Meet Apple Crumble's suspicious family

Grandma wants to know whether it's time for cake. Your conversation options include birthday chat and angst. Apple Crumble has a lovely way of putting a family gathering on edge: the woman everyone has come to celebrate smiles behind enormous round glasses, while you have reason to suspect that someone at the party wants her dead. Getting through this visit involves looking around the house and deciding which of its occupants deserves your trust.

Happy Broccoli Games' first-person mystery arrives on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux on 3 December. The Berlin studio behind Duck Detective is keeping this new thriller small, with a fully voiced cast and an advertised running time of 60 to 90 minutes. A free demo offers the opening 20 to 30 minutes now. It's a useful invitation for anyone who likes a mystery they can make an evening of, with a familiar domestic setting supplying the unease.

The guests are already trouble

The occasion is your grandmother's 84th birthday, held in your childhood home. Exploring the rooms and talking to the invited family members are the central activities. The guest list includes your stressed mum, an uncle in the middle of a midlife crisis and a strange man in your bedroom. The developer also includes you among the suspects. That's an enjoyably awkward company to move through: you belong to this family, and the investigation means reconnecting with people who already have a history with you.

The character designs give that gathering immediate personality. Grandma's hair rises in a great silver wave above her glasses. Alan appears in sunglasses, with a moustache and an extravagantly raised pointing hand. Mum wears an apron in a kitchen crowded with cupboards, bottles and crockery. These are compact, expressive figures placed close to the camera during conversations, with dialogue along the bottom of the screen. The full voice acting gives those encounters another reason to hold your attention.

Happy Broccoli names Knives Out and Mouthwashing among its inspirations. The family gathering and threat of murder make the first connection easy to understand; the second is an intriguing choice for a game with such cuddly-looking people. Its content description includes swearing, blood and implied smoking and vaping. Those details help set expectations: the friendly character shapes sit inside a thriller with an adult edge. Choose it for a suspicious birthday visit, rather than a children's party game.

A home with things left behind

The house is full of objects that reward a closer look, even before their place in the plot becomes clear. One official image shows an open desk drawer with a Polaroid photograph highlighted for inspection. Another opens a photo album containing family pictures, with empty spaces beside the collected images. A selected holiday snapshot is labelled Barcelona 2016 and names Millie, Jess and Mum. These are appealing things to examine in a family mystery: possessions and photographs carry personal history alongside whatever clues they contain.

Jess's old room adds a particularly recognisable detail. Drawings cover the wall above a desk, a keyboard sits beside drink cans and little character figures, and an exercise bike occupies the space between the furniture. In the pictured dialogue, Jess remarks that she hasn't lived there in five years. Returning to a childhood home means encountering an earlier version of yourself, right down to the things still stuck on the wall. That is a strong setting for a story about reconnecting with relatives.

The walking-sim structure keeps the appeal clear: explore the home, meet the people and put together what is happening. If you prefer a more explicitly diagrammed investigation, our look at Hope in the City's sketchbook explains how that adventure connects observations into breakthroughs. Apple Crumble's immediate draw is the intimacy of its gathering, with a small cast sharing rooms that already mean something to the protagonist. The furniture, family photographs and uncomfortable conversations belong to the same visit.

Steam lists full controller support alongside the keyboard-and-mouse setup, and English interface text, subtitles and audio. Its accessibility features include saving at any time and playing without timed input, useful details for someone who wants to pause a conversation-heavy evening or take longer over a room. The house gives you plenty of small things to look at; being able to set the pace is welcome. Those practical options fit the advertised shape of a brief, solo mystery built around exploration and dialogue.

The December release follows a playable opening you can try for free on Steam, so there's a straightforward way to judge the voices, conversation and first-person exploration for yourself. Happy Broccoli's 60-to-90-minute estimate gives this a manageable place in a busy release calendar. A short mystery can be an attractive commitment when its setting is this specific: a family home, a birthday tea and people whose company has become a little too interesting. Leave enough time to look through the drawers.