The Seance of Blake Manor is a folk horror detective game, but I’ve been too busy digging through my fellow hotel guests’ drawers to solve its supernatural mystery
I’m sharing conversation over breakfast with an undertaker and a charming widow when a clatter of dishes draws their attention away. This is my chance—I swipe the unattended room key.
An anonymous tip has led me to investigate the disappearance of one Evelyn Deane from Blake Manor in Ireland. Luckily for my investigation, it turns out Evelyn Deane was hardly a shrinking violet, though even the briefest of chats with my fellow guests suggests her vanishing is just the gothic spire of this iceberg. There is something rotten in Blake Manor…and I’m sure I’ll get to it at some point after I’ve thoroughly nosed through all of my fellow guests’ dirty laundry.
Like the very best who’dunnits, everyone is guilty of something. By snooping where you shouldn’t and demanding other guests dish the goss, you’ll slowly stitch together a spider web of evidence. The Seance of Blake Manor lays this out visually in the cleanly designed mystery menu, which even indicates avenues of investigation you’ve yet to fully explore. For some, a physical notebook may prove best, but for me and my abysmal handwriting, this mystery mind map is a real brain-saver.
Once you’ve gathered enough info, you can piece together a Golden Idol style deduction and then really make your fellow guests squirm. Confronting each guest about their guilt isn’t just a thrill for busy bodies like me, but necessary to save each one’s mortal flesh from the wicked schemes afoot.
Taking my first steps on the grounds, I’m reminded of 2015’s Crimson Peak and its opening line, ‘Ghosts are real.’ The art style’s Mike Mignola-esque, inky black shadows might be what inspires the red-string corkboard I call a brain to make the Guillermo Del Toro connection. Then again, a shadowy form I spy by the manor’s fountain bursting into a murder of crows might have also had something to do with it.
Once a private estate, the surviving members of the Blake family have turned it into a hotel which is playing host to an eclectic mix of spiritualists, and sceptics when I arrive on the scene. They’re all here to witness a seance taking place on All Hallow’s Eve that promises to cut out the medium middle man and achieve direct communication with a spirit. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this isn’t a parlor trick but a dangerous ritual that threatens to tear a supernatural hole straight through the side of Ireland.
To stop that from happening, I’m going to need a lot of keys I shouldn’t have. As the charming widow asks the grumpy, bespectacled receptionist about a replacement for the one I’ve lifted, I head upstairs.
In any investigation, time is your most valuable asset but The Seance of Blake Manor really means it. Whenever you question a guest, unearth evidence, or crack open an arcane lockbox that definitely doesn’t belong to you, time passes. Whenever you’re stuck wandering around in circles, reviewing evidence in search of a lead, time has the good sense to wait around while you noodle on the mystery.
I’ve barely begun turning over the charming widow’s chambers when I stumble upon a stack of racy letters addressed to her late husband—in handwriting suspiciously similar to Miss Evelyn Deane’s signature in the hotel logbook. Well, that’s definitely motive.
But before I can confront the charming widow, I am distracted. First by the honest to goodness druid whose life story I’m eager to hear, and then by the undertaker’s musings on the Celtic goddess Bríd and her cross-cultural forms. He explains the parallel to not just the church’s Saint Brigid of Kildare, but also voodoo’s Maman Brigitte. How odd, he muses, that all three figures should see representatives in attendance at our seance. Alas, I have to cut our scintillating conversation short—I’m running late for the talk in the drawing room on Ireland’s fair folk.
Poring over tomes on Irish history, mythology, and folklore in the library, the clock chimes late on the Sunday evening. I still haven’t confronted that charming widow—and as the guests file towards the hedgemaze, it’s clear the moment has passed. Due to my nosiness, a grand total of four guests live to tell the tale. Due to my incorrigible distractability, that number does not include my own put-upon investigator, Declan Ward, who is ultimately engulfed by green flames. You mark my words, Blake Manor, I’ll be back for your secrets yet.
All Hallow’s Eve may have passed, but The Seance of Blake Manor offers a mystery you can enjoy all year round. Check out the demo on Steam.
