Bohemian Killing was originally released around 2016 on PC and was later ported to Xbox One and PS4. Now Nintendo Switch owners can get their hands on this special adventure.
Courtroom drama
In Bohemian Killing, you are Alfred Ethon and you have committed the most heinous crime of all. You have murdered a young woman in cold blood. All the evidence points straight at you and you find yourself in the courtroom during your trial. It’s up to you to find a way to change the narrative of this story from being found guilty of first-degree murder to getting away with murder. When the judge asks your side of the story you get to relive the acts that happened that day. By using your intellect and creativity you can alter elements from the case the prosecutor has, to change the mind of the judge.
Manipulate by alteration
The game takes place in late 19th century Paris. As you relive the events before the murder you are free to roam around the area as you please. Mind you that every action has a potential consequence on the final verdict. If you interact with certain objects or meet people, the story gets altered. If these alterations don’t match up with the preset timeframe established by the evidence, you might be in big trouble. Therefore you need to constantly mind the time before you take a crucial action. For instance, if evidence point to you walking in front of your building with bloody clothes at around 10 pm, you need to be there at 10 pm as to not raise suspicion. The bloody clothes part of that statement can be handled however you like. Cut yourself during shaving, get into a fight at a bar or even just deny the bloodstains completely.
Walking simulator
Bohemian Killing is an adventure game of the walking simulator type. You are more or less forced to walk a certain path at set times. Roaming free is not really an option if you want to get out of jail free so to speak. During the walking around and being at the right place at the right time you can’t do much else. Sure there are items to interact with but nothing more than just pointing out their existence to the judge. Don’t expect to be doing any classic adventure puzzling. In fact, don’t expect to be doing much else either. Bohemian Killing is much more about the narrative than anything else. To me, that’s just fine, the story in Bohemian Killing is enough to keep me interested in getting through the game.
Time mechanic
As mentioned before, the game relies on you matching the timeframe while changing some things to alter the outcome. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in a situation a bit too early. You need to waste time at that moment. The way the game chose to implement time-wasting is by doing meaningless tasks. You can interact with a book to move time forward 15 minutes. You can put away your groceries for a 5-minute jump in time. All these tasks felt quite dumb to me. They even broke the story a bit for me. Just when I was piecing together a perfect explanation for me being in a certain place, I needed to go find items to interact with in order to lose time. It broke the mood for me.
Block of cheese
This game was made the indie way so I can’t be too harsh on the way it looks and sounds but certain things need to be addressed. The 3D models all look very awkward. The movement looks completely whack at times. The menu makes use of a sort of typewriting reminiscence font but decided to make it so big it just looks awful. The surroundings in which Alfred Ethon walks around are actually very well made so why they did such a bad job on the articulation of the characters and the menu is beyond me. A game like Bohemian Killing which is based on the narrative has to have good voice acting. In my opinion, the actors all sound great but the way the lines needed to be delivered leaves much to the desire. Despite the exaggerated accents, the lines all felt a bit too cheesy to really get me into the story.
Conclusion
Bohemian Killing is a very original game with some odd choices made during the development. Going through the game can be done in about 2 hours after which you can replay the game to get some different endings. I personally had enough after one playthrough. Chasing the other endings would mean I needed to go through the same motions again with some small changes. Something I was quite done with after one playthrough. I felt the game could’ve been more than is currently present. Get it for the novelty but don’t expect much more.
