Though, the deaths do lose some impact as it just happens with no visual clues, with that particular character just disappearing off the screen. It made for some confusion at the start as I wasn’t quite sure what was happening; some better on-screen representation of the deaths would have been much welcomed and given those scenes much more weight with the drama occurring around them.
Throughout the game there are a bunch of eccentric characters to meet. It seems the Galleys are having a gathering with their son’s fiancée’s family at the time of John’s arrival. This opens the story to be able to explore many possibilities, preying on everyone’s insecurities and fears. Personal problems mix in with these emotions to really play with your mind, making you continually question everyone’s motives. Personalities are wide, with a timid girl hiding up in the attic; a broad, confident man who claims he is out to be the owner of the house; and a nervous, quick-to-judge man who might be hiding more than he lets on.
This mixture of individuality brings more questions that heighten the overall mystery: why are these people just dropping dead? Is one of them behind it? And when will it stop?
This is where you come in, as it’s your job to find out what actually happened at Galley House by using a special machine that can recreate scenes based on information entered into it. Many years after the incident, you’ve come to the now-abandoned house with your equipment, a set of instructions and handy documentation in tow to find out exactly what occurred at Galley House way back in 1936.
To view a scene, you need certain information, just like in Type Help: the room it happened in, the people involved and the time it happened. If you can input all three correctly, you’ll see that respective scene. Once finished, you’ll have a transcript available of the conversation for you to comb through for clues to the next scene. This is not going to be a game where these clues stand out in plain sight; you have to scrutinise everything that’s said if you’re to deduce what you need to progress. It’s tricky; some are very obtuse, and I missed plenty even after reading over the same conversations many times.
But figuring out what happened is only part of the job, as you’ll also have to work out who is who. At the start of the game, every character is represented by a numbered silhouette, and you not only have to match the right name to the right person but also choose the correct character model. Thankfully each one has little clues which will aid you; for example, one told me that she had a red wine stain on her dress, which, when that happened in one of the scenes, confirmed which person that particular model belonged to.
But don’t fret too much about whether this will result in Post-it notes covering your entire house, as the game features plenty of ways in which to make your deductions more user-friendly. First up is the timeline, which houses all the conversations you’ve witnessed and also includes a badge on scenes that contain information that will lead to other undiscovered scenes; there are also many stamps you can manually put on the timeline, including marking deaths and arguments. You can also highlight a particular sentence from each conversation, which will show up in a handy journal.
But the biggest help at hand is the game’s robust hint system that got me out of a bind many times. Frankly, there would not have been any chance of me finishing the game without this hint system, and I was very thankful for it. The best part of this system is that it won’t tell you the answer straight away, instead giving out gentle hints for you to try before straight-out giving you the answer. Sometimes these hints jogged my memory, and I was able to figure it out by myself, but other times I just needed the answer. The only bad thing about this is trying to resist the temptation to use it all the time, which is hard to ignore in places.
It would be rude of me to not mention the beautifully realised visuals of the game. Each character has been created with such care and attention that it makes each of them stand out clearly. Their individuality is easy to see thanks to the detail in their faces and clothes. The same can be said for the backgrounds, with rooms littered and furnished in just the way you would expect for the time period. Even the machine you use in the future, equipped with a more up-to-date look, with its monitor add-on and hand-charged generator, massively adds to the game’s characterisations.
I have to also mention the excellent sound design and voice talent, as both are exceptional throughout the game. From wardrobes opening and closing with a satisfying creak to food being stirred in a pan, it all made the scenes feel more alive and believable. The incredible voice cast also did their part with some seriously great performances; they did such a good job that it ensured that I wasn’t just quickly skimming through scenes, as I was enjoying their work so much. It all led to a polished and immersive time, so much so that by the end of the game I was rooting for some and sad when others died.
