The Black Widow is an interactive murder mystery game that recounts the tale of real-life convicted murderer Louisa Collins. As the story goes, Louisa and her husband Charles Andrews were poor and struggling financially, due to having 7 children to take care of, and so to make ends meet they took lodgers into their home. One of those lodgers was her husband’s co-worker Michael Collins, and during this time him and Louisa had an affair. It was discovered by her husband and Collins was kicked out of the home, but just a couple of months later Louisa’s husband died under mysterious circumstances. Just two months after his death she remarried to… you guessed it, Michael Collins. Salacious! After being married for just a year, Michael Collins also began to fall ill and eventually died from nearly the exact same symptoms as Louisa’s previous husband Charles Andrews. Suspicious! The Black Widow tasks you with contacting Louisa Collins in the afterlife and trying to determine for yourself whether or not she is guilty of these murders.

The case of Louisa Collins is extremely polarizing, as many people think she is clearly guilty and many others think she was unjustly convicted. There is certainly a lot of circumstantial evidence and plenty of motive behind the murders, but back in the late 1800s Louisa Collins went to trial four different times for these crimes, with three of the trials unable to come to a verdict and the fourth finally convicting her and sentencing her to death by hanging. It’s definitely not cut and dry. The Black Widow uses actual court records and letters from back then, as well as numerous historical sources to create a game that tries to present all the facts as unbiased as possible and then let the players come to their own conclusions. As someone who has seen every Forensic Files ever made, this sounds really interesting to me and I’ll be looking forward to when The Black Widow arrives on Steam for $5.99 as well as iOS and Android for just $1.99 next Thursday, August 1st.