The Indie Informer

“I ‘ll waste no time, as there’s none for wasting.”

It’s a gripping opening line, flowing into a commanding speech heard over the wail of a night lashed with rain, that sets the tone for both the atmosphere and writing. A chillingly enthralling mystery, The Séance of Blake Manor resonates with an eeriness earned not by cheap thrills but with carefully crafted tension.

On October 29, 1897, Declan Ward arrives at Blake Manor in the west of Ireland. Irish history fan that I am, I immediately admire how fraught the setting is even before stepping through the hotel’s front doors — and how perfect for a murder mystery. Blake is not an Irish name. Many of the island’s landed gentry at this point in time were not Irish, but English, whose titles had been written in blood centuries before.

The specific date of our tumultuous setting is also remarkable. Only two score years removed from The Great Famine, which devastated Ireland and especially the more rural western Ireland, people were still living who had witnessed the indescribable suffering left in its wake. The echo of that suffering reverberates through the game’s halls. Consequently, my blood boiled when the noble head of Blake Manor moaned about how those years left his family no choice but to turn the estate into a profit-turning hotel. It’s a brilliant dew-drop of writing resting on a complex web of woven tensions. And the spider lurks in the shadows, waiting for the kill.

Our protagonist Declan Ward brings his own ghosts to the manor’s entry halls, but that remains its own mystery for a while. What we do know is he has received a letter imploring him to investigate the disappearance of a young woman who was staying at the hotel. The letter is unsigned, but pays well.

Questions heaped upon questions, the player enters a deep but accessible detective experience. The comic-book-style artwork is shaded with intrigue that makes me want to investigate everything. But I can’t. The clock is ticking.

As stunning as the writing and atmosphere are, the game’s mechanical functioning rivals them. I arrive just days before Halloween, or more appropriately in this case, Samhain, when the titular seance is set to begin. The time of day, ever-present at the top of the screen, looms over my head literally and figuratively. Time doesn’t flow on its own; instead, the clock is tied to my actions. Interacting with the prompt to investigate almost anything, from the traditionally carved Jack-o’-Lantern turnips to interrogating an NPC, forces you to spend a certain amount of time. Usually, this time cost is only one minute, so I can reasonably expect to have sixty interactions most hours.

It’s so perfectly not enough. I can’t ask every question I’d like or scour every inch for the secrets this house holds. This creates a real sense of urgency and verisimilitude without making my efforts feel unimportant or my goal impossible. Every hour, the hotel’s occupants move places according to their own set schedules. So, learning their weekend plans can be the difference between missing something vital and solving the case. However, since the clock doesn’t move until I choose it to, I can take my time figuring out my next move and working through my deductions.

The system for deduction-making is a novel mix between Clue and The Case of the Golden Idol. Talking to the odd collection of people who have come for an odd collection of reasons to participate in the seance, I collect clues for my inventory’s repertoire. Some hints come from the walls themselves, the extensive library, or even from my dreams (which are more than they first seem). Each helps me weed out the culprit of a murder that may not have been committed, making me feel clever while still guiding me.

When I have collected enough hints, I can create a hypothesis which takes the form of a Golden Idol-style word lib. Using these to uncover individuals’ hidden motives or untangle small events eventually leads to solving the central enigma.

I won’t touch on what that conclusion is here; however, I do want to appreciate how richly The Séance of Blake Manor rewards players for the effort they have put in and the choices they have made. I can’t wait to watch others’ playthroughs to see how the decisions they made or the roads they didn’t take change the game’s world when all is said and done. It doesn’t take much investigation to see this game is one of the year’s best — and it might also be one of my favorite detective experiences of all time.