Blood on the Thames to flow this summer on PC

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Victorian-era murder mystery blends black-and-white photographs with sketch-style backgrounds

Jack the Ripper is Victorian-era London's most famous killer, but was he the only one? Did he kill others with a different M.O. than his previously identified victims? That'll be for you to decide in Team Firestorm's upcoming historical "macabre" murder mystery, Blood on the Thames. 

In 1888, Quincy Ernest's corpse is pulled out of London's famed titular river, his body "savaged by something in the water." Tragedy continues to follow his wife Minerva, as a month later, after returning home from being questioned by police, she discovers "her maid collapsed in a pool of blood, sending the trajectory of her life into a terrifying spiral." To uncover the truth, Minerva will need to traverse the smoky city streets in search of clues, using her special "detective vision" to help "spot the most important details in the room." The deeper she digs, the more convinced she is that "there are no coincidences, no accidents, and even the impossible may simply be the magical manipulation of fate." As her investigation proceeds, she comes to believe that she's pitted against "forces beyond this world," a realization that makes her start to question her own sanity. It'll be up to players to help the tormented widow "piece together how these strands might weave their way to the answers, no matter how horrifying."

Presented largely in black and white, Blood on the Thames features a combination of real photographs with first-person 3D graphics treated to look like hand-drawn pencil sketches. The case will take players across the "intricate and historical Victorian London streets, from the most lavish of lounge rooms to oppressive and shadowy industrial plants," with stops ranging from "the perceived sanctuary of the Ernests’ home to the police station, the banks of the Thames, the catacombs of the city, and perhaps somewhere not quite of this world." There you'll scour for evidence and interrogate a diverse cast of characters, none of whom are "who they appear to be." To separate the truth from fiction, you must present "the right facts to exploit contradictions." Fail and you must "face your fate with the twisting, turning machinations of an unknowable entity that could change the very nature of Minerva’s reality."

While no target release date for Blood on the Thames has been annnounced just yet, all clues point to a launch on Steam and the Epic Games Store for Windows PC sometime in the third quarter of 2024.

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