Paradise Killer is a wild murder mystery with 'ancient nightmare computers' and sexy skeletons

VIDEO: The PC Gaming Show indie montage, featuring Paradise Killer.

The trailer for Paradise Killer from the PC Gaming Show says a lot in 30 seconds. It says that your protagonist is "investigation freak Lady Love Dies." It says this is the kind of game that will let you talk to a suave skeleton. It says "Paradise was killed," but it also says "When love dies, all that remains are the facts."

Who has actually died? Was it a metaphorical death? These things it doesn't answer, but the tone says pretty clearly that that ambiguity is the point.

We wrote a little about Paradise Killer back in April, when its demo was part of LudoNarraCon. Its story sounds pretty wild, but the gist is this is a first-person exploration game in a 3D world—Paradise Island—that you can explore as you wish to assemble clues and interview suspects. Those suspects show up as illustrations, visual novel-style, which is a neat mix. Exploration will be more open-ended than the usual visual novel, but conversations can still highlight some very pretty (and ridiculous) character designs.

It's not exactly a conventional murder mystery, or at least your path to conviction won't be. Some key quotes from the Steam page, in no particular order:

"Paradise is an island that regenerates every few millennia. The psychic power that the alien worshipers within release into the universe is meant to feed and eventually resurrect their fallen deities."

"The 'truth' is that there are many possible killers, and many ways to build a case. Even if you make a convincing case for prosecution and get someone convicted, is the mystery really solved?"

"Solve hieroglyph puzzles on ancient nightmare computers to discover new areas of the island, find concealed evidence and reveal terrifying secrets."

No word on when Paradise Killer will be out, but the Steam page does say "Get ready to breathe life back into Paradise."

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).