Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mystery of the Concealing Flame

He may bat away the question 'When did you first realise you had an awesome voice?' but Dussek's voicework does stand out as the star of the show. His dramatic and prolonged cries of 'Muuuuurdeeeeer!', the loving use of words like 'dear heart' and 'vittles', can't help but gift an idiot-grin.

The manner he chivvies along players in a way that recalls the heady days of quiz classic You Don't Know Jack is also a nostalgia-blast in waiting for gamers of a certain age. Dussek though is quick to underline the teamwork that goes into creating Little Riddle's daft inhabitants.

"The character is written, and then a designer comes up with the way they look - and then I put a voice to it. For example, the doctor is very thin, so he can't have a big fat voice.

"Mrs Gossip, I think, is based on my Auntie - but none of my family can see it. The Butcher is loosely my best mate Jim... So it's written, the character is designed, we spend some time getting the voice together, then once we think we've nailed it we go and record it.

"Obviously we try and put as many hooks into the speech as we can, for the animators to animate to - put in some sort of peculiarity and it's beautiful what the animators can do. If there are inflections in the voice to indicate an eyebrow-raise it works so much better because it's funny."

He's right too. The swooning and moustache-twirling of the suspects you'll head-scratch for and against is never anything but a delight, and the way that puzzle-bearers fall through the floor as the action switches to the challenge screen is yet another successful front of the charm offensive.

Combined with the old-time pathé-style 'Duh-Duh-DURRR' organ music, backgrounds seemingly made of flock wallpaper, and omnipresent ducks, it's an instant love affair for anyone with a working knowledge of the ITV4 Midsomer Murders and Agatha Christie rinse-and-repeat schedule.

Quite how these things will fare on release in other territories is another matter entirely though. "We're releasing in America soon, and it'll be very interesting to see how it does there," says Paul Woodbridge. "Obviously stuff like Monty Python is really popular over there - so we'll either do really well or not so well. We'll find out when it happens."

A more pressing issue, however, has reared its head over the pricing of episodes and the fact that once you've pointed the finger at the accused there's little by way of replayability. This has led to the somewhat gigantic decision to make the third episode of Little Riddle's increasingly dangerous rural shenanigans free for those who invest, or have invested, in the earlier instalments.

"It's predominantly from the feedback we had from the release of episodes one and two," explains producer Jade Tidy when we attempt to do journalism at her.

"We got that the game is really good - but the cost and the lack of replayability is a downside. We were too far into development to change anything about the replayability, but we could do something about the price."

As such, for the four weeks after release on 25th February The Mystery of the Concealing Flame will be free to anyone who buys or has bought the first episode, while the final three episodes will appear in a £9.99 triple-pack on 8th April. It's clearly a sharp turn in Relentless' plans, but there's little doubt that the fun-yet-frothy Blue Toad experience is more of a viable purchase under the new mission statement.

As for the dramatic close of episode three, when each player secretly points the finger at someone in a Little Riddle Usual Suspects line-up, it was no particular surprise when I got it fundamentally wrong. Wrongful imprisonment would become more frequent should I ever become a fictional detective.

But, beyond an hour's worth of chuckles and puzzling, what's an abuse of criminal justice between friends?