The Séance of Blake Manor review: "Like horror Clue come to life, this supernatural mystery against the clock is incredibly immersive"

The Séance of Blake Manor is going to happen whether investigator Declan Ward likes it or not. Arriving at the titular hotel just in time for a gathering of mystics, paid by an anonymous client to track down the missing Evelyn Deane, you only have the weekend to unravel the truth behind the dark dreams and supernatural occurrences that are bubbling to the surface as power swells ahead of the ritual. But with so many secrets to unpick, where do you start?

Set in the west of Ireland in 1897, The Séance of Blake Manor is a lavish supernatural adventure that's easily become one of the best mystery games in recent years – and it's a genre I love. Irish folklore is fantastic to delve into, as is the attention to detail in its period setting. Even whether certain characters are literate can provide vital clues, but clear signposting means you never feel admonished for not knowing something about mythology or history. So too are supernatural parts of solutions crucial, yet carefully balanced so these aspects don't undermine the logic of clues. Untangling how certain schools of magic think and work is an important part of the mystery. It creates a wonderful texture.

Checking in

Coming from Spooky Doorway, the developer of the underrated pixel art detective series The Darkside Detective, this isn't the studio's first foray into mystery gaming, but it is its most ambitious. After a brief tutorial, Declan is free to explore the manor as he likes in first-person, only having to keep in mind the passage of time, where each guest is located, and which doors are either unlocked or can be crept through.

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Time only passes, often minute by minute, when you actively choose to investigate something. It's used as a resource, rather than actually putting you against the clock – just one of many ways The Séance of Blake Manor feels wonderfully board gamey, like getting to poke around a haunted Clue. Look through a journal and a minute passes. Check out a painting and that's another gone. Ask a guest about the sigil on their intriguing broach. Peek at their shoe size while undetected in their room. The minutes slip by with ease.

With so many bits of evidence to unpack with each guest, and a manor so dense with objects, you'll need to be tactical about how you spend your time. It really makes the investigation feel tangible, and Blake Manor and its guests feel alive with their own motivations behind everything they do as they await the séance.

Neatly, the manor reshuffles each hour as guests stick to their schedules. Some may pass the time in the library. Others flock to the bar when it opens. Some attend a range of talks in the drawing room – which you may attend as well, or take advantage of their absence from their rooms to be nosy. Schedules are tracked, always available on a hotkey, and reminders can be set to nudge you when each hour rolls around. With the option to even listen at doors to see who else is there, I'm reminded of the equally schedule-driven and eternally iconic Laura Bow mystery games from Sierra, such as The Colonel's Bequest. To this day, those games remain some of the most ambitious feats in gaming to my mind, and The Séance of Blake Manor feeling like a modernized version of those is a high compliment indeed.

But there's no pixel art here (besides one cute Darkside Detective reference). The Séance of Blake Manor's comic book style artwork is gorgeous and an effective part of the mystery. Deep, almost Hellboy-style blacks emphasize the many shadows that dance around Blake Manor's dark, occult mystery. Detailed elements of each character design allow Declan Ward to make deductions about their background and uncover conversation topics. Even visual onomatopoeia, like the crackling of a fire, can draw attention to what you need to investigate. While The Séance of Blake Manor does have a detective vision button to further highlight objects of interaction, the visual design is so clear that I rarely need to actually use it.

So too is The Séance of Blake Manor good at keeping you on track when it comes to the many clues you'll need to juggle. While I find it handy to keep a notebook at my side, especially to jot down symbols (codes and lockboxes are plentiful) I don't need to rely on it too much – for the most part everything is kept neatly in Declan's evidence folder, and linked clearly to discrete mindmaps pertaining to each mystery. Even the core goal to track down Evelyn Deane is split into individual steps.

Even each node of evidence – ranging from topics, the profiles of other guests, and actual objects themselves – clearly displays a character portrait alongside it for who you can discuss it with, and an eye symbol marking who you've already presented it to. Even re-checking evidence you've looked at – rifling back through a room, for example – doesn't incur a new time cost.

