The Ratline
A downloadable game for Windows and macOS
Availability:
Demo is fully available from July 16th 2025.
Quotes:
Lucas Pope - "I enjoyed every minute of the demo - great art, setup, mood, mechanics -- the lot"
Alasdair Beckett - "A much-needed reminder of a time when Nazis were universally despised"
1971. A dead priest. A list of Nazi fugitives. The hunt begins.
When a Catholic priest is found murdered in Budapest, a secret list is discovered —names of Nazi war criminals who escaped justice through a covert network known as The Ratline. Now, the case is yours.
In this gritty detective thriller set in 1971, you play an investigator chasing shadows across continents. Use your wits, intuition, and network of contacts to follow leads, dig through documents, and piece together the truth—before the trail goes cold forever.
You will;
- Examine documents, photographs, and recovered artifacts
- Make independent deductions with no hand-holding
- Act like a proper sleuth, working contacts and shaking down sources from Rome to Buenos Aires
- Hunt down your marks - put together their identities, check your work and bring them to justice.
Made by Owlskip
The studio behind acclaimed narrative detective games Family, Rivals, Conspiracy, Echo Beach, Life & Crimes, and Riley and Rochelle.
The war may be over—but the reckoning has just begun.
The Ratline
Download
Development log
- Ratline Demo - Playtest Weekend21 days ago
Comments
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Really fun! Random comments/suggestions/etc.
Accessing the notepad requires multiple clicks, when instead it could be an icon on the playing screen.
The folder tab is a little unwieldy. It would be nice to have an ‘icon view’ (rather than a list of text headers). When sorting by case, the evidence is one big list instead of being clearly separated in sections. Being able to colorcode headers for each evidence would be nice too.
When maximum zoomed in to an evidence, I have to either click the arrow at the left of the screen (or hit the Esc button). I wish there was a red X in the top right of any evidence to click.
I would have liked a board somewhere in the room where I can see the identities of those I already discovered (as well as assigning multiple headshots). Or a table where I can physically lay out all old evidence.
More red herring names/businesses/etc. would improve things. I figured out the first name of a suspect as she was the only girl’s name available that started with that letter. There’s so few names right now that when I see (e.g.) a business in the search tool, I assume it’s connected without any deduction which can potentially spoil things.
I don’t think the volume sliders work? There’s this snoring sound which I think is SFX which I can’t mute. Also would like the ability to increase text speed (the typewriter noises can go on for a long time)
I wouldn’t expect any of the above to be implemented, just wanted to share my experience.
cool ass demo, i got stuck on the last step of the Hoffman case but i love this sorta thing :)