Is "Golden Idol"-like a genre now? We have got quite a few games with the same mechanics where you investigate a crime (often murder) by collecting keywords and then putting them together to make everything make sense.

This one deals with the drama (and murder) surrounding a comunity theatre group, and one mans obsesion and hubris and his downfall. I don't know if I just got used to the logic these games go by or not, but except for the last level that was quite tricky (partially due to the fact that its huge), most of the levels where fairly easy. If you want a pretty good entry level game in this genre, then this is a solid choice.

As a current and former theatre kid who loved the Case of the Golden Idol games, it felt like this was created specifically for me. Heard about it on the podcast Post Games (Check it out!) and it made it on my wishlist immediately. I finished it in one sitting and after watching the credits roll, I now have the audacity to think I could make my own video game.

I wrote this review for the Thinky Games Database.[thinkygames.com] Check out the Thinky Games curation group for more reviews on Steam!

Murder at the Birch Tree Theater is a detective game about dramatic events taking place at a fictional community theater over the span of twenty years. Players must examine characters and items inside the theater in order to understand several deaths. The game wears its love of musicals on its sleeve, and turns the theater into a memorable stage for mysteries.

The gameplay closely follows the deduction framework established by The Case of the Golden Idol. In Explore mode, you get to observe frozen vignettes of several rooms. Bits of information are conveyed through character dialogue, written documents and other props. These elements will help you build an understanding of what lead to the deadly incident at the center of the case, and who’s responsible for it. Then, in Solve mode, you use a bank of a few dozen words to fill in the blanks in a description of the events, and validate your reasoning.

The solution sheet that must be filled in also contains intermediary steps, like matching names to portraits, that help solving each case. The difficulty gently builds up across the ten cases, with a moderately tough (and markedly original) final case to cap things off. A few cases contain audio snippets such as rehearsal recordings and phone messages; these snippets are always captioned and can be paused if needed.

Each case features a different musical as a backdrop, and the characters make up a lively cast of artists, technicians, performers and board members. The story eschews most dark crime tropes, though it does not shy away from portraying ambition, pettiness, and the occasionally twisted dynamics of a community troupe. Murder at the Birch Tree Theater bears the same passion that goes into producing musicals, but its drama is no less bitter.