The Séance of Blake Manor

This is a truly fantastic experience, but I believe the Detective and Puzzle tags are only lightly applicable. For any players expecting a true logical deduction or outright puzzler à la Return of the Obra Dinn or Case of the Golden Idol you may well find this shallow if compared directly. Blake Manor instead feels (and should be approached) like you are playing through an old Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot novel, taking in the storyline and atmosphere of the mystery as it unfolds while being reasonably certain that you will get a satisfying conclusion presented to you, rather than having to actually wrench it out yourself.

And storyline and atmosphere is exactly what the dev's both promise and deliver, it's clear they have a lot of love for the chosen setting and theme of Late 1800's Ireland. The manor itself feels realistic but ominous, every character present has their own fleshed out plotline that believably twists and connects with the others, and all are fully voice acted to a solid standard (very occasionally a bit cheesy) that keep the tone well-set for the entire game. The music is well crafted and placed, but perhaps just starts to feel a bit formulaic towards the end game since there's only a few looping tracks to cover the majority of your playtime.

The actual mechanics of the game are where things start to come undone. While never truly ruining the experience, it's fair to say that the actual 'detective' work is fairly formulaic.



In terms of the time mechanic however, I feel many other reviewers have been unnecessarily harsh without truly understanding it. As a player who normally hates games with time limits or a push to complete them quickly, I actually really enjoyed this mechanic, it is in fact better thought of as an 'energy' system rather than proper time. Exploring the manor and moving around costs you no time whatsoever, nor does time simply pass in real-time while standing around. Instead any action (reading a newspaper, opening a chest, talking to another person) has a time cost that is always indicated in-advance, but there are also far too many possible actions to be able to choose everything. This forces the player to consider which paths they wish to pursue with the time available, rather than methodically inspecting literally every possible interactive, without actually forcing you to make rash decisions as you (the player) can sit and puzzle out your choices without actually having to commit to them under pressure.

In conclusion this is an excellently themed and presented story that it's clear the dev's had a passion for in it's development, as long as you go into it expecting a supernatural detective story, rather than a true detective puzzle experience.