New game: "The Séance of Blake Manor"

New game!

Developer Spooky Doorway already made an incredible entry in the adventure game business with their two pixel art style Darkside Detective games. Under publishment of Raw Fury, they have now released a totally different game: The Séance of Blake Manor. It's a first person point 'n click game which combines a mouse interface with directional keys to move around the 3D environment; or you could play it with a controller, of course.

How huge is this place?

We find ourselves in Ireland. It's the year 1897. Detective Declan Ward has been summoned by an anynomous party to Blake Manor. A woman, Evelyn Deane, has disappeared. This is linked to a séance that's planned for the weekend. Ward is tasked with figuring out where Evelyn went.

Cozy...

But that's not all... There are seventeen guests staying at the manor, hoping to participate in that séance. One of them is indeed responsible for the fate of Ms Deane. Yet everyone else has their own mysteries for Ward to solve. Doing so will make them change their plans regarding the séance. And once that happens, the dial on a mysterious, green glowing device drops down.

Looks like something out of Steampunk Ghostbusters...

I've played The Séance of Blake Manor for 100 minutes and already two guests have said bye bye to their séance plans. So I think I'm doing a good job. However, Ward only has a good 45 hours to make sure nobody attends the séance. And contrary to regular point 'n click adventure games, almost everything you do here takes time. Each hotspot you examine takes away one minute of your time. You are assigned different tasks over the course of your stay, and they all have a strict deadline. Miss the deadline, or get caught doing something you shouldn't, and it's GAME OVER! Thankfully there's both a manual save system and an autosave function...

I'd barely done anything!

I think I already have ten save files. The Séance of Blake Manor is making me extremely nervous. It looks and feels a bit like a combination of Return of the Obra Dinn with a bit of The Case of the Golden Idol and some Sherlock Holmes thrown in, and also a bit of Cruise for a Corpse and The Colonel's Bequest, in that you need to go to specific places at specific times to get a whiff of all the secrets. There are maps and timetables and connections on a type of deduction board, and frankly I'm very much overwhelmed by it all. I think I'll be seeing that FAIL screen a lot, but for now let's just hope for the best.

AdventureX 2025 - Episode Three: Demos Galore!

James Lightfoot with Sleeptime Village!

After meeting all those game developers and voice actors, finally we reach what AdventureX is all about: both aspiring and seasoned devs showing off their latest creation to the public. There were thirty of them and I'm sorry to say I never got close to playing them all. Decisions, decisions, you know... With so much to do and see and so many people to talk to, so many presentations to attend, these games quickly (and sadly) moved to the background. So I tried my best to reserve all Sunday morning for them.

First I played The Midnight Barber by Omaet Games. A great dev who looked happy someone had found his stand hiding behind the huge white pillar blocking his view, patiently explaining what his game was about and how it worked. So I sat down an enjoyed slowly unfolding a story in a fantasy version of Barcelona in the 1970s by Guitar Heroeing my way with a pair of scissors and a spray bottle. The dev assured me the rhythm game would get more challenging as you progress, so I'm looking forward to jam on those controller buttons, even though I had a bit of a hard time taking in what was going on in the conversation while focussing on my dexterity.

Next I moved on to Ashwood Conspiracy by Yawning Dog Studios, which reminded me of the style and atmosphere of some Cosmic Void games. You play as Marcus, whose uncle has died and you inherit what's left in his storage unit. There are inventory puzzles but also codes to break, which seems to turn this game into a huge escape room. It was a bit too crowded around the demo chair for me to fully concentrate on solving the code puzzles, so I had to cut my session short but not without promising I would continue the demo in the serenity of my own home.

The Tragedy at Deer Creek by Sparrowland fully impressed me. These two brothers have crafted an intriguing story about a photographer travelling to the Alaskan frontier to document an abandoned settlement. It was a bit frustrated at first when the main character refused to pick up anything, which a normal point 'n click adventure protagonist wouldn't have any problem with. It's only after you stumble upon some obstacle and she actually has reason to gather helpful items will she do so. The character animations were a bit slow in my opinion, and I didn't like how you couldn't use the right mouse button to examine hotspots but instead had to use the left one to choose whether to examine or use. The dev was very happy with my feedback, though, and who knows, they might even "fix" some of these issues.

While I was looking for the next demo to play, Duck Made Of Wood almost literally grabbed me and put me in his chair to play D3AD HAND, a comedic point 'n click about a Russian guard at a missile base. I must admit I hadn't played it earlier because the game's militaristic cover didn't really appeal to me. But the game quite surprised me with funny writing and cool puzzles: a gear puzzle, some code breaking, and discovering a password. Here as well I cut the game short after I puzzled my way inside the missile base, where I was left on my own devices with only a cat named Stalin as companion, to continue at a later time at home.

