PAX Aus 2024 Highlight – ShelfLife: Art School Detective

PAX Aus 2024 was another huge year, especially with all the amazing indie games scattered throughout the show floor. One that I played and loved was ShelfLife: Art School Detective, an interactive fiction mystery that also has dating sims elements and is super queer! We interviewed and did a feature on ShelfLife last year and were stoked to get a chance to catch up at PAX with the devs, Fnife Games, to play their new demo and discuss how the game has progressed since PAX 2023.

The narrative in ShelfLife focuses on an “art murder” that has occurred at the art school Cruston Beaux-Arts Academy. When I asked what an “art murder” was Nate Tamblyn, the game’s Narrative Designer told me this refers to a student from the Academy “slashing” and destroying the paintings of their fellow students. Protagonist and fellow Cruston Academy student Johana has taken it upon themselves to find who, out of the seven possible suspects, could have committed such an aggressive act. They have a deadline though – if they don’t find the “murderer” in the next 14 days the school will be turned into a water park and all the student’s artistic dreams will be thwarted. The player therefore will have 14 in-game days to find the perpetrator.

Fnife has dubbed Johana’s investigations “INVESTI-❤︎DATE(s)” meaning that things could get a little bit romantic for Johana, depending on how they interrogate the seven suspects. This mechanic is new to ShelfLife’s 2024 demo and also includes bond-building, highlighting exactly how those you are questioning are responding to your charms.

There are also supernatural elements to the game, with Johana having psychic abilities – the most impressive of their talents is the way they can jump into the destroyed artworks. In the Shelflife 2024 demo, I was able to experience Johana’s immersion into a painting and it was a trippy and fascinating time. When in the artworks, they can interact with elements of the art and try and find out what occurred from their point of view. Due to the “murder” element of the game, the artwork itself is fractured, disrupted and can be seen to be in flames in parts. The art does talk to you, but in riddles, giving the player more clues to help them piece together this “murder” mystery.

ShelfLife: Art School Detective is still in development, but you can Wishlist it on Steam. Be sure to keep visiting Checkpoint for more Shelflife updates!