Lord Winklebottom Investigates (Switch)
Slap a top hat, monocle, and an absurdly posh name onto an animal, and you have yourself a recipe for a silly greeting card or animated gif. But what if you took that simple amusing concept and really fleshed it out? What would the life of such a dapper British creature truly be like? Lord Winklebottom Investigates takes the idea of upper crust animals and builds an entire point-and-click mystery about it, taking the concept just seriously enough that it can construct a believable enough world for its detective work and still have a good laugh about foppish old-fashioned critters.
Lord Winklebottom Investigates takes place in a world not too different from our own, at least when it comes to how things looked 100 years ago. A wide range of animals with human level intelligence all live in a place not unlike Britain of the 1920s, Lord Winklebottom himself being a giraffe of some renown for his incredible mystery solving ability. Alongside his hippo doctor assistant Frumple, Lord Winklebottom’s latest case sees him initially hoping to reconnect with his childhood friend Admiral Gilfrey only to learn the rich axolotl had been murdered in his mansion prior to the giraffe’s arrival. Restricting the suspects to the island for the course of the investigation, it falls on the pair to try and puzzle out who could be responsible. The detective story is in many ways a classic one with clear inspiration from Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s works and yet every principle role is played by some sort of animal dressed up and mostly equal enough in size to interact with a world that would look remarkably normal if not for the zoo running through the high end decor.
Very quickly one of the most delightful elements to come through in Lord Winklebottom Investigates is the mix of old-fashioned English and the range of British accents on show. There is full voice acting for the entire cast and it suits the game wonderfully, a great deal of character able to come from not just playing expected roles but through the delivery. Lord Winklebottom himself and Doctor Frumple are definitely the most effective cases of writing and vocal performances mixing. While they do both sometimes speed through their dialogue a fair bit, perhaps because of how much they have to say over the course of the adventure, it’s quite enjoyable hearing them interact or react in their own particular ways. Lord Winklebottom is an unflinchingly polite sort and can even dance around a bold accusation gently, but despite his appearance the giraffe is never haughty because of his disarming niceness. Doctor Frumple is a solid counterbalance, the hippo more readily muttering dry commentary on what the duo witness or sometimes bringing a surprisingly informal bluntness to a situation that cuts through the usual civility with its candor. A friendly foil to Winklebottom’s unerring good manners, Frumple is also one of the best examples of the game writing characters to use plenty of outdated or highly specific terms and phrases without it being difficult to parse. Frumple is the type to call people he dislikes “rotters” or say something is a load of “tosh”, a character’s meaning never hard to puzzle out even if you’re unfamiliar with the old-fashioned or regional slang. There’s a good enough mix that you never forget these are dapper animals interacting, but it’s not so overbearing it loses its novelty.
The world of Lord Winklebottom Investigates embraces its odd occupants in half-measures admittedly, but likely for the sake of comedy. On one hand, we have the axolotl murder victim live in a mansion with water tubes throughout to suit his amphibious nature, giving you a unique variable in the investigation. On the other, it’s hard to parse how the snail gardener does his work, but he mostly seems to be in the role to make jokes about how a snail can’t help but nibble on a garden its been left to tend. A pigeon is capable of flight even though it states normally it would find doing so dreadful, and even characters standing upright is depicted as a sort of trendy way of living for animals to explain a bit why this world works despite it feeling like it otherwise wouldn’t accommodate such a mix of mammals, reptiles, and birds so easily. There are definitely jokes enhanced by the mere fact an animal is doing the action rather than it being a standard human too, but it is not mere cavalcade of animal antics. There are enough peculiarities in the cast and their delightful way of talking to better spread out the animal jokes, making them more amusing since they’re not always leaned on save for perhaps the consistently humorous image of Lord Winklebottom being much larger and taller than his peers and needing to squeeze his body or neck into situations.
For the actual mystery-solving itself, Lord Winklebottom Investigates is a fairly typical point and click. Traveling between areas, mostly on the Isle of Barghest and within Gilfrey’s manor, you’ll need to talk with characters to learn important clues and click around on objects in the background to find useful items or learn important details. As you build up your inventory, you figure out occasions where you can use items to open up new possibilities, sometimes even by combining them. For the most part the logic feels sound, at least once you factor in the reality that you’re using items on animals so what works for one of them might not for another. There is a bit of a hindrance to the ease of investigation on the Switch though, playing with the controller involving you moving a cursor around screen that can feel a bit touchy. The left control stick moves it at great speed while the right stick is more precise, but neither feels like it hits the sweet spot in speed so sometimes you might take a second or two longer to do an intended action than you’d like. Mostly this won’t harm things, the rare moments it could truly impact things still rarely having any sort of time pressure, and the one with time pressure waits a fair bit anyway. It’s certainly an easily overlooked hitch but still one of note, players perhaps preferring the PC release if they want it to be cleaner to control.
