Two murdered bodies are found, decapitated, with the torsos sitting upright in their hotel bed…holding its own head in its lap. Your job, as private eye Gus MacPherson, is to investigate these gruesome murders. Thus starts the mature-rated murder mystery game, Post Mortem, by Microids and The Adventure Company.

You are hired by a mysterious young woman to solve the identity of the murderer. The woman that was murdered was her younger sister, so she has an interest in getting the case solved. She doesn’t trust the Paris police, believing them to be in the take of the upper crust of Paris society. As you touch her hand, you have a flashback of the brutal deed. Gus MacPherson is a retired private eye from New York, who is now in Paris to take up a new life, to paint. He wants to get away from his old life of detective work. His gift to sniff out clues with psychic episodes is too valuable to be abandoned altogether, however, and Gus takes the case. A stop at the crime scene finds an unresponsive hotel manager. Between the interviews at the front desk and at the bar, you discover that a man was seen the day of the murder, waiting in the hotel restaurant for the Whytes to come home. With their testimonies, you were able to sketch a suspect and to go to the police.

The police recognizes the man, but won’t tell you much more. Strangely enough, the bellboy at the hotel received some money—enough to pay off his debts—and quit his job the day after the murder. A conversation with him about the mysterious visitor results in the bellboy running off. The bellboy was found dead the next day, decapitated.

As the murder mystery unfolds, you discover that other people have been involved before, roughly just a week before your own investigations started. Things unraveled, resulting in the death of two American tourists in their own hotel bed. As you probed further, the murders continue, and everyone connected to the source of the slayings are in danger of dying themselves.

The deaths are ritualistic in nature. Each victim is cleanly decapitated, and has an ancient coin in its mouth. The head and torso are placed in “artistic” positions. One other victim got his head placed at the hood of the car as a hood ornament, while the body was behind the wheel. Behind the evil killings is a sinister plot that reaches into the high society of Paris, blending ancient myths and rituals with modern knives and chemistry.

This adventure-style game has an intriguing storyline as its backbone, making the characters come to life. In the style of a good detective novel, every cut scene has gray buildings and ominous skies. There is not a single instance in which the sunlight is seen. And yet the days pass. Post Mortem gets high markets for dialogue choices that are not strictly pre-scripted. There are several paths that came be taken to arrive at the same pivotal plot points. The wrong choice can lead to an irate witness that will not speak with you. Events in the game can also be done out of order, necessitating mysterious objects to appear to aid you in your later quest even though you clearly checked out the area before. Overall, the development team did an excellent job in choosing dialogue and events to make the storyline flow while giving the gamer freedom in pursuing clues and witnesses. This is one of the more successful attempts at greater freedom in adventure games.

The in-game graphics does leave room for improvements. The facial controls of the characters are not great. Salammbo, another game published by The Adventure Company, has static torsos with an animated face imposed on top of it. This gives a fluid facial expression. Here in Post Mortem, the entire body is allowed to move, but it is only moderately effective. Although facial expression and gestures vary, many times it is out of sync with the dialogue.

Characters in the game are interesting, however. You will meet Bébe, an old girlfriend whose physical dimensions are impossible in real life, certainly not with the enhancement technology of old Paris. She rivals Lara Croft in figure, but not in intelligence, wit, or the ability to handle weapons. You will also meet the policemen of Paris, a psychiatrist, a clairvoyant, a hotel manager, and a bartender. You will meet and interact with these individuals several times to gather clues, confirm facts, and use their help to piece the puzzle together.

The artwork for the scenes is wonderfully done, and the puzzles are fun. The overall complexity of the game is not super-hard, or else it would take away from solving the largest puzzle—hunting down the killer. The music is moderate, suitable for the game and to create the mood. It transitions smoothly between the various scenes and interfaces.

I do wish for a quick save key, and the ability to name the save files with notes and not just the date and time stamp of the save game.

The ending was good, and unexpected.