Heir of the Dog brings Victorian comedy to Steam on 29 October
Tall Story Games' Victorian point-and-click comedy Heir of the Dog arrives on Steam on 29 October, and its demo is already playable on Steam and GOG.
Heir of the Dog arrives on Steam on 29 October, and the Victorian point-and-click comedy already has a demo players can try. Tall Story Games, the small British studio behind Lucy Dreaming, is publishing the game itself, and the release trailer is below.
What the game is
After a mysterious explosion over Victorian London, Cummerbund Bandersnatch, described by his creators as a likeable if dim-witted twit, visits his uncle's laboratory and drinks an experimental formula that promises a good time to whoever takes it. The transformation that follows sends him through the back alleys of the old city, hunting an antidote while a plot involving a secret society and the royal family comes into view.
The store page promises puzzles, time manipulation and the chance to find love, along with what the studio calls copious amounts of dog hair. It is a single-player release with full controller support and Steam achievements, and it can be played with a mouse alone.
The studio behind it
Tall Story Games has been working in this corner of London for years. Lucy Dreaming, its first commercial game, arrived in 2022 and picked up awards and warm reviews; before that the team built a short, fully voiced game-jam entry called Hair of the Dog in a fortnight, and Bandersnatch grew out of it. The developer's own site frames the new game as a return to that world, with the same studio producing and self-publishing.
The demo is already live on Steam and GOG, and the full game is listed for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Our opinion
Point-and-click comedy is a small corner of the market where reputation travels by word of mouth, and Tall Story Games has spent four years building exactly that. Releasing a demo long before launch is the honest way to sell a game whose appeal is tone as much as puzzles, because a store page can describe a joke but only the game can land one.
The interesting question is whether British is a selling point or a ceiling. The studio is leaning into it deliberately, from the store copy to a registered trademark, and a Victorian comedy stocked with louse circuses and pie shops is a specific enough pitch that it will find its audience quickly or not at all. The demo gives that audience every chance to decide before 29 October.