I had already played some demos before coming to AdventureX, like Sleepytime Village by Lightfoot Bros Games and Your Crown Is Mine by Lyyycaena. I even reviewed The Beekeeper's Picnic several times. There were also lots of games of which I already knew I would be playing the full game eventually; they no longer needed to convince me with their demos, so I felt comfortable skipping them for now: City of Voices, The Séance at Blake Manor, Shadows of the Afterland, Ghost Haunting, Legends of Castile and Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror Reforged (even though I haven't played the first Reforged yet...) I did want to play We Stay Behind by Backwoods Entertainment, but it was always occupied and I didn't get a chance.

And that concluded my first visit at AdventureX! I had a blast of a time these two days. The organisation made sure of that, but also all the people I talked to, not only the game developers and voice actors, but also complete strangers who came up to me and told me how much they liked my reviews and playthrough posts. I definitely wasn't expecting that!

And now I return to my latest review job, and I also hope I can play a couple more games before the end of the year so I can compile a decent top ten and have a good discussion with my fellow podcasters, bloggers and reviewers about which game will deserve the title of Adventure Game Of The Year!

Thanks for reading my blog!

AdventureX 2025 - Episode Two: Listen to those voice actors (and also some extra devs)

Dominic Armato!

Highlight of AdventureX 2025, responsible for a full auditorium, was a presentation given by none other than Dominic Armato, voice actor of Monkey Island's Guybrush Threepwood. He talked about impostor syndrome, a heavy case of self-doubt that makes people think they aren't skilled or talented at all, making them constantly fear exposure as a fraud. It even got emotional at one point. After his talk, Dominic was so kind to see his fans, take pictures and sign stuff. He signed my boxes of Curse Of Monkey Island and Escape From Monkey Island! At the Sunday afterparty, we saw him again and had a nice chat, where it became very obvious he would love to return to voice work for adventure games. So if any developers are interested in hiring him: you know where to find him!

I knew Ivy Dupler would be coming to AdventureX, since she posted that on her socials. For two days I'd been keeping an eye out for her. I spotted her once, but she was having lunch and you don't disturb people when they're eating. Finally on Sunday afternoon I saw her again, but she was already talking to one dev or other. Then I saw my chance when she was standing with a dev team I was already familiar with and had grown to love deeply over the course of this weekend: David and Sophie Younger of Inklingwood Studios! So I grabbed my chance, joined the conversation and was able to get my much anticipated selfie with one of my most favorite voice actors, who played the lead in Midnight Margo and had roles in many, many other games, including Twilight Oracle, Kathy Rain 2, Rosewater, Lamplight City, Monorail Stories, and the upcoming Nighthawks!

Ivy Dupler!

 

Most special was meeting recent BAFTA Breakthrough Sally Beaumont near the end of the Sunday afterparty! As with Julia Minamata, she seemed to be all over the place during AdventureX - though she did always wave at me as she was hurrying down some hallway - and she was also part of the comedy writing panel. And suddenly there she was, and we could have our photo moment. There are so many games she has a part in - PRIM, Hob's Barrow, Loco Motive, Harold Halibut, Lucy Dreaming, Blake Manor, and many more - but of course now she's most famous for not only voicing Fia Quinn in Old Skies but also writing for the game alongside Dave Gilbert!

Sally Beaumont!

And while I don't have a photo with her, I also had a short chat with Brogan Farr during the Saturday afterparty! I don't know her very well, but somehow we connected on the socials a little while ago. She has a role in Duck Made of Wood's D3AD HAND, which I played a little of at AdventureX (but more on all those demos in my next blog post!)

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Of course it's only after you hit the publish button and share your blog post about meeting a bunch of adventure game devs on the socials, that you start to think: "Wait a minute, I've met several more people! I just didn't take a picture with them..."

Indeed, I also met the team of Tag of Joy, who made Crowns and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit, a game I very much enjoyed due its style similar to Broken Sword and Secret Files. This very hip developer team is currenty working with Bill Tiller on a sequel to A Vampyre Story! I better hurry up and finally start playing the original game!

I also met publisher Chris Tikkos of Dionous Games, which was a very hearty encounter. Dionous Games got me into game testing, when they posted an ad looking for testers for Not Another Weekend, which led me to test Lucy Dreaming by Tom Hardwidge, who then suggested I'd become reviewer for the Adventure Game Hotspot! And of course with him being part of the organisation, I met Tom on several occasions during the weekend!

