One Show Only from indie developer Tristan Dahl is an unusual little game based around solving a mystery using question cards. A beautiful and talented trapeze starlet has fallen to her death and it is up to you as a …
One Show Only from indie developer Tristan Dahl is an unusual little game based around solving a mystery using question cards. A beautiful and talented trapeze starlet has fallen to her death and it is up to you as a detective to determine how and why she died.
To solve the murder mystery, you must interrogate members of the circus one at a time using provided question cards. Placing question cards on the board will generate answers from the witnesses and as you move the cards up the board, you’ll unlock additional questions and earn responses. With each new question you receive, you must return to previously interrogated characters to see if they can offer additional information about the situation.
As you advance on the board, enemy cards will appear which bump your cards out of the way or block slots for you to ask new questions, resulting in your line of questioning being quickly thwarted. To get through all of the clues and gain all of the information, you’ll need to be persistent, sometimes asking the same question (by playing the same card) several times to advance.
Once you’ve earned all of the question cards and moved each card through each character’s board you will have all the information you need to understand how and why the young trapeze artist has died.
The gameplay mechanic of moving cards to play against other cards will likely resonate with tabletop gamers. One Show Only is quite short, so it would be interesting to see the mechanic applied to a longer series of chapters in a story, or on a larger board. The sketchy art style is dark and provocative, matched nicely to the tone of the story. If you are ready to lay down your cards and play detective amongst a group of shady circus performers, One Show Only is now available on iOS and Android.
