Happy about: The Séance of Blake Manor

While a lot of people recommended me The Darkside Detective, a comedic point and click adventure game from Spooky Doorway, when I did try it for myself, I wasn’t a fan and never finished it. Nonetheless, when “Eldritch House” was originally announced a couple of years ago, I got intrigued. It was shaping up to be a very curious investigation focused adventure game with some cosmic/weird horror flavour and with interesting visual design too. That game was renamed The Séance of Blake Manor alongside the release date announcement and now that I’ve had time to play it, I’m very impressed. Even if it’s a flawed game.

The general idea of this title is that you’re a sudden guest at a hotel full of other people who have gathered for a very special seance. Except unlike seemingly everyone else, you’re here not there for the spiritual thrills, but on an investigation as one of the guests have gone missing. But the location appears to be genuinely haunted and other guests seem to have real magical powers, so the investigation is going to take a lot of very unexpected turns. To translate the premise to the gameplay, the developers decided to make the game explorable from first person perspective, where the locations have interactable items and other characters, but interactions might cost time. There is a clock that is almost always visible and all major events in the game, and some minor ones, happen on a schedule, so you need to manage the time you spend interacting with things to be sure you’re not missing out on important things. Characters also work on a schedule, so not every character is readily available to you at every hour. And being found in a location you’re not meant to be, which can happen when an hour ends and a character returns to such a room you’re already in, will lead to a fail state.

This sounds quite imposing at first and the game’s opening task that is designed as a tutorial is there specifically to teach you about the importance of being efficient with time and also not being too suspicious. But in reality, the rest of the game is far more lax and this “trial by fire” is there seemingly just to make sure players understand that they shouldn’t attempt to investigate any pointless thing or ask about everything in dialogues and focus on the essential. Since if you do, you will have time to spare by the time the game is ready to be over. Plus, as I’ve mentioned, only interactions (and not all of them) cost time, so you can freely explore all accessible locations in the game without the time going forward even a minute, before you decide to commit to a specific action that will actually have a cost.

To help you with the investigation, the game has several dedicated tabs. One is basically a “mind palace”, that shows your current goals and leads. Another is a collection of all information you’ve gathered that is relevant to the case. There’s a schedule screen that you will gradually fill in, to know where anyone is at any point in time and when events happen. And there’s a map that will show you where each character is, if you know their schedule or if you’ve entered the room. It’s not the most elegant UI solution, if I’m completely honest, and I feel that people who are either worse at self-organizing facts or who have simply made a long pause between play sessions, will get lost on return. But it’s quite good and has a lot of little hints and helpers, like the colours of the lines for leads hinting at if you’ve investigated it thoroughly enough or not.

Still, the game can get inconsistent and messy. The rules for what rooms you may or may not be found in, for example, aren’t always what you think they are – usually it’s a big no-no to be found in a room to which you’re not supposed to have a key, but then there are moments where you can. And it’s also odd that you can’t simply knock on the door and ask for some of the character’s time if they are in the room, instead of having to wait until they get out and are in a public space. Some of the investigations require, basically, pixel hunting and while there is a “detective vision” that highlights interactable elements, it feels almost like a crutch. And there may be moments where you think you’re lacking information and need to investigate something else first, where in reality you already have access to everything you need, you just forgot where it was among dozens of evidence items or didn’t notice a small element in the room. Game also cannot quite find the right balance between being dependent on major story events and being a hands free investigation, so it constantly swings between being almost mindlessly railroaded, to requiring you to think about possible connections very carefully, to you simply not being able to do anything at all at the moment, because some events didn’t happen yet. The story flags were also often glitchy when I was playing it and the performance of the game in general was a bit odd for what it is.

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed The Séance of Blake Manor. It has good gameplay, really cool story, wonderful visual style and good soundtrack, lots of interesting flavour and atmosphere and it really isn’t as tense as I was afraid it would be when the game introduced the time management at the beginning. It’s very enjoyable, as long as you stay smart about using the time you have… and using the detective vision to pixel hunt carefully. It didn’t quite stick the landing to be a fantastic experience, but it is a good and easy to recommend experience.