The Séance of Blake Manor is over!

Nothing says gothic horror more than an dreary graveyard...

When I first started playing The Séance of Blake Manor, I wasn't sure I would be able to do the job well. The time limit really bothered me. You can't play this game like you would any regular point 'n click adventure game, both regarding dialogue options and examining hotspots. Everything costs time. It's an investigation game, a deduction game, but also a time management game.

I bet the Ark of the Covenant is in here somewhere...

After I finished the second in-game day, however, and I started to experience a kind of snowballing effect, finally putting things together succesfully, solving mysteries and "saving" people from harm during the eponymous séance, nervousness made place for elation and the accompanying adrenaline rush, causing the game to become quite addictive.

Fill in the blanks!

I was astounded by the amount of detail in this game. Not only graphically; the manor is indeed an amazing setting to roam around in, the characters are very recognizable, and each dialogue topic has its own little icon. But that dialogue as well; you can talk to almost everybody about almost each topic. Not everything is voiced, though: only the important bits show some great acting talent from the entire cast.

A whole lot a lecturing going on...

I started Sunday morning at 11 am, which was pretty late thinking of all the things I still wanted to do that day. So I went about my business, at first much more smoothly than on the Saturday, but then right after lunch I found myself once more standing in the middle of the manor's atrium thinking where I was supposed to go next. While a moment before I was never lost for leads, and more importantly, clear ideas on how to actually follow up on them, with everything starting to make sense to me, there were still a couple of not-so-obvious secrets to uncover, which took some extra snooping and questioning and peering a bit closer in a couple of dark corners of the manor.

We're all in the red now!

Then suddenly I had about three in-game hours to kill, because after I finally succeeded in figuring out each character's backstory, for the last mysteries I needed special access to a location that would only be opened up to me at a designated time. I was scared that I might have missed something earlier, so I went around asking people all the questions I thought weren't important and would only suck up precious time. But in the end that didn't really provide me with any new info, except for some extra topics I could read up on in the library but weren't essential for the investigation.

Great job, Spooky Doorway!

The game's final in-game hours blew me away, once again going smoothly. And as the credits rolled after an astounding 25 hours of gaming, I sat staring at my screen feeling sad, because the game was over. The investigation was done. I had figured it all out. And even though it was a tough job in places, and kind of stressfull as well keeping an eye on the time, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. This was an amazing game with captivating gameplay, and if Declan Ward ever goes on another investigation, a new mystery but in the same style as this one, it will be an immediate buy for me!