The Séance of Blake Manor channels classic detective tales with an Irish supernatural twist
Something strange is brewing at Blake Manor. Set in 1897 Ireland at a remote hotel, you arrive to investigate the disappearance of Evelyn Deane, but there’s the occult and strange mysteries to unpeel before the truth can be discovered, and there’s just 48 hours to go before a ritual will bring everything to a head in The Séance of Blake Manor.
Spooky Doorway cut their teeth on the detective mystery genre with the Darkside Detective series, but Blake Manor pushes things in a rather different direction. This is a sprawling mystery with dozens of potential suspects to rule out, a ticking clock that determines the flow and nature of your investigation, and obviously plenty of potentially supernatural goings on, steeped in distinctly Irish mythology.
The opening of the game, though, is much more guided and direct. The deep Irish voice of Declan Ward lulls you into the dour, sombre tone of this investigation, as he takes train and carriage to the manor’s gate. Trudging through the gardens at the front of the manor, the setting and thunderstorm is immediately evocative of this kind of detective story. It doesn’t help that a shadowy figure stood by the fountain suddenly bursts into a flurry of crows flapping away, leaving a shawl behind which humorously suggests it was actually seven crows in a trench coat and not a hunched-over old lady.
The lobby of the manor hotel is empty, save for traditional jack-o-lanterns carved out of oversized turnips – Halloween originated in Ireland, after all. but ringing a bell brings the sour-faced concierge to the table, whose appearance immediately raises questions. How did his glasses come to bear a large crack in one of the lenses? Why is he so tense and preoccupied with the time?
You can question him directly over Evelyn Deane’s disappearance, and follow up on the visual clues found by a bit of traditional point & click screen scouring, but he’s evasive and preoccupied at best. Something about needing to deal with telegrams by hand…
As he retreats to his office, you can start poking around, but the deeper you investigate, the more time passes. There’s no ticking clock mapped to real time, but rather time will advance whenever Ward interacts with objects and characters in the game. It’s an interesting choice that might force you to be more judicious than is typical for games, where players often have a tendency to interact with anything and everything possible. Still, there’s immediately some curious clues to uncover. Poking around in the side rooms for luggage and coats, you can see something hidden behind an air vent, or overhear the concierge muttering about a busted window. There’s also the log book that you can snoop through to see if Miss Deane truly had checked herself out of the manor and left – unsurprisingly, this does not seem to be the case.
The trick is figuring out how to fix the telegram machine, to bring the concierge out of his office and let you snoop within there, and that means constructing a battery from an assortment of electrical discs. A simple starter puzzle, but a nice one to make you feel ever-so-slightly smart.
Much smarter, of course, than when I just bungled into the office and got told to leave. Then I had the bright idea of going out and climbing through the window… except the concierge was still there, banning me from the hotel grounds and getting a dismal game over screen.
Not my finest moment, but quite hilarious. I got it right the second time round.
It was when heading to bed that the real spookiness started, a thoroughly demonic dream sequence befitting of the Overlook Hotel or Twin Peaks. It’s all brooding, dark and bathed in red light as you walk down fish-eyed hallways, and still absolutely in keeping with the graphic novel inspired art style through the rest of the game. The setting is rendered in 3D, but characters are all represented with eight-direction character art, while comic book cutaway panels give a distinctive tone.
It’s only after waking from a frightful night that the game starts to loosen its reigns on your investigation. Stepping out of the room the next day, after a loud noise startled the assorted guests, you’re greeted by all manner of potential suspects, coming from all manner of background and superstitions, and all with their own secrets to hide.
With so many names and faces thrown at you, having a physical pen and paper will no doubt be key to keeping track of everything, but the game does have built in tools within the Mystery Map. This neatly organises all the key clues and narrative threads that you’ve uncovered so far, joining them up for you in a colour-coded web that makes them easier to digest. At various points, you’ll have to make a deduction, filling in the blanks from a particular phrase using the clues and evidence you’ve gathered.
Alongside this, you also have a timetable that lets you track the known locations of all the staff and guests, automatically populated from things like a staff rota and messages you’ve managed to find between people. If you need to find a particular person at a specific time, this will absolutely help, and Spooky Door is building in a feature to let you rewind and retry portions of the game if you run out of time before the séance itself.
All too soon, our time with the game came to an end, just as it would broaden out to reveal the full scope of the mysteries. Having such a broad cast of characters to investigate, it will be fascinating to see how this gels with the game’s time limit. Certainly, there’s an implication from my brief game over that you need to not only save Miss Deane, but also save people from attending the séance. This is absolutely one to watch for fans of mysteries and puzzles.
