Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? Review: A Shocking Call

Getting a phone call from your favorite uncle usually isn’t as exciting as Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? would make you think. I talked to my favorite uncle just a few weeks ago, and while helpful in figuring out what was wrong with my car, it didn’t lead to a highly entertaining murder mystery.

Still, at least my uncle wasn’t dying. Abby is just getting ready for her family’s annual trivia night in honor of her mom’s birthday when Uncle Marcus calls. It turns out he was recently poisoned at the family’s annual meeting. Doctors have determined definitively that it must have happened there, and only the six people you’re about to meet for virtual trivia night could have done it. Without figuring out what poison was used, and hopefully who poisoned Uncle Marcus, he’s done for. Abby missed the meeting, though, so she’s the only person he can trust. If she can figure things out in time, Uncle Marcus can take the antidote and survive.

Accept Things As They Are

You’ll need to accept early on that the story of Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? doesn’t make a lot of sense. Filmed during the pandemic, this FMV game was clearly designed for the actors to shoot in their own respective homes. That means a lot of logical questions like why Uncle Marcus is just in his home and not a hospital, or why Abby, who seemingly has no qualifications as a detective, is being recruited to solve this instead of an actual detective, aren’t going to be addressed. That’s relatively okay within the world of the game, though other questions like how a late twist is known to the entire family yet unknown to Uncle Marcus’ favorite niece has stayed a secret from her weighed a bit more heavily on me. Still, if you can move past these questions, you’ll find a story that is actually a lot of fun.

Everyone Hates Everyone

Who are our potential murderers? Well, they’re nearly universally awful, but thankfully in a so bad, they’re fun sort of way. I wouldn’t actually want to know any of these people, but they’re a lot of fun to follow in a video game. You have your completely self-obsessed mother, Felicity. There’s the always drunk Auntie June, who loves to dish out verbal abuse to everyone. Your older cousin Toby is the sort of person who likes to spend his time doing charity work, but only so he can spend the rest of his time telling everyone about all the charity work he does. His younger brother Bradley is less outwardly awful, but he’s a strange kid obsessed with serial killers. Your sister Lottie is also less outwardly hostile, but she’s an online influencer who is somehow more self-obsessed than her mother. Your sweet but seemingly oblivious Nan rounds out the group.

None of these people are likely to just come out and admit they poisoned your uncle, but thankfully game night presents a perfect opportunity to get some alone time with each of them and get them talking. For reasons even the characters don’t know, you play each round of your trivia game in teams, with the teams changing after each round. That means for each round, you can pick one of three characters to team up with, and get some alone time with. You’ll be given a variety of choices to make throughout your conversation to direct things in the way you want them to go, hopefully unearthing clues about what happened at the family meeting.

You’ll gather clues about each of the six possible murderers, and there’s evidence that can point to anyone. These characters all seem to hate each other, to the point where you wonder why they’d bother to have a family game night at all. It’s to the point where you start to wonder how Abby and Uncle Marcus are even a part of this family. Lottie and Bradley are about as decent as it feels possible for someone to become after growing up around them. I’ve known awful families with one member who was somehow great, though, so it didn’t fully break my immersion.

A Mystery Worth Solving

That was helped by the universally excellent performances of the cast. There’s definitely some camp going on here, but it’s clearly intentional, and it maintains a tone that consistently had a grin on my face while I was playing through the story. That’s good, because you’ll have to play through it a lot. You very likely won’t even have enough clues to accuse anyone of murder by the end of your first play-through, with each path through the story taking around forty-five minutes to an hour. Luckily, your clues carry over to starting a new game unless you go into the settings and reset them. That means you can try and try again until you find out who killed Uncle Marcus.

This can make things difficult, though, because there are a lot of things you’re going to see over and over. You can skip some sequences you’ve already seen, but not all of them. Some sections you’re forced to watch over, and over. This is exacerbated by making one choice during a long conversation differently, stopping you from skipping future sections of the round you’re on, even if you’d have been able to skip them otherwise. There’s also little indication of what options you’ve previously picked. You’d think this would be easy to remember, but playing with Auntie June in round 1 is different from doing so in round 2, or round 3. That means you’ll need to partner with each character multiple times in multiple spots in the story. So while I could remember teaming up with Lottie before, I couldn’t always remember if I’d done so in the round I was on. Even something as simple as color-coding options you had already chosen would definitely have helped here.

Conclusion

Still, I never considered stopping this ride until I’d saved Uncle Marcus. The core mystery here is fascinating and had its hooks in me until the end, while the entertaining cast made me want to go back and see every alternate ending. Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? doesn’t reinvent much, but its a well-executed FMV title that should satisfy anyone who’s a fan of the genre.

Final Verdict: 3.5/5

Available on: PC (Reviewed), Switch, Xbox One, PS4; Publisher:  Wales Interactive; Developer: Wales Interactive, Good Gate Media; Players: 1; Released: March 18th, 2022; ESRB: M for Mature; MSRP: $12.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus? provided by the publisher.