The Séance of Blake Manor to be conducted on PC

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Paranormal mystery from the creators of The Darkside Detective gets a new name and publisher

First they made us laugh at ghosts in The Darkside Detective series, but now indie Irish developer Spooky Doorway wants us to take the paranormal much more seriously in their newly rebranded upcoming mystery, The Séance of Blake Manor.

Originally revealed under the name Eldritch House, the game is set during Halloween, 1897, when a "group of mystics from across the globe gather in the west of Ireland to rip open the veil between worlds and speak directly with the dead." Two days prior to the planned séance, however, socialite Evelyn Deane suddenly disappears without a trace from the remote hotel in the old Blake Manor. As Detective Declan Ward, you are "summoned to find her and uncover the culprit before someone else disappears." But this is no ordinary mystery. Not only does each of the manor's residents "have more than one secret to hide," but your investigation will be plagued by "unexplained phenomena [that] torment you at every turn." The deeper you dig, the more you'll begin to uncover "centuries of tragedy that have befallen the manor and the sad stories of spirits suffering because of it."

As with the adventures of Detective Francis McQueen and Officer Patrick Dooley, The Séance of Blake Manor offers a blend of worldly and otherworldly investigation. But that's about where similarities with The Darkside Detective end and the differences begin. Gone is the third-person pixel art presentation and heavy emphasis on humour, replaced here by first-person 3D navigation through a comic book-style aesthetic in a darkly atmospheric, occult-themed mystery "inspired by Irish mythology and the spiritualist movements of the Victorian era." You'll need to thoroughly explore the estate's "haunted corridors" to reach "forbidden areas of the hotel… and beyond," solving any environmental puzzles you encounter and recording your relevant findings in your journal. As a detective, you must also "interrogate an eclectic group of suspects to learn more about their motivations and unearth any clues they may be hiding." The catch is, you have limited time to find Evelyn and identify the perpetrator during the day, and "each action and every lost minute counts the day down." To succeed you'll have to "be in the right place at the right time to catch critical events pertinent to your investigation." Nightfall promises to bring its own unique challenges,  as "who knows what hidden secrets lie in wait once you’ve turned in."

There is no target release date for The Séance of Blake Manor, but you don't need to be a psychic to know that the game will eventually be launched on Steam for Windows PC.