Tall Story Games Launches Heir of the Dog, a Jekyll-and-Hyde Comedy Adventure

Tall Story Games, the two-person UK studio run by husband-and-wife developers Tom and Emma Hardwidge, has released Heir of the Dog, a pixel-art point-and-click comedy adventure set in a fog-choked, monster-plagued version of Victorian London. The game launched on October 29 for Windows, Mac and Linux through Steam and GOG, priced at $18.99 and discounted 10% to $17.09 for its opening week.

A nightly transformation in a fog-choked city

Players take on the role of Cummerbund Bandersnatch, an unlucky Londoner who drinks his uncle's secret "good time" formula and starts turning into a monster after dark. Tall Story Games frames the setup as a comic spin on Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde: Bandersnatch has to solve a string of puzzles, manipulate time to get around his own condition, and chase a cure before the transformation becomes permanent, all while untangling why the city's dogs keep vanishing and what a secretive society has to do with it.

The studio's own pitch for the tone sits closer to Blackadder or Monty Python than straight gothic horror, built on fully voiced dialogue and hand-painted pixel art of landmarks like a louse circus and a pie shop fronting as an antidote-mixing hideout.

Tall Story Games describes the puzzle design around that premise as letting players "manipulate time" and "find love" as Bandersnatch works his way toward a cure, pairing the comedy writing with a cast of oddball Victorian Londoners rather than leaning on jump scares, even as the nightly transformation keeps real stakes attached to every delay.

From a two-week game jam to a full commercial release

Heir of the Dog has an unusually long runway for a studio this size. Tall Story Games built the original concept, titled Hair of the Dog, in under two weeks for the 2020 AdvXJam game jam, then released that free, fully voiced short adventure on Steam, Itch.io, iOS and Android, where the studio says it has since been played by tens of thousands of people. Rather than follow it up immediately, the Hardwidges set the idea aside to finish their first commercial game, Lucy Dreaming, which came out in 2022 and picked up awards and critical notice of its own. Heir of the Dog is the studio's return to Bandersnatch's London, rebuilt and expanded into a full-length release rather than a jam-length short.

A fully voiced cast built around genre regulars

The expanded cast draws on performers with ties to other recent narrative games: Sally Beaumont, who voiced a lead role in Old Skies; Shaun Mendum, who appeared in Baldur's Gate 3; Alasdair Beckett-King, from Earth Must Die; and Savy Des-Etages, who featured in Loco Motive. That lineup, paired with the studio's insistence on full voice work even for its original jam game, points to Heir of the Dog leaning as hard on performance and dialogue as on its puzzles.

Funded by backers, now live with a demo already in players' hands

The jump from short jam game to full release was backed by a Kickstarter campaign before launch, and a free demo has been available on both storefronts ahead of the full game, letting players try an early slice of Bandersnatch's night-time wandering, including a stop at the pie shop and a warning to steer clear of the local barbers, before committing to the $18.99 asking price. Tall Story Games lays out the full premise and demo links on its official game site. During the Kickstarter campaign, the studio told backers a Nintendo Switch version was planned to follow the PC release; that promise hasn't been repeated on the game's current launch page, so treat a Switch release as a stated goal rather than a dated, confirmed launch.

• Platforms at launch: Windows, Mac and Linux via Steam and GOG
• Price: $18.99, discounted 10% to $17.09 through launch week
• Switch version: stated as a goal during crowdfunding, no release date announced

Why it's worth watching

Heir of the Dog is a useful data point for how small a team can be and still ship a fully voiced, multi-hour comedy adventure: Tall Story Games is still just two people, and its last release, Lucy Dreaming, proved the studio could turn a modest scope into an awarded game rather than a forgotten one. A sequel built from a two-week jam game, backed by Kickstarter and launched day one on two storefronts with a Switch version still on the studio's wish list, suggests the Hardwidges are treating Bandersnatch's London as a series rather than a one-off.