This is the sequel to the hugely overlooked, obscure mystery detective 'The Deed', RPG made by Pilgrim Adventures; who are slowly climbing up my ladder of favourite indie developers. Dynasty expands on the original's concept and foundation with deeper storytelling, more and diverse characters, who strangely seem to be incredibly memorable despite their generic appearance and names. This could be due to the fact this game's art style, whilst looking plain and brown, strikes a resemblance of old school mixed with modern sprite work.

Of course, the meat of this and the prequel game is the "choices matter" mechanic. Does it work? In short, yes. Yes yes yes yes yes yes! Whilst the game is limited in scope due to its short, linear nature and small world to explore, which isn't a bad thing I might add, the idea that you will be judged for your actions and un-actions is a satisfying, tense experience. Knowing that if you talk to him, or her, and collect this or that, will definitely effect the outcome is immersive and thrilling, and graphics be damned. Without specific spoilers, here's an example. To have the murder look like somebody else committed it, you'll be required to talk to a certain character and ask them about the character you want to frame to learn more about their past, which you'll use against them in the chain of evidence you have setup against them. I would say it's more about finding the "correct" choices to make to win the game than having absolute freedom to do anything and get away with it, which again, I actually find to be a logical game design choice.

Audio wise... meh, it could be better, but it isn't explicitly terrible or unpleasant. I like the BGMs, but I would like to see things like footsteps and ambience added just to put the cherry on the cake. But please, keep the no voice acting. I love to read and I love reading the dialogue with my own voice that I allocate to these characters, much like a novel. In this game, the lack of voice acting, I think, enhances the atmosphere and enjoyment.

I'll re-iterate the character portraits and art style again. Somehow, for some reason, I really love them. Yes, they are just plain blank faces, but the way they are styled and portrayed is... cool...? I would like to see this style return for a potential sequel, among all the other compliments as above.

For the negatives, I think the inherit bias towards the player character should be dropped and less alibis for the NPCs to be limited to only 1 or 2 and not all of them. It's quite annoying to have a sheriff turn up and immediately suspect you just because he hasn't heard your name before. Also the sound design complaint as above.

To finish this review, and if the developer bothers to read this far down, I would like to say I love The Deed and this game, but I would LOOVVEEE to see a game made by them where YOU are the detective, and YOU solve a murder mystery - where the killer is random per playthrough, in the style of The Deed games.

Again, great sequel this is bar some personal gripes, well worth the asking price and more!

This is a kind of prequel to the first game, The Deed. It isn't at all necessary to have played that game first though, as both games have storylines that are completely independent of each other. In this game, the objective remains the same - find a way to kill someone you hate, and get away with it! Compared to the first title, Dynasty has 3 different stories (instead of just 1), set in 3 different time periods, involving 3 different main characters. The stories are not linked in any way, except that the character you play comes from the Bruce family.

+ This game offers 3 stories instead of 1, at the same kind of price point as its predecessor.
+ All the stories are fairly interesting.
+ 3 different locations and settings to explore.
+ Each location is nicely designed and period-appropriate.
+ Music and ambience are not bad.
+ Reasonable range of murder weapons to choose from.
+ Murder methods are fairly interesting and some yield amusing results.
+ You can use either the mouse or keyboard to play.
+ More difficult/challenging than its predecessor.
+ Much more gameplay time compared to before.
+ High replayability, especially if you want to try out all murder weapons and get all possible endings.
+ Loads of achievements.

- You can't really "win" on the very first try because there's no way you can predict what characters will say in response to your questions, and the questions are vital to producing evidence for a frame-up.
- A few spelling/grammar errors here and there.
- BUG: Pressing F12 to exit the game at any point causes a crash.

I grabbed this at S$0.90 during sale. At that price I would highly recommend giving this a try, especially if the premise enthralls you at all in any way. Also check out the first title in this series, The Deed.

I tried to kill my victim using bare fists.

No idea he was stronger than me.

Now I know.

10/10.

Kind of like playing Cluedo in reverse!

I was a little unsure of this game, considering the subject matter of murder is a little dark and sinister, but I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. It feels to me like a good old fashioned puzzle or story-driven adventure game. You need to a pay a lot of attention to what characters say through the conversations, and you need to choose your responses very carefully. Its not just enough to try and frame somebody else by planting their weapons on the body and a bit of evidence in their room - you need to have engineered as many conversations as possible to make it look like they have motives and reasons for the deed. At the same time, you need to be careful and consistent in your own responses. You don't want to say anything that might make you look like a didgey character, or somebody raking up dirt on everyone else. Plus, whatever you say to any of the npc's will come out in front of the local law later, so be consistent in whatever story you spin about yourself!

All in all I found this more in depth than I expected, and a good deal of though is required to succeed. I suspect it is possible to frame any of the npc's (or make the murder look like suicide) in any of the three scenarios, and here is where the games replay value lies. While all the weapons and evidence are the same each time you play, the conversations (ie, the most important part) may not be (although there are a finite number of possibilities). Hence, it is possible to see many different endings to each scenario.