Guest list

Though the opening couple of hours seem quite tight, setting you a couple of hour-long tasks to get a feel of the game, The Séance of Blake Manor is incredibly friendly once you're let loose to pull out all the many threads on offer. And corkboard-like strings of investigation are tangled and plentiful. The simple premise to find out what happened to Evelyn, and who among the guests might be responsible, quickly balloons. Turns out, the magically minded attendees are almost all involved in something no good, basically all of them having at least some motivation. Figuring out how involved they were with Evelyn means helping them out with their own problems.

The diverse range of guests all have their own reasons for attending, magical specializations, and cultural backgrounds, making The Séance of Blake Manor a feast of supernatural flavors. Tarot readers, the angel obsessed, devout catholics, druids, and more always give you something new to latch onto. Which also means that beyond drilling into their own individual mysteries, they all bring different perspectives when asked about pieces of evidence, often prompting you to connect individuals who can help one another out, or who can elucidate lines of investigation for you more clearly.

Though you've an incredible amount of freedom in how you approach helping out each guest and investigating, the mysteries themselves are set in stone. It's more about puzzling out solutions than making narrative choices, though a handful of moments do present you with moral-like decisions. They're nice bits of lightweight roleplaying, but it did take me a while to settle into the expectations of the flow of investigation because of it.

Even though you're mostly free to explore, some avenues of investigation are locked off until later points in the weekend. Clearly signposted, they do mean that some aspects of the investigation pretty obviously have more weight than others just by the nature of having to wait it out, which means some parts of the narrative aren't that surprising as a result. At other times, you can come very close to wrapping up a character's storyline before having to wait many hours for something else to give you the final piece, which can leave you feeling like you've got unfinished business hanging over you for quite some time. Even so, I love the idea that I'm snooping around under my own steam – it makes the sequence of events as I learn more about The Séance of Blake Manor's magical world feel like my own personal discovery.

While exploring by walking around presents lots of great opportunities to stumble upon threads of evidence, whether that's eavesdropping on a private conversation or just spotting something worth rifling through, trekking back and forth does eventually lose its luster. The further you get in, the more areas open up, with most additions being quite large areas that are relatively empty of evidence. There's a lot of value in walking about early on – especially before you've nailed down each guests' schedules so you might stumble upon someone. But, eventually, when you've narrowed down the number of mysteries considerably, you can't help but dream of a bit of fast travel.

There's a great deal of fantastic writing. The diversity in characters comes across in their voices, whether that's what they're saying or the actual voice acting itself. Most of them are likable as well, even the ones certainly involved in some particularly nefarious events. There's lots of morally grey conundrums without The Séance of Blake Manor asking you to be judgy. You're just here to solve problems, not to mete out justice. It fits the supernatural tone well.

It can sometimes feel odd when you ask guests about evidence out of sequence. For example when asking about a secret they've revealed to you already, some will still be coy about said secret when talking about other topics – because you can ask them about those topics before delving deep into their own storyline. It's definitely gamey, but all feels part of that board-game-like vibe. If anything, feeling occasionally tripped up by these conversation sequences just goes to show how otherwise immersive The Séance of Blake Manor really is.

Playing it over the course of an actual weekend myself, I really feel a deep connection with unravelling this folklore mystery. Even though I'm conscious of how the mystery was stitched together, the exacting detail with which it's all been put together keeps the illusion strong. The Séance of Blake Manor is the kind of mystery that makes you want to believe – and a reminder that gaming can be truly magic. The Séance of Blake Manor is out now on PC.

Looking for more folklore-inspired mysteries? Check out our Carimara: Beneath the Forlorn Limbs review, where we said that "Playing as a goblin thing to crack a gothic fairy tale mystery with magical cards has quickly become one of my favorite gaming short stories"