Tom Hardwidge!

A very special meeting was with Kevin Wickenden of Polytely Games who developed Last Christmas, and with whom I once made the jam game The Crete Escape (together with a bunch of other people).

I'm probably still forgetting some others I met, so lets hope my memory will come back when I'm writing my third blog post when I talk about the demos I played!

AdventureX 2025 - Episode One: Game Devs on Parade

Adventure gaming paradise right up these stairs!

I won't lie to you. What I was looking forward to most, attending AdventureX in London for the very first time, was finally meeting all those people I've been writing about and sometimes even directly talking to online for the past two and a half years. When I got back home, I had a hard time explaining to my family and friends why it was such an amazing experience to me, and putting into words what exactly makes it so special. The only way I knew how to do that, was to compare it to a more wider form of popular media where people are revered for their creative output. And the best I could come up with, is this: “It’s the equivalent of going to the Cannes Film Festival, with the big stars accepting you in their midst so you can hang out with them, and they show you sneak previews of their next movies.”

Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games!

It already started the evening of our arrival in London. At a local bar where we knew a bunch of adventure game community people had gathered, we tried to work up the nerve to go talk to Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games, when the man himself actually walked up to us instead, apparently knowing fully well who I was! (Which might have something to do with the fact that I was one of the testers of his most recent game Old Skies...)

Adam Riches of Robust Games!

Later that night, a smaller group went to a karaoke room and we joined as well, invited by Laura Cress. Suddenly I found myself sitting next to Adam Riches of Robust Games, whose Loco Motive won the 2024 AGOTY Award, as well as Dave and Treasa McCabe of Spooky Doorway (attending AdventureX to promote their new game The Séance of Blake Manor), among many others (I think there were indeed more people present than were actually allowed in that room...)

David and Sophie Younger of Inklingwood Studios!

So yes, the first day of AdventureX I wasn't able to play any of the demos because I kept meeting people I wanted to talk to and get a selfie with. Pure fanboy style, and I won't apologize for that! Almost immediately I ran into David and Sophie Younger of Inklingwood Studios (as well as Adventure Game Geek!), who had kindly brought me the big box of their game Foolish Mortals which I had ordered from their website (having it delivered to Belgium from the UK would easily cost me the prize of another box at Customs... Thanks a lot, Brexit!)

Jake Prytherch of Beyond Booleans!

I bumped into Jake Prytherch of Beyond Booleans, who makes Lovecraftian horror games like Abscission and Carnival, an upcoming developer who not only still has lots of other stories to tell, but is also a great and very down to earth guy, a real pleasure to hang out with and lots of fun, especially when he's telling the story of how he once met David Hasselhoff! (He's got an amazingly cool picture with him!)

Francisco González of Grundislav Games!

It was great to meet a mix of game developers who only recently started, like Jake, and established names like Francisco González. I remember how nervous I was playing Rosewater this year, hoping to finish it and write the review in time for its release, thinking I wouldn't make the deadline and worried that my words would never do the game justice. But he was very happy with what I'd written! Phew!

Helen Greetham of The Wonder Room!

It took me until the second day before I found the nerve to introduce myself to Helen Greetham of The Wonder Room (previously known as Afoot Games) who made the Sherlockian adventure The Beekeeper's Picnic which I reviewed both for the Adventure Game Hotspot and the Adventure Games Podcast. Such a lovely young lady!

Charles Cecil of Revolution Software!

Revolution Software was at AdventureX as well, to show off Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror Reforged, but Charles Cecil was also giving a presentation. While I was making my rounds of the venue, I suddenly spotted him coming in from the street so I lurked a bit so I could introduce myself as well, namedropping my fellow Adventure Games Podcaster Laura Cress, who I knew had spoken to and interviewed him several times already, to break the ice. I'll never forgive myself that I had to get rid of the boxes of both Lure Of The Temptress and Beneath A Steel Sky when moving house several times... But how could I know back then what a treasure these boxes would turn out to become?

Julia Minamata!

As the weekend drew to a close, at the end of the Sunday evening afterparty, when I thought there would be no new encounters, who suddenly walks past other than Julia Minamata, whose Crimson Diamond was a revelation last year, a return to the text parser in a game inspired by The Colonel's Bequest. I had spotted her around AdventureX before, but always seemingly in a hurry and I didn't dare bother her. But it was great to talk to her and discover she started work on a new game! (I hope that wasn't a secret...)

