Murders & Mistresses Deep Dive #6: The World Remembers
Hey everyone,
Steve here with another deep dive! And this one's the final part of a bit of a trilogy.
In #4 I talked about how M&M approaches sex and in #5 I talked about how it approaches detective gameplay. Today I want to talk about the thing that brings these two together:
Consequences.
Because what makes M&M special to me is that it's not just an adult game with a detective mini game, or a detective game with some explicit sex scenes added on top. It's a world.
And more specifically, a life inside that world. A life that you'll get to both inhabit, and steer.
An integrated adult detective game
And the core difference between mashing two unrelated things together, and integrating them, is whether they are additive or multiplicative. Meaning, do they simply co-exist, or do they influence each other?
In M&M, I'm proud to say that the adult game part – the romances, sex, and friendships – and the detective part – solving cases, catching bad guys, dealing with physically and emotionally severe situations – are deeply interconnected.
For those of you that have played the demo, you've already gotten a taste of that. If you're having a flashback nightmare caused by your work – your loving wife is by your side to help you get through this. Whether through talking about it, or, if words don't help, other options at her disposal…
The ability to date and sleep with certain ex-murder suspects, or hang out outside of work with your colleagues are further examples from the demo.
Later in the game this becomes even more pronounced. As the cases get more intense and more personal, the line between your professional and personal life starts to blur.
Romancing the people you work with can cause complications. But the connection you have with them might also be the only thing getting you through, say, a live hostage negotiation you have zero expertise in dealing with.
And sooner or later, with your past catching up to you, everyone you love might just be in danger.
The three types of consequences in M&M
Murders & Mistresses is built around three types of consequences:
Spinal consequences, branching consequences and world leakage.
Spinal Consequences
Spinal consequences are the ones you inherit rather than choose. They make up the spine of the game. They are, essentially, how the past of the person you're inhabiting – a cocky ex-conman who can't help himself but be drawn to moral and legal gray areas – catches up with you.
M&M is built brick-by-brick. A concept I first learned from listening to Vince Gilligan talking about how they wrote Breaking Bad on the show's insider podcast back in 2020 (a podcast I've since relistened to about four times lol).
The idea is that every action has a reaction, and all of these reactions are layered on top of each other to build the story. It's not just random things that happen in a row, it's a deeply interwoven chain of events, set off by each other.
This creates M&M's prestige TV feeling. It's what makes the world feel deeply immersive and its characters feel alive. And it's the foundation for making your choices not just have impact, but feel emotionally meaningful.
Branching Consequences
These are the classic "Choices Matter" consequences. Different case endings, relationship changes, new sex scenes, unique scene branches, the difference maker between a character living or dying, vastly different game endings, etc.
M&M is full of them as you might expect from a high stakes adult detective game. Your choices will change your own and other people's lives. From sexual fulfilment to heartbreak, proving someone's innocence or sending them to jail, or being indirectly – or even directly – responsible for saving their life, or causing their death.
These are the big moments, the things you're probably gonna wanna replay just to see what else could have happened. And I'm telling you, a lot could have happened. In fact so much stuff, I literally had to add a content warning at the start of the full game which includes the fact that: "The story will force you into uncomfortable places, and difficult choices with severe consequences."
World Leakage
Despite how juicy and dramatic the two other types of consequences can get, the world leakage is actually the thing I'm proudest of when it comes to consequence design in M&M. And what world leakage simply means is that scenes aren't really ever clean. They don't exist in a vacuum.
The MC's personality, desires, flaws, mind games, and mental state – as well as the mental state of all other characters – leaks into every single scene, whether openly discussed, or subconsciously repressed.
Whether it's a small behavioral change, a joke landing slightly differently, or even a group chat text message three cases later about that person you arrested months ago.
The guilt, trauma, and possibly contradictory emotions about the residue of cases, relationships, and choices you made follows you everywhere. That's leakage.
The world remembers everything. It just doesn't constantly announce it.
A world of uncertainty that doesn't explain itself
M&M is, at its core, about uncertainty. Judgment under uncertainty. Decision making under uncertainty. Even romance and sex under uncertainty. What will you choose when you have to take a leap of faith, when you do not have all the facts, when you have no choice but to trust your own intuition?
And M&M's consequences are designed the same way. Yes, everything is deeply layered, brick-by-brick. But just like in real life, the causal chain may not always be obvious. Characters, scenes and consequences are written to be coherent in themselves and as a whole, but that's not the same as being easily legible for a player.
For example, there will be a number of scenes where the team's read of a situation – or a certain character's – is not what's actually going on. Or it may be partly right, but missing the deeper picture. But the story doesn't always correct these reads. Sometimes not even at the end. The game isn't written around maximum reader understanding, a character doesn't say "Woah, by the way, I have figured out five things going on in this moment that the player might miss if I don't point them out."
No – if the character wouldn't coherently, realistically, as who they are, know or say that, then they won't. M&M is full of depth that is never surfaced or explained and if you pay attention you will notice things that even the characters don't.
Outro
I feel like I've talked a lot in this post about quite intense, dramatic and dark stuff, so let me end on a light note. The supporter edition!
With CK2 we've done a lot of supporter editions as they were always very popular and helped fund future development, but I never felt like the Supporter Editions we did for CK were as good as they could be. Mainly because we were always chasing behind deadlines and didn't have enough time to make them what I wish they'd be.
M&M will also launch with a Supporter Edition – and this one's going to be massive. We're talking three full bonus sex scenes that are different from anything in the game, wallpapers, scripts for deleted scenes, behind the scenes videos with me talking about M&M in depth, hours and hours of me playing through the entirety of M&M doing a developer commentary on every single scene I come across, and a gameplay solutions section with guides for love interests, achievements and the solutions to all cases (as well as the classic sex scene gallery unlock button).
So for those of you that want a little less uncertainty after your first playthrough, the supporter edition will give you all the answers.
It's going to be awesome, I can't wait, and yes – it's coming to Patreon too, for all Senior and above Patrons!
Please note that the quality of the base game takes priority, the supporter edition may not release with the original Patreon release date. It might, it might not. If not, it'll come to Patreon with the Steam release of the game (about two weeks later).
The release date announcement trailer with the actual date is coming soon – stay tuned :)
And as always, thank you all for your continued support!
Much love, Steve