Just when you thought you’d escaped this lockdown tradition, a new FMV from Wales Interactive reminds us about it all over again.

This isn’t your typical quiz, though. You won’t find questions about distant relatives of celebrities or what the world’s fastest animal might be. No, this borders on the narcissistic, the philosophical, and the downright nasty.

Oh, and one of the participants is a murderer. Or, at least, an attempting one.

Before joining mum’s annual birthday quiz, Abbie gets a call from dear old Uncle Marcus who tells us he’s dying and has been poisoned at a big old family meeting just the day before.

He has no idea who did it. He has no idea why and he doesn’t even know what type of poison it is. All he knows is that someone at mum’s quiz has to be the culprit. And he’s tasking Abbie with finding out the answers.

You’ve got four bizarre rounds to find out the truth and make an accusation at the end of it, while also trying to save your dear old Uncle’s life. No pressure!

It may sound short because, well, it is. One playthrough probably lasts about thirty minutes. However, the likelihood you’ll find out the truth first time out is extremely unlikely. Possible, but unlikely. For context, I probably took about 10-15 playthroughs before I’d finally found the culprit.

Basically, you have to build a case by gathering clues from the family. Each round, you choose a family member to team up with, then strike a delicate balance between finding out what happened at the meeting and determining whether your sister’s best feature is her signing voice or her eyebrows.

As you get more clues, so your evidence board for each family member fills up. Eventually, you’ll gather enough clues that you can make an accusation at the end of the quiz.

The casting all around is fantastic and each acting performance is superb with a special shout out to Gabrielle Glaister who plays mum and Andy Buckley who plays a dying Uncle Marcus.

Everyone absolutely nails their roles, even Abbie herself who is sat in the middle of the family drama to end them all. So good, in fact, you could believe all of the family members are suspects, particularly with some of the clues you come across.

FMV games are a bit hit and miss at times, and I will say the interactive elements of this are pretty much a 50/50 the whole time, with the timers between questions going a bit too fast for my liking.

I’d also say some of the answer combinations do lean toward the obscure and so you’ll probably have to do a lot of restarting and fast-forwarding in order to get 100% of the clues from everyone.

There is one clear suspect, though, so this isn’t a game that tries to shoehorn everyone into that role. Instead, you’ll have to deal with the guilt of getting your conviction wrong and starting over. That said, I’d still highly recommend seeing every ending. One, in particular, is a jaw-dropper!

I was hooked from beginning to end and once I’d got my first runthrough, I was desperate to get all the answers and finally figure out ‘whodunnit’. It did get a bit frustrating having to watch certain scenes replay over and over, though you can skip through most of it using RB.

For the most part, though, this was an enjoyable way to spend a few hours and certainly more enjoyable than most of the Zoom Quizzes I ended up in during the Pandemic. Even if this one had a bit more a sinister edge to it.

Verdict

Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus will keep you guessing right up to the end, and is filled with some interesting twists and turns, fun interactions, and shocking moments. Scene repetition and basic decision making does let the experience down a little bit.