Funeral for the Sun

Funeral for the Sun is a point-and-click detective game about investigating political upheaval in a Latin American town. It expands on the deduction game format by having you create a web of people and relationships from scratch with no scaffolding. The story draws from Latin American magical realism and tales of oppression and resistance.

The exploration part of the game is a point-and-click adventure. You play a modern journalist investigating a town that burned down in the 1960s. Around the town you find newspapers, letters, and documents that provide clues about the story. There are also magical blue flowers growing in certain places. Examining these flowers allows you to see a frozen vignette from the past. Some areas are blocked off by locked doors, overgrown plants, or fences, and you must collect the right items to get past these obstacles, adding some metroidvania flavor to the exploration.

The deduction part of the game takes place in a notebook you carry. When people appear in the vignettes, they get added to a large board in your notebook. Any names mentioned in the vignettes also get added to your notebook, and you must assign them to the right portraits. You can also draw lines between portraits to indicate relationships, such as parent and child, couples, and who killed who. Both names and relationships get marked correct and locked when you have three correct.

Characters ending up in the notebook may have different portraits at different ages (for instance, one portrait as a child, another as a teenager, and another as an adult), so there's an additional mechanic that allows you to combine portraits if you think they're the same person. Combined portraits get marked correct immediately.

The story unfolds over three acts, each of which functions as a robust stand-alone game. The first act is about a South American oil boom town that burns down in a disaster in the 1960s, the second act is about conflict between a Spanish colonial settlement and a town of emancipated slaves in the early 19th century, and the third is about an indigenous community facing conquistadors in the 1500s. The stories are rooted in real history but also feature magical elements, especially supernatural beings.

The story is complemented by art that combines hand-drawn backgrounds and animated vignettes with vibrant environments that the protagonist can explore in fixed perspective. An atmospheric soundtrack adds to the game’s mysterious feel.

This description was written by Gwen C. Katz. It is based on a development build of the game.