The Dark Rites of Arkham review

• Reviews by Johnny Nys
• Published:

Occult Lovecraftian thriller is another bewitching point-and-click pixel art mystery from Postmodern Adventures

Just another night in Arkham, Massachusetts… Detective Jack Foster is on the trail of a pair of blackmailers squeezing down on the mayor for his romantic escapades. A foul yet familiar smell further down the hallway of their hotel draws Jack’s attention – the stench of rot, of decay. Of death. Forcing his way inside, Jack discovers the remains of a satanic ritual: one man beheaded, another burned to ashes with only a single hand remaining, in a room from which no one could have escaped.

Thus begins the noir-steeped Lovecraftian mystery that is The Dark Rites of Arkham, the latest creation of Postmodern Adventures. Here the creator of An English Haunting and Nightmare Frames hits all the right notes with its 1930s gumshoe dialogues, jazz club soundtrack, graphic violence in a detailed pixel art world, and perhaps best of all, a steady stream of intuitive, well-balanced inventory puzzles all bringing a gruesome horror story to life.

Jack is put on this new case, but his boss won’t let him fly solo this time so he’s hooked up with a new partner, Harvey Whitman. Similar to another fictional FBI agent with his own small office hidden away in a basement working on X-Files, Harvey has a knack for everything to do with black magic and dark forces, though his education has always centered more on book knowledge and the sciences. Teaming up with the more street-smart and down-to-earth Jack makes for a very odd couple indeed, but Harvey’s usefulness soon becomes apparent.

You control Jack with an easy one-click interface. The cursor arrow will flicker subtly when you hover it over something interactive. There’s no hotspot locator, so it’s completely up to the player to discern what there is to find in a particular scene. The hotspots do have labels when hovered over, though, and most items stand out enough to be noticeable at a glance, even in the most detailed of backgrounds. That’s important because each room is packed with frames on the walls, objects on shelves, and cluttered tables and desks, while the Arkham streets all have posters attached to building facades and fences.

Clicking on a hotpot will have the detective examine an object, pick it up, or if it’s another character, talk to them. The inventory drops down from the top of the screen when you get near enough with the cursor. Only once did it do so when I was simply trying to examine something in the environment. There are instances where you will control Harvey directly as well, when the duo has split up and Jack is otherwise occupied. Most of the time, he will simply step forward when needed and perform actions or talk to people out of his own volition.

Each location throughout the game is splendidly designed in stylish pixel art and filled with things to see and hear. Dark yet lively animated streets are filled with pedestrians and period-appropriate cars, both in the foreground and in the background. There’s great attention to detail when it comes to lighting as well: car headlights pierce the darkness, chandeliers give off warm glows, and skylights let in the blueish light of the moon.

Ambience is provided by sound effects of vehicles, footsteps, people coughing, barrel fires crackling, a hooting owl in the forest and the distant growls and roars of creatures better left unseen. There isn’t any voice acting, but I didn’t really miss that. It could have elevated the production quality even more, but music fills the void masterfully. Most scenes are brought to life by a jazz band, comprised mostly of piano, double bass, and saxophone. Arkham’s Museum of the Unusual has a typical spooky theremin track, and there’s a cult community in the woods where gentle flutes take the upper hand.

While The Dark Rites of Arkham isn’t split up into chapters, you could say there are basically three huge acts. The first is spent in the city of Arkham: the police station, an antique store, a diner, a psychiatrist’s office, the Meskatonic University, the city park, and more. There you’ll follow leads, track down suspects, and find ways to gain entry to their hiding spots. The second part is with the cult, where you have to take the necessary steps for a ritual to take place so that you are free to snoop around more. The story then takes you to a prison, where a member on death row might hold valuable information leading up to the game’s finale. Many times you will have to distract people by creating diversions so you can gain access to places or items they don’t want you near, all done by gathering information and solving inventory puzzles.

The Dark Rites of Arkham

Genre:	Mystery
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D
Theme:	Historical, Monsters, Whodunit, Lovecraftian
Perspective:	Third-Person
Graphic Style:	Pixel art
Gameplay:	Investigative
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Medium (5-10 hours)
Difficulty:	Low

When a lead uncovers a new destination, it’s added to the city map, which flashes for a moment in the corner of the screen. You can’t access the map at will, only by departing your location via an actual street exit. Thankfully, you can double-click on an exit to travel faster should you wish (though doing so elsewhere doesn’t make the detectives walk more quickly). Once everything in the current setting has been discovered, usually Harvey will say there’s nothing left to do there when you talk to him, and its icon is also removed from the map – but not always. For instance, while the locations of three important suspects vanished immediately after I had dealt with them, the museum remained accessible until long after I had wrapped up my business there, perhaps so I could unlock optional achievements. For the final part of the game, all locations are removed from the map except for the two required.

