2025, unlike other years, has a really clear highlight:
The Séance of Blake Manor
In many ways, The Séance of Blake Manor is a game I would have made, had I had the time and resources to do so.
It has everything; a supernatural mystery, a freely explorable hotel, very deep and compelling detective mechanics, 2D characters in a 3D world, a branching emotional narrative, fantastic atmosphere – all things I like to play with.
The way the game drives you forward is very smart, every action you take costing a certain amount of Time Points. And so, as you frantically search for clues in each of the 21 guests’ mysteries, you feel the pressure of the ticking clock breathing down your neck. But unlike Blue Prince, walking around costs nothing, so it feels very fair.
And it enables nail-biting moments like this: every hour, the people in the hotel change locations. If you are in one of the guests’ rooms while they are in there, you’ll get kicked out and it’s game over. So I was rummaging through a very promising room when I ran out of time before the hour change, and indeed, a moment later the room’s occupant returned. For the next hour I could not continue my search, so I followed other leads. And in doing so, forgot to go back to that room for several hours, leaving a vital clue laying around until the last minute when I recalled where I was and ran back up the stairs to finish my investigation.
It’s moments like these that elevate Blake Manor to another level. There is a robust in-game clue system, but there are SO MANY clues for all these mysteries you can solve, that I still had to take notes on my suspicions and next actions. No other detective game has come close to this experience, even though many of the same parts are there. But Blake Manor blends them so well that it is infinitely compelling.
If you like mysteries, you cannot skip this one.
The rest
- Yes Indiana Jones was very good. God, so good.
- Sword Of The Sea was very nice and calming and it gave me all the Journey feels.
- Flintlock made a good effort to hook me, but dragged on too long.
- The Alters seemed like _my shit_, but when I made a critical mistake a few days in that slowly killed my crew because I ran out of materials to build radiation shields, I uninstalled it immediately.
- Similarly, I tried hard to get into Blue Prince, but the randomness of it all really tired me out.
- Harold Halibut is so scrumptious, but oh so slow, so i think I will dine on it over several months.
- ReCore: Definitive Edition was a nice discovery, and it satisfied my run-around-world-and-collect-things cravings.
- Metal Eden and VoidBreaker satisfied my run-very-fast-and-shoot-all-the-things cravings.
- Ambrosia Sky satisfied my clean-things-with-a-spray-gun cravings.
- Skin Deep and Hell Is Us intruiged me, but I really don’t have the mental room to sit down and bask in these titles yet.
Let me know your favorites!
