Carnival coming before The Tragic Loss of M. Slazak on Steam

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Two new mystery horror adventures on the way from the solo developer of Abscission

Most smaller indie developers are content to focus on one game at a time. Not so for Beyond Booleans, as the UK studio behind the Lovecraftian detective mystery Abscission has already lifted the veil on its next two projects, Carnival and The Tragic Loss of M. Slazak.

Carnival

First up is Carnival, an "atmospheric folk horror" adventure in which you assume the role of journalist James Maynard in 1933. His latest assignment is what seems like a "mundane story about Venice and its planned road bridge," but with the rise of Mussolini it's a turbulent time for the famed Italian city, and you'll soon find yourself "uncovering a disturbing underbelly to the local customs, and a hideous core to the notion of Venetian pride." Compounding matters is the protagonist's narcolepsy, which not only causes James to randomly lose consciousness, it also impacts "both his memory and perception of the increasingly twisted reality around him."

With a chunkier retro pixel art style than Abscission and a simple two-button interface, the game features lots of items to collect, people to question and puzzles to solve while traversing many "locations drawn from Venice itself." It's up to you how to approach your relationships with the locals, allowing you to "influence events in the game and achieve multiple different endings."

The full version of Carnival is coming soon, due to arrive on Steam on August 25th for Windows PC. In the meantime, a playable demo is available to download, either from Steam or itch.io, giving players their first taste of the historic setting and its darker, hidden secrets.

The Tragic Loss of M. Slazak

Described as a "Lovecraftian, story-rich horror point-and-click mystery," The Tragic Loss of M. Slazak shares several elements in common with the developer's other games, while feeling slightly different in others. It's a traditional puzzle-filled adventure that returns to the more detailed pixel art aesthetic of Abscission, but here the perspective puts players a little closer to the third-person action. This allows for in-game character facial detail to go with larger box portraits during conversation.

The story involves the disappearance of the titular Miroslav Slazak, a "Polish immigrant who fled to Britain shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War" and set up shop as an antique dealer. It's now 1997, and a group of six friends and family have gathered at Miroslav's invitation to help him celebrate his 96th birthday. But when Miroslav doesn't show up, it's up to his only grandson, Borys, to lead the search for him through the "bizarre interior of his grandfather's home." Before long, Borys is swept up in "a twisting labyrinth and fighting for his life against threats both seen and unseen," even as he's forced to deal with "increasingly strained relationships with his companions" and "come to terms with the changing picture of the man he thought he knew."

There is no target release date for The Tragic Loss of M. Slazak just yet, but you can sample this game right away as well, as a playable demo is available for Windows PC, similarly on both Steam and itch.io.