Apple Crumble is a game by Happy Broccoli Games, the developer of the noir-inspired point-and-click Duck Detective games. I was excited when I heard about Apple Crumble because I really enjoyed those previous games. They have a penchant for bringing a happy-cozy atmosphere to somewhat dark subject matter. Apple Crumble is described as a suspenseful interactive mystery centered around the attempted murder of the main character’s grandmother. While I found myself enjoying this very short demo, It’s simpler than I had initially hoped.
Relaxing in the Childhood Home
Apple Crumble’s gameplay felt very straightforward. I played in first-person as Jess, talking to family members and completing a small, ever-changing to-do list. As each task was completed, it would be marked off until another one was added through conversation. None of the tasks were difficult or really thought provoking as they mainly involved finding an item and then placing it where it belongs.
Walking through the house, Jess opens drawers, cabinets, and doors while looking for items to complete those tasks. She can find collectibles that take the form of family photos and quest items that can be anything from birthday streamers to a chicken-headed USB drive. For conversations, there are a couple of dialogue choices per interaction, and once the option is selected, it can no longer be chosen again. Due to this, conversation feels limited, because once a conversation is done, you can’t talk with that family member again until some new development brings up new conversation points.
Besides that, I feel the developers did an amazing job making the demo feel like an actual meeting with a family. Jess had to conform to the family rules she’d left behind, most of the interactions with siblings felt like going through the motions, and for the most part, everything felt cozy. It felt similar to when I’d returned home to visit for the holidays, minus the characters and the possible looming threat of murder, of course.
Gasp! An Attempted Murder… or Something Else
In the Apple Crumble demo, Jess is a young girl visiting her family home for her grandmother’s birthday. Early on, it’s mentioned that the grandmother’s birthday is on Easter, and I quickly found that Jess’s family preferred the holiday to celebrating the grandmother. From the moment Jess and her grandmother enter the home, the grandmother is ignored by everyone except Jess. This becomes strong motivation for Jess’s actions as she goes out of her way to get the family to focus on the birthday.
Instead of immediately jumping into the mystery of everything, the demo focuses on getting to know the family members and learning how the game plays. I search around for party supplies and place those around the living room while conversing with Jess’s family all as a way of learning the game’s mechanics. After the living room is decorated I start investigating Jess’s childhood bedroom, now turned gym, and find not only are some important items missing from the room, but that a psychiatrist is now taking up residence as well. Jess doesn’t seem to know him, but he acts as if they’ve spoken before, as if Jess was his patient.
After leaving behind the psychiatrist, Jess returns to the living room to see her uncle and sister brandishing a gun. Shortly after this is where the mystery should start as a disco ball is dropped from the ceiling right over where the grandmother is sitting, but sadly, the demo ends here. As a mystery game this was exciting for me and I had questions. Was the disco ball really an accident? Why does the family ignore the grandmother? Finally, is what I’m seeing the truth? I had this feeling early on in the demo, that maybe Jess was the character with the problem. That maybe the grandmother wasn’t actually there, and that the psychiatrist and the family’s actions were meant to bring Jess back to reality. I had this feeling that this short demo had already alluded to the game’s ending twist.
Final Thoughts
I had fun with the Apple Crumble demo, but I found it felt overly simple compared to the other Happy Broccoli games I’ve played. While the controls were easy to understand, smooth, and natural, there wasn’t much to them. Besides walking around and interacting with people and objects, as Jess, I didn’t feel like I did anything else. There was no jumping, running, or crawling that hinted at deeper puzzle-solving elements beyond finding an item and putting it in its place.
With that said, I found that the game felt like a labor of love through the different family interactions, the way Jess spoke of her family, and the small details strewn through the house. Even the mirrors allowed you to see Jess and her expressions as different things happened throughout the demo. While I’m hoping for quite a bit more from the full game, I enjoyed the demo for what it was, and I’m excited to finish the story when the full game comes out.