More information and some gameplay in my review of it on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D__9hyT594s

But overall I enjoyed the game, and for the price you will get a lot of hours of puzzlement out of it.

The Deed is a murder mystery, except this time you're the Murderer and you have to get away with it! If you enjoy the idea of making the perfect kill, evading and fooling the police and getting away scott free, then you should take a closer look at this game.

This release was a quite a suprise to me, I enjoyed the first game, but never expected a sequel. Fortunately its a good suprise, and anyone who enjoyed the first game will enjoy this game, with more refined gameplay and three scenarios to play instead of one.

The core gameplay involves finding an item and weapon that incriminates your patsy (or an item that leaves the impression the target took their own life), then planting that item in the right place so the police find it, and using the weapon to kill your target. If all goes well then the police will find the item in their search and that combined with the weapon you used makes your patsy look suspicious enough for them to be arrested. You will also need to minimise suspicion against yourself, for example in one scenario bringing up an argument with the victim makes the police suspect you more, but changing the subject allows you to avoid the suspicion.

Environments are small, but this allows you to really understand the environment and people in it, allowing you to easily execute your devious plan and control the way events proceed. The only real flaws this game has are repeated dialogue getting tedious as you replay scenarios and cases where the your own plan isn't one the game designers thought of (however I haven't run into this situation yet).

There are three scenarios in this release, and I've only played one and still I can wholeheartedly reccomend this game, its a unique experiance worth playing especially for such a low asking price. If you're still skeptical then I can reccomend the first game in the series which is only $1 so you have little to lose.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much when I purchased this game. I've tried quite a bit of RPGMaker games, and almost all of them seems to be carbon copies of one another.

My impression changed after I tried the first scenario. This is an entirely different approach on using RPGMaker to create games. Instead of RPG, what I got is a "Create your own story (of murders)". Truly different than other RPGMaker games.

Visual Novel fans and/or mystery lovers should give this game a chance.

if you want to murder somebody with different types of object including your hands? this is the game for you. The main objective is to seek vengence to the person who hurt the character you play as. There are 3 character that you can play as. Each Character is from a differen't time period and has their own unique story. Each character is about a 20 minutte gameplay. Lots of dialogue. The game is worth the 2 dollars you're spending. The graphic is decent at most considering that the character you play as looks nothing close to what is suppose to look like. The game has great music(It has that sinister feeling to it). The game has a few jokes. Overall, i do recommend this game because to me it's unique and it has a STORY! Something these cheap game LACKS. :) Here is a quick gameplay if you're interested. Also I forgot to mention you have to be very strategic when you play this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEc129QapTA

The game is interesting. It's fun to find ways to frame multiple people, but at the end, the recipe to work is quite the same and very repetitive.
You pretty much never say anything bad to anyone about the person you want to kill, then select lines depicting flaws of the person you want to frame and finally act like a normal person, not a vegeance-seeking-one.
I would like to have seen some different stuff and interesting ways to murder and frame.

I recommend because it's a great idea, the atmosphere is great, and the execution/writting was decent. Could have improved the gameplay and variety so I say buy this with a 50% discount or higher.

The level of depth that this game offers is nothing short of astonishing, and for the price that this game costs - it is well worth it, and more!!

I've definitely paid more for games/things that are worth much less.

Not only is this game fun, but it is intellectually challenging - especially when you have to determine the best use of evidence and murder weapons to boot!

So far my success rate is 1/3 because I have a specific bias with trying to accomplish the affair in a very specific way.

The first murder I made look like an assasination through the means of absolving debt. I placed it on the best friend who seemingly had money problems (ohohoho!). Needless to say, I lucked out a bit there, but my plan was -- initially -- to place the blame on a mysterious indebted vagrant, but I just placed the finance letter in John's room (realising that I would be the prime suspect for mysterious strangers!) and called it quits.

2nd one wasn't so lucky. I intended to do away with both Bill and his menacing right hand man in a sort of play on poetic justice. Unfortunately, luck was against me and I failed miserably.

The 3rd scenario was perhaps the most complex (or perhaps not!), where I could hardly hide my clamour that someone had taken all the credit for my character's work (a hatred of which I can personally relate to), so it was truly impossible to try to pin the impending crime solely on suicide, when It became apparent that I had written the novels.

Hopefully I can prove my innocence despite this on following playthroughs! The craftmanship that went into this game is incredible, and better than many Triple A titles in my opinion.

I would wholeheartedly recommend buying this game, and it's predecessor if you have the chance! It's truly a remarkable, and wonderous experience! If there is any word of a sequel, best hold onto your hat's because that might just be one of the best games on steam (if they keep it up, which I have high hopes of thus far)!

This game definitely lives up to it's predecessor. Instead of just one time period, there are now three. The weapons and environment vary greatly from story to story, along with the reason why you are committing the murder. Even though the actual goal is a little repetitive, all the different dialogue choices and possible outcomes make this game very exciting. The achievements are a great way to keep track of the endings you've already gotten. If you thought the Bruce family was interesting before, wait until you see their dark lineage.