Look out for two more blog posts (hopefully) soon, one of course about the demos shown at AdventureX, and one about the famous voice actors I met!

"Splittown", my Adventure Game Hotspot review!

Read my full review on Adventure Game Hotspot!

Excerpt: "Splittown is a love letter to the adventure games of yore, set in a world with brightly colored pixel art and impossible architecture, filled with funny situations and fairly easy puzzles, along with a couple of mechanical challenges and codes to crack that make you feel like a spy on an impossible mission without delving too deep into clichéd secret agent tropes. I enjoyed controlling Leonard Nimby for the entire six hours (including that bonus side quest), though a memorable character he is not. Neither will the story linger for long when it’s done. It certainly has its charm, but the pieces of world-building proved to be too fragmented here to really rock my own. For retro adventure fans it’ll feel like a blast from the past, though with that comes some cumbersome interface issues that modern gamers may wish had been left in the past. Either way, it’s a solidly enjoyable experience. Does it compare to the early 90s genre classics it clearly wishes to emulate? To that I can only answer: close, but missed it by that much."

Finished "Foolish Mortals" and now I'm dying for more!

The quest for the treasure of Arthur Flab... I mean Bellemore Manor continues!

After playing through Part One and Part Two of Foolish Mortals, where I was allowed to first roam the island, then explore the mansion respectively, Part Three proved to be twice as big with both settings available simultaneously. This took quite a bit of running back and forth, this time trying to find not seven, not five, but the classical three elements needed to continue the story.

Finally...

I noticed now how some environments changed after you completed a particular action, making way for further progress. What I enjoyed the most is that every action Murphy does is animated. In many games these days the screen would fade to black and you might hear the main character putting in some effort or other, to reveal the new situation without actually having seen it change. Not so in Foolish Mortals: here you see Murphy perform every action you make him do, and also see every item he picks up slowly disappear inside his vest or taken out again when he uses something.

I think these guys kidnapped Dalmatian pups in a former life...

I must admit now that I was stuck two times, where I had absolutely no idea what to do. Turned out in the first case I hadn't noticed a much-needed item simply lying around just waiting for me to pick it up. In the second case, however, I had to go back and pick up an item I had already used somewhere else again, thinking at first it had already proven its usefulness.

So much to see and yet so little to actually click on...

Part Four was again quite easy in comparison to the previous part. Immediately I figured out what I had to do here, and it reminded me of the endings of both LeChuck's Revenge and Tales of Monkey Island. Everything worked out in the end, though some story elements still confused me and I don't think I really understand how everything came to pass exactly.

Somehow this scene reminds me of The Goonies...

But with some suspension of disbelief I found myself very much enraptured by this story, the fun puzzles, and the fast-paced rhythm. I finished this game in 12,5 hours but it felt much shorter and I enjoyed every minute of it, especially the movie-like soundtrack fitting every action, revelation and discovery on screen. I certainly hope that David and Sophie Younger of Inklingwood Studios have more stories like this one to tell!

You can buy Foolish Mortals on Steam and GOG!

Halfway through and completely addicted to "Foolish Mortals"

Mirror, mirror, on the dresser... 

After playing through the Prologue chapter, I'm now halfway through Foolish Mortals and I wish I could play this game in one sitting. Everything goes so smoothly. The puzzles all make sense - or at least after a while. The graphics, voices and music are all gorgeous. And the story is very engaging, with lots of characters and great dialogue combining background information with clues to the puzzles.

I'm going to print this out as a fake shopping list and leave it in a cart...

Part One felt like an elaborate fetch quest to find the necessary ingredients for a voodoo spell. Compare it to the recipe to guide your ship to Monkey Island. After exploring the island of Devil's Rock and seeing what's what, I actually found all seven ingredients faster than I had thought I would. 

Not quite Escher, but similarly mind-boggling...

Part Two was a bit trickier. It followed pretty much the same formula, except now I only had to gather five elements together. This time the puzzles weren't only of the inventory variety. There was one puzzle where you had to navigate a magical staircase room. This one had me try out the in-game hint system because I just couldn't figure it out. Turned out I had made the solution harder in my head than it actually was, and after realizing one particular visual element didn't matter at all, it was easy to get past this.

Once again proof I suck at dancing...

Another puzzle involved a dance floor and some basic programming, in fact. This one I finally solved on my own, though it did take a bit before I figured out what all the steps did.

After a little more than six hours of gaming, now it's on to Part Three!

You can buy Foolish Mortals on Steam and GOG!