Tales From The Arcade: Starship Murder

About this game

Tales From The Arcade: Starship Murder is an experimental murder mystery roguelite in which the killer changes every time you play.



The astro hauler the SS Persephone is falling apart. You - the on-board AI - are being reactivated to perform the necessary repairs. The crew claims that the captain died in a mysterious accident, the same one that conveniently erased your memory banks. Who is telling the truth and who is just trying to buy time to finish the job they started? Welcome, to Starship Murder.

Features:

• Artificial Intelligence Perspective - become the AI of a starship.
  
• Experimental Gameplay - balance searching for the killer with repairing the ship.
  
• Digital Thriller - experience an atmosphere of tension and mistrust.

Making games can wear you down. A few months back as a break from our main project we created a little free game - Hank: Straightjacket. The experience was so invigorating that we decided to repeat this exercise whenever we get burned out. In the weeks before this year’s Summer Steam Next Fest once more we felt exhausted… And so… we took a breather and made Starship Murder. This game is an experiment in creating tension. We’re not exactly sure how people will interact with it :D If you’d like to share your playthrough we would be very happy to watch or read or hear about your experiences in any way.

Latest news

• Announcements·26 Apr 2026Official

  Gaming in the wild!

  What a month! We’ve got 4 things to share with you – two achievements and two announcements. Let’s jump right into it!Face to faceFirst of all – if you know us well, you’re probably aware that we looove meeting you guys in real life at conventions. And a few weeks ago we had another opportunity! We showed up at OMG – One More Game gaming festival at Wroclaw, Poland. Lots of cool cosplays, stands with retro games and of course us. As always, each one of you who came to meet us had an opportunity to play our newest entry in the collection, Hank: Drowning On Dry Land, which was really popular amongst a bit older players, while the other game, TFTA: Fartmania was a favourite one of the younger audience. Most cherished memory? The Kid enjoyed his time playing as a little pig, while me and the Dad were talking about Hank. Do we even need more reasons why games bring people together and are great for every age? Hank on paperNow a second thing – Hank got reviewed. But this time it’s not just a casual steam review (although we love each one of those too!). Because recently Hank made an appearance in the Debug Magazine! That’s a huge honor for us, especially with such a high note. If you’d like to get your own volume, you can get it here. I already got mine! Another one!Now back to the IRL theme, we have great news: we can meet again soon! We’re going to CD-Action Expo at Łódź, Poland. It’s one of the biggest and most popular conventions in our country and we’d love to invite you too! Save the date May 30-31st. See you there! That one’s EpicAnd last but not least, Hank is spreading to one more place! That’s right, next month (May) you’ll be able to get the newest entry in Hank’s series on Epic Store! Its game page is already up, you can check it out there.. If you have some friends who are using Epic Store, tell them the news!Your ScoreWe’ll be back soon with more plans for the future and announcements. Before you leave – Hank: Drowning On Dry Land got released over 3 months ...
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• Announcements·23 Feb 2026Official

  Hank got Steam Deck Verified!

  Thanks for your support!It’s been a little over a month since we launched Hank: Drowning On Dry Land, and judging by the 97% positive reviews, it seems like you’re really enjoying our little game. That honestly means a lot to us — thank you. Polished!Over the past month, we’ve been focused on polishing things up. We fixed a bunch of bugs, added ultra-wide screen support, and sorted out issues with certain controller models not working properly. We also made several optimization improvements to boost performance across the board.Great news for Steam Deck users!In fact, we pushed things far enough to pass the Steam Deck Compatibility Review — which means Hank: Drowning On Dry Land is now officially Steam Deck Verified! To get through the process, I picked up a used Steam Deck myself, and it turned out to be a great piece of hardware. It gave me a chance to revisit our earlier games — Hank: Straightjacket, Tales From The Arcade: Starship Murder, and Tales From The Arcade: Fartmania — and add some extra quality-of-life improvements with handheld play in mind.Something ends, something beginsWith all that done, we’re starting to wrap up our work on Hank: Drowning On Dry Land. But as one journey ends, another begins 🙂 We’ve already started working on the next adventure of our favorite drunk vigilante — and we hope you’ll join us for that ride too.Cya Around,Kuba
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• Announcements·13 Jan 2026Official

  Hank: Drowning on Dry Land - Out now!

  {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42195882/bfaebb6b51a287425d73a3f3a284bd91af0be311.jpg Sooo, we’re finally here. Hank: Drowning on Dry Land is now available on Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1937880/Hank_Drowning_On_Dry_Land/ It’s been one hell of a ride—thank you for following us on this journey. I’m not entirely sure what to say now, other than a simple hope you enjoy it. If you do, and you’d like us to keep making more Hank things while also learning how this whole thing came to be, we’ve prepared a digital art book. It’s packed with concept art and commentary from Witek (the artist), me (Kuba, the programmer), and Matthew (the writer). Alongside the PDF, it also unlocks a fully voice-overed, in-game version—so if you’ve ever wondered what we sound like, you can hear us there. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42195882/dea8e67f9d4a9cc3361566dae8a1b4b37965dda7.jpg https://store.steampowered.com/app/4229770/Hank_Drowning_On_Dry_Land__Digital_Art_Book/ Anyway, here’s the launch trailer. And now I’m off to grab a week-long power nap to recover from the final push ;P https://youtu.be/p8Y_beMV-2I Cya around, Kuba
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• Announcements·30 Dec 2025Official

  Hank: Drowning on Dry Land release date

  {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42195882/b4d6558059e446c57f365fbd2c2efb5824ef3682.jpg You might’ve seen me teasing a big announcement after Christmas — so here it is: Our new game "Hank: Drowning on Dry Land" launches on Steam January 13th! Drunk. Time-traveling. Batman-esque. If that made your brain go “wait, what?” — perfect! Now do me a favor: tell a friend, tell your dog, shout it into the void, or accidentally “leak” it in your group chat 😉 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1937880/Hank_Drowning_On_Dry_Land/ Cya Around Kuba
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• Announcements·13 Oct 2025Official

  A huge MILESTONE for Hank!

  A huge MILESTONE for Hank!About a month ago my game about Drunk Batman got selected for a PAX Rising Showcase, which not only made my game much more visible on Steam, but also got me my own stand at PAX WEST 25, where I had a chance to talk with you guys, amazing gamers, and journalists and literally everyone who dropped by. We even got a chance to visit Valve’s headquarters and it was an awesome experience. You might say… meh, and you got what from that, 10 wishlists? That might be a really big surprise for you, but that one weekend made my game go from 3-4 wishlists a day to… skyrocketing into hundreds and even thousands of wishlist additions A DAY. Of course after the event it all stabilized, but just think how big of a deal that is! Just by attending a show like that with my own table and talking with real people I managed to cross the 10,000 wishlists milestone for my indie game, which is MIND BLOWING.And yeah. It was hard getting there. It definitely wasn’t easy. But it was worth it. And that’s another thing I want you to do later. Look for some ways to show off your game in public. Even if it would be an after-class meeting at your school with only 5 people attending, doesn't matter. You have to build courage to actually… stand out. And show your game to real people. Posting stuff on bluesky, or tumblr, or twitter is not as efficient as it was back then, so you gotta find some other ways. And live events are my proposition for that. Check my video on YouTube, to find out what else we realised!
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