Comic books and contrast: Behind the craft of Confidential Killings

For fans of classic detective games and point-and-click adventures, Confidential Killings is a must-play. It’s a stylized detective game with plenty of charm, drawing inspiration from comic books and the team’s roots in Game Jam projects.

I sat down with the minds behind the game, Lorenzo Boni and Miloš, the latter being known as BRANE online, to discuss the inspiration behind Confidential Killings and what it takes to create an impactful indie game. 

The importance of Game Jams

Out of the myriad of detective games and point-and-click adventures that I’ve played over the years, Confidential Killings stands out as one of the most interesting. I sat down with Lorenzo Boni and BRANE to discuss how the game came to be and the importance of Game Jams.

BRANE noted that the pair had been working together on and off for around 10 years, meeting in an adventure game forum and connecting over their shared love of point-and-click adventures.

“Those are the first kinds of games that we made,” he shared, “…Only like, I don’t know, in the last 4 years or something, we started to do games together, mostly in Game Jams, and mostly in the adventure game genre.

“[For] Confidential Killings, we started working like a year and a half ago…that also happened after we had a nice success with the Game Jam game.”

BRANE described the influence of iconic games like Return of the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol, and noted that the Game Jam success is what prompted the pair to look at doing a bigger commercial project together. 

Boni continued, agreeing that the pair shared a love of detective fiction and games, and that the new era of deductive games had been fascinating for the duo.

He’d begun doing some Game Jams alone, before joining up with BRANE – praising his colleague for being a talented programmer and saying that he’d worked on the framework to build Confidential Killings around.

As someone who’s never dabbled in a Game Jam, the events are fascinating to me. If you’re unfamiliar, they’re themed events where indie developers work to create a game in a set amount of time, either solo or with a team. 

I wondered how the Game Jam experiences had influenced the pair’s work; Boni explained that they’re great for teaching you to let go of perfectionism while helping newer developers avoid getting trapped in massive games for their first projects. 

“You have like 2 weeks to finish an entire project,” he shared, “So you can’t do everything perfectly…you have to kind of accept that something is done and go on.”

BRANE continued, saying, “What I would also expand is there’s this saying in the art world, Lorenzo will know this…your first 10,000 drawings are shit, so you better get through them as fast as you can.

“Game Jams help you…to get the shitty ideas quickly so you can get to the good stuff. So, practice there is very helpful…”

Boni added, “And, you can prototype ideas without any risk, because if people don’t like it? Well, it’s a Game Jam…you only lost, what, 2 weeks of work, maybe less.”

From comic books to detailed documentaries

The act of creating a game is far from easy – no matter whether I’m interviewing folks who’ve worked on roguelike autobattlers or dungeon-crawlers, the attention, care, and immense amount of work required always shines through. 

I asked the team how it felt seeing the game out in the wild after it launched on January 12, 2026.

“It’s been great,” BRANE shared, saying, “This is the first time we worked with the publisher and had this amount of feedback from people, and people generally like it… the human psychology comes into play, like you’re a lot more sensitive to the bad reviews.

“So you read that 3 times and all of the people who say, oh this is the best game, you can ignore those, which is not the smartest thing to do, but it’s hard to battle with that.”

Boni agreed, saying there’d been lots of positive feedback from players, but that the negative feedback had landed harder, despite a dedicated community forming around the game.

I asked where the inspiration for the game’s art style came from, as it’s what makes the game stand out from the crowd. 

“I’ve been drawing for a long time, right,” Boni answered, “And you tend to pick up various things you like from the style of certain comic artists…after a while when I ask you what’s your inspiration, I don’t know anymore, right, because there are so many. 

“…I read a lot of European comics, and they were all black and white, and they used to paint with brushes…I wanted kind of that style, and those thick shadows from movies from the 40s. It’s a lot of different influences.”

He added that finding an art style that looked good in screenshots was also a priority, saying he wanted something with strong contrast and interesting shapes. 

Looking at impactful scenes and moments from the game, the team mused on whether they had any particular favorites. 

“I have some fondness for the very first scene because it’s the one that pretty much set how the game would look,” Boni answered, adding that he loved the hotel sequences too, with its interesting color palette. 

BRANE picked the cult section the most, pointing out the dripping blood in the lobby as “so disgusting.”

“The soundtrack is very weird there, like vibey,” he added, “So I think that that one steals the show for me.”

Wrapping things up, I asked whether the pair had anything further they’d like to add, prompting both creatives to enthusiastically encourage folks to check out Confidential Killings for themselves.

I’d second this – the game is unique and has plenty of charm. It’s got a well-balanced approach to puzzles and difficulty, meaning you’ll be challenged by some segments but likely not frustrated, and it’s incredibly rewarding to play through as a fan of detective fiction and indie games.

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