The Séance of Blake Manor

Brilliant game with great story. Reminds me of Blue Prince.

I bought this game hoping to get to play it, but it just crashed on repeat before I could even get to midnight of the first night. I'm sure there's a decent game here, but since there are hard wall crashes still happening a year after release I'll opt out and get my money back.

Such a great game. I got so immersed I had to finish it during just a few long sessions. The attention to detail in the characters is what sets it apart. There are so many of them, and they all have deep backstories, wants and goals, and opinions on other characters. The setting is great too and there is so much to learn and explore, and dialogues to have. Systems and mechanics also work great. Documents, items, conversations and the mysteries menu itself is great. A minor inconvenience here is that when cross referencing codes and numbers, I had to go in an out of multiple menus to get them again. I could have written them down in notes on steam or physically, but when everything else is easily accessible, this welt weird. At first I didn't like the horror aspect, but it kept it more on the spooky side and I eventually got used to it. There are no jumpscares other than some furniture moving or mirrors breaking. The style itself also has it charm, and it works for me. Sometimes the "cutscenes" are a bit slow, and you stare at a still image for a bit too long. Wish these had a skip to next slide-button as with the dialogue. There are concerns of the game holding your hand too…

Amazing gameplay, for me the closest I have felt being really investigating a case, where time pressure exists, but does not ruin the game. It just adds a feeling that what you are currently doing is important. Plot, characters, music, everything is top notch from start to finish.

Pretty good overall. It was cool to learn some Irish folklore, but it was frustrating to "know" the answer to a mystery but be locked behind finding the one object or having the one conversation which unlocks actually solving it.

The Séance of Blake Manor has more than one compelling story to tell. Once I started, I couldn't stop digging to uncover them all! The opening section on arriving to the Manor functions like a tutorial prologue, after which you are fully unleashed to get up in everyone's business digging for leads and clues. I loved wandering around, following whatever thread struck my fancy. Every character has a mystery for you to solve, so there is plenty to do. While your time on the manor is finite, as measured by actions costing time over a pre-determined number of days, my play speed is on the slower, less efficient side, and I did not have any issues with this impeding my enjoyment. It's rare to see games that handle social and political circumstances with as much skill as Spooky Doorway manages here. There is a surprising breadth of backgrounds amongst the characters. Magic and spiritualism are grounded truth in this version of the world, and they are used to expose the raw edges of these people's lives in a way that straight realism cannot. It's an incredibly effective lens to put on real world history. There is so much else to say about this game regarding the audiovisual aspects, b…