I quite enjoyed the pacing of this game, and the difficulty of its puzzles. There is no hint system of any kind, but only once did I stumble around, revisiting each place looking for something I'd missed. Even then, it turned out I just had to talk to an extra character I assumed was only there for window dressing. Other than that, it was smooth sailing with very logical puzzle solutions, which anyone really thirsting for a challenge might wish perhaps were a bit trickier.

When talking to key characters in the story, you are treated to detailed close-ups of them. These interview scenes totally show off the artistry of the designer. Jack and Harvey are standing in the shadowy foreground, their backs to the player, with the interviewee in full frontal view, their eyes darting back and forth between the two detectives.

Just to name a few of the people you will encounter, there’s Benjamin Marsh, the freakish-looking owner of the antique store and expert in strange symbols; a former Innsmouth resident whose appearance is rumored to be due to inbreeding and exotic “outside” influences; the owner of Arkham’s Museum of the Unusual and his tour guide, keeping a close eye on you to make sure you don’t touch any of the exhibits; a couple of stuffy professors at the university who will most likely get on your nerves with their haughty attitudes; and you will have to hunt down three witches who might have aided in the murder: Mary Warren, Abigail Revell, and Keziah Mason, whom people might know from the Lovecraft short story “The Dreams in the Witch House.”

Even when all the pieces start to fall in place, there’s sure to still be a surprise or two. The Dark Rites of Arkham will make the hair on the back of your neck tingle as you expect danger around every corner. The supernatural factor is cranked up as you discover the locked room mystery with the mutilated corpses may have potential ties to the three witches, who traveled two hundred years into the future after escaping the infamous Salem trials. To get close enough to question them, you will have to find a way past their magic first. The case gets even darker when you stumble upon a conspiracy involving a cult determined to bring about the end of the world. And all the while, you never quite know for sure who your allies or enemies are. In this gritty 1930s environment, everyone is thirsting for some kind of salvation during Prohibition and the Great Depression, with the many strange goings-on making them just short of crazy.

You don’t need to be a Lovecraft fan to enjoy the story here. The world-building doesn’t overload you with useless information, and there’s not a word uttered that doesn’t need to be there. While Postmodern Adventures is a Spanish solo developer, the English translation of The Dark Rites of Arkham is sublime. All texts are written very succinctly to keep them crisp, and this could very well have been a script for the big screen. No two characters sound alike, and the lingo always feels genuine, whether from cops, city folk, cult members, academics, politicians or two-hundred-year-old witches. And throughout what is otherwise a very violent and horrific mystery, Jack constantly being annoyed by Harvey’s by-the-book attitude provides just enough comic relief.

Just as with An English Haunting, I wound up with about twenty save files because of the constant tension that something bad was going to happen. You can’t actually die, though there are some scenes where you feel the pressure of acting fast. Still, I was very glad for that manual save system, if only so I was able to save on the spot and take a little break after I had just completed a suspenseful sequence. There is violence in this game: shots are fired, blood flows, and you will see mutilated corpses as well as some nightmarish inhabitants of H.P. Lovecraft’s world, though of course it’s all done in the same stylish pixel art and so not (too) disturbingly realistic. There was only one small jump scare I definitely should have seen coming, but I didn’t expect the sudden loud musical sting to accompany it.

Final Verdict

As much as I love books, there’s almost no need to read the original Lovecraft stories when there are amazing developers like Postmodern Adventures creating such well-crafted interactive stories based on them. The gorgeous pixel art here brings both the city and its residents to life, and even without voice acting, the writing pulls you forward along its fairly linear tracks, tapping your foot to the raspy tones of the jazzy soundtrack as you go. With plenty of locations to explore, characters to question, and items to find and puzzle around with, The Dark Rites of Arkham is a very traditional yet utterly enjoyable point-and-click adventure that proves there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. As long as the ride takes us to the darkest reaches of our world and beyond, I’ll gladly spend eight hours of my life on grisly creations like this one!

Johnny played The Dark Rites of Arkham on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.