Demo for Surradia: An Art Retrospective displayed on Steam

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Deduction-based mystery about a magical WWII art movement coming soon to Windows, Mac and Linux

Deduction-based mysteries are exploding in popularity these days. Most, like Return of the Obra Dinn and the Golden Idol series, involve solving specific crimes or tragedies based on first-hand information from the moment they occurred. Nightwell Games is taking a slightly different approach, offering more of a text-based mystery to solve decades after the fact in their upcoming debut adventure, Surradia: An Art Retrospective.

In the 1930s, a (fictional) surrealist art movement known as Surradia arose in Paris around three very different "magical artists" collectively known as the Surradistes, who defied social expectations in fresh and daring ways. During the Second World War, however, the three women suddenly disappeared following the Nazi invasion of France, with the last known photo of them taken in the woods outside Fontainebleu in 1942. What became of them? Were they just three more statistics, anonymous casualties of war? Were they able to evade capture by going into hiding, never again to seek the spotlight even after peace was restored? There have been various rumours and reports speculating on their fates since then, but eighty years later, they've largely been consigned to a forgotten part of history. Until now. A new interactive gallery exhibit is being unveiled that explores their lives and works, and it's up to visitors to "piece together what happened to them from clues in their artworks, photos, and letters."

Inspired by creator Gwen C. Katz's interest in the real-world surrealist artists Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Leonor Fini, and based on Katz's short story "Portrait of Three Women with an Owl," framed in the style of an art exhibit review, Surradia was conceived first as a word-based paper game before making the leap to digital for 2023's The Case of the Thinky Game Jam. Since then it has been expanded and enhanced for commercial release, now offering twelve distinct rooms filled with "handpainted artworks and digital illustrations," animated cutscenes, full voice-over and an original jazz soundtrack. The goal remains the same, however: In each room, players will pore over numerous documents and creative works in order to fill in the blanks of text statements missing key information, with hints available if you need a nudge in the right direction. Clues can be cryptic or incomplete on their own, but as you begin making connections you will put faces to names and trace the actions of the Surradistes and events transpiring around them. 

The answer to the final release date of Surradia: An Art Retrospective has yet to be filled in, but it's "coming soon" and a playable demo is already available on Steam and itch.io for Windows, Mac and Linux.

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