When it comes to the substance of the problem solving, Lord Winklebottom Investigates can concoct a few interesting puzzles and it doesn’t try to nudge you too hard towards determining the culprit, the player able to freely deduct it even though the course of the story doesn’t require you to actually finger the guilty party to proceed. Tying things together is still important, especially since it helps you know when it’s necessary to go speak with someone again and grill them on new subjects, but the game does also have a few hitches in terms of finding important items. Usually when you first click on something, you’ll get symbols that represent what can be done with it. You can most often observe it to hear what Winklebottom and Frumple have to say, or you can possibly pick it up or otherwise use it. Oftentimes if it’s something that can be used but you have no reason to utilize it yet, you might get the “pick up” symbol or at least have a character note it may be useful another time. However, sometimes an object must first be observed and then next time you look at it the interaction symbol will appear, or even more puzzling, you will first have to do or learn something elsewhere and then return to it even when there wasn’t necessarily a strong hint to do so. When, for the most part, the symbols do not change, the few moments where they do can be confusing to someone who has come to accept the mechanics at play, but once you are aware of it, it puts things back into play and makes connecting items to their purpose a bit easier.
Doctor Frumple does also serve as a hint system should you click his tea cup in the top right. Frumple’s clues are most often nudges towards what to look at or what problem you should try to solve, although he doesn’t have the best sense for the order of operations. He can talk to you about the pelican woman who is hard of hearing as if she’s the next thing to focus on when you can’t even get the proper tools to help her until you’ve done a range of other actions that a hint might have been nice to have for, but it at least doesn’t give too much away. With some solutions being delightfully absurd but reasonable enough to figure out as well, it’s nice to not have your hippo helper potentially blurt it out and ruin the impending joke.
THE VERDICT: A dandy little mystery that knows when to emphasize its animal characters and when to whip up comedy through delightfully delivered jokes, Lord Winklebottom Investigates is a charming little romp despite being a murder-mystery. You might hit a hitch with the cursor controls and a little bit of the logic at play, but its characters are a fascinating bunch to listen to speak and there are some satisfying inventory puzzles that pay off your deductive reasoning with amusing banter. Lord Winklebottom Investigates knows you want its posh absurdism, but it doles it out in careful servings so it never loses its charm.
And so, I give Lord Winklebottom Investigates for Nintendo Switch…
A GOOD rating. Any mystery being solved by the delightful pairing of Lord Winklebottom and Dr. Frumple is going to have a lot going for it purely because of how they’re written. Admittedly there are some times where the investigative work feels like it’s losing steam, but you still get to hear the commentary from the pair that helps sustain those lulls. The strong sense for how much to lean into the absurdity is also a great boon to Lord Winklebottom Investigates, there being a good deal of simple humor sprinkled throughout even from moments as simple as seeing Winklebottom trying to fit in a small area. At the same time, it’s not overdone, some elements becoming the norm to the point you’re a little caught off guard when you’re reminded a woman is a duck or that a world of animals might treat some things we take for granted differently. With a little bit of clean up on controls and elements like the system for marking interactive items, Lord Winklebottom Investigates could be a very clean comedic mystery where there’s plenty to chuckle at, the game having some wit, a good way with words, and moments where it just lets itself be silly. Lord Winklebottom Investigates feels like a wider scope could have benefited it, the cast remaining small and the Isle of Barghest having few unique locations for example, but it does what it sets out to well. If you are interested in a game about posh British animals solving a murder, it aims to deliver without being too goofy or too self-serious.
Lord Winklebottom Investigates is a self-contained mystery and a full experience, but it does wrap up with a sequel hook and one I do hope leads somewhere. More than anything, just the prospect of Winklebottom and Frumple getting more screen time to banter would make the sequel worth the price of admission, and with a stronger and larger mystery at play, they could truly find a lot more to share their perspectives on. While it was a bit of a gamble to take the plunge on fleshing out the kind of silly dapper animals usually seen in quick memes, developer Cave Monsters found out how to keep it appealing in long form, the joke not getting tired because it was approached with a surprisingly careful and skilled hand.