Turnip! Everywhere! As far as the eye can see! Well, not exactly, but there sure are a lot of them in The Blake Manor Session. This may seem like a strange start for a brilliant new supernatural detective mystery from developer Spooky Doorway, but it actually says quite a lot about what makes it so good. Here, the amusing historical footnote that jack-o'-lanterns were originally carved from turnips turns into a feature, as angry turnip faces peer from dark corners and sit in ghoulish formation along the imposing staircase. It's a minor detail in the grand scheme of things, but it's what gives this creepy deductive tale an air of historical authenticity that sells its supernatural premise that much more effectively.
It's 1879 and you, Declan Ward, have been called to the titular estate – now the Grand Hotel – to investigate the suspicious disappearance of a young woman named Evelyn Dean. When your carriage pulls into this remote, rain-drenched corner of Connemara, western Ireland, it doesn't take long to realize that something might be wrong. Suddenly a figure appears in the dark courtyard, but disappears in a flutter of flapping wings as lightning strikes another. But this isn't a game of cheap thrills and mild thrills; Spooky Doorway quickly makes it clear that the soft-spoken Ward may not be the most reliable narrator. He recounts past interactions with the Dean family and sees horrors—souls drowning in harmless oil paintings, terrifying things in flickering flames—where horrors cannot be seen. A wealth of detail permeates every aspect of The Seance at Blake Manor, creating a tangible world of dark events in which it is easy to get lost.
At first, your goal is simple: find evidence that Evelyn Dean never left the Blake estate. You'll spy around the hotel reception and its surroundings from a first-person perspective as you wait for the receptionist to arrive, taking advantage of the moment to find discarded notes, newspaper clippings and anything else of potential value you can find. You will introduce yourself to the twitching hotel manager, analyze his behavior and try to find clues in him; then, as the mystery begins to take shape, you try to engineer a situation to sneak into his office and find out more. It's all presented in a striking comic book aesthetic with sharp shadows and bold lines, using split-screen snippets and pop-in panels to give the proceedings extra visual flair. And the unsettling ambient soundtrack, filled with quiet, looming menace, underscores it all.
It's fantastically atmospheric and incredibly tense. That's because The Séance of Blake Manor is a game where time is of the essence. Events are divided into hour-long segments, each with its own mandatory objective. But there's one catch; Each interaction—whether you're rummaging through a closet or reading a letter—takes up a unit (sometimes several) of time, which means you're always running against the clock. Therefore, it is important to think before you act and choose your investigative path carefully. For example, having successfully entered a room a few minutes before the clock strikes the hour, you may have to decide: that locked chest in the corner or those suspicious stacks of papers? This is stressful at first, but as Blake Manor's demands become more familiar, they become more manageable.
You see, Evelyn Dean is far from the only mystery that can be found within the walls of the Blake estate. You arrive at the hotel three days before All Hallows' Day, and despite its remote location, it is full of guests – spiritualists, mentalists, skeptics and many more – all here to witness the Great Seance and a never-before-seen attempt to communicate with the dead. Each guest follows their own schedule throughout the day – breakfast perhaps at nine, an afternoon lecture or two – giving the Blake estate and your evolving investigation the shape of a vast clockwork machine. And soon enough, they begin to reveal their secrets, revealing new mysteries and motives to follow as you continue your search for Evelyn Dean.
Soon, your notes (The Blake Manor Session meticulously records every interaction in a dizzying array of cross-referencing mental maps, schedules, and lists of evidence) are a fascinating tangle of possibilities. Who owns the Bible that wishes the death of supernaturalists? Why does a guest in the room have enough poison to kill a person, and then someone else? Mysteries beget mysteries, which beget mysteries—some with tight time constraints, others not—branching in countless new directions and often leading to startling discoveries. You'll explore, socialize, discover even more investigative possibilities in the library, all in the search for the truth. And if the petty grievances and murderous plans of the mundane world aren't enough to cope with, the supernatural realm seems to be increasingly seeking to assert itself, filling your restless nights with visions of dark stories and ancient runes.
I may have only spent a few hours in The Séance at Blake Manor so far, but I'm already captivated, completely captivated by the richness of it all. And even this ticking of the clock, which I thought might tire me, seems to work in its favor, concentrating my thoughts among growing possibilities and surprising freedom of inquiry, so that every deductive victory seems truly deserved. And when candles flicker in the dark hallways of the Blake estate and something terrible begins to stir, I can't think of a better place to spend this Halloween.
