The Séance of Blake Manor (2025)

4.5/5

The Seance of Blake Manor is a first person puzzle horror mystery game where you are a Private Investigator hired to find the whereabouts of an individual who came to a mysterious manor for a seance to take place in a couple days. The more you dig into this mystery though, the more mysteries you will find. There's a time management at play though as well where each piece of evidence you look at, article you read, question you ask anyone will advance the in game clock 1 minute each time. This adds a sense of urgency and risk vs reward as you try to determine what will advance a mystery or what will just waste time.

The manor is filled with a pretty large cast of characters. Each of these characters have their own mysteries to solve on top of the original case that brought your character to the mansion. To get the "good" ending, you must solve each of these characters mysteries One thing that can get a little frustrating at times is how some of these side mysteries will be completely locked out until certain in game days/times. You will inevitably end up burning some minutes trying to solve mysteries that you absolutely cannot advance yet until the game allows you to.

Many reviews really criticize the time management aspect of the game. While this adds some stress, it never becomes much of a hindrance. You can absolutely save scum, which I did for a bit early on day 3 when I wasn't sure I had enough time to solve the remaining cases. I probably didn't even need to do this as I then had to spend a good chunk of time running around looking at random items to get the clock to advance. As someone who panics playing Pikmin games or LoZ Majora's Mask due to the in game timers, I didn't struggle too much with time management.

I'd generally recommend this game, though there are some parts of its structure that I felt more ambivalent about. The game has some 18 characters, each with their own reasons for attending the seance. Your goal is to discover their reasons, and then help them with whatever problems they have to prevent the seance from happening as planned.

Though this giant cast is the game's biggest strength, it's also one of its biggest weaknesses. There's a massive amount of evidence and topics, and the many people of the manor make it hard to keep track of every single thread going on. At times, it was difficult to tell either who I needed to talk to, or what I needed to be doing to progress. There's an in-game time limit, so you can't spend your time asking everyone about literally everything, and there's lots of investigating that will waste time (like looking at every single book you find).

SoBM does have many ways to arrive at a given answer, thankfully, so it's not typical that there's exactly one way to find information. On that same topic, the setting of the game - an manor in the Irish countryside - really offers a lot in terms of cool mythology and mystery.

I'd recommend this one. You may or may not consider consulting a guide at times, and I'd say it's not necessary for 95% of the game.

The Seance of Blake Manor is pretty much what I'd expected it to be - a supernatural mystery with tons of Irish folklore and myth thrown in. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if an annoying bug prevented me from completing one investigation so I didn't get to see everything... (maybe I'll go back once they fix it).

The voice acting was really good, but there was not enough of it. Entire conversations are not voiced and it did made me start and skip ahead eventually. So much talking and reading (it's an investigation, but still...). The visuals are neat and I like the game's 2D-3D mix, and the art is also real nice.

The story is, of course, where the game shines. The overall mystery, as well as the smaller investigation you conduct are all interesting and some even captivating. I can't say I was on the edge of my seat, but there was a lot to uncover until the end, with plenty of personal, touching stories to experience along the way. It's a good, intriguing game and another great title from Spooky Doorway.

Well, this game was an absolute delight!

I accidentally played this game for 12 hours straight and did almost nothing else with my Saturday. But it sucked me right into its gothic horror supernatural mystery solving! It's safe to say I liked it. (That being said my entire playthrough of doing most of the optional content was just under 20 hours, it could definitely really vary).

This is a detective game, perhaps the first detective game where I felt you were actually doing detectiving. You are a detective sent to a manor to find a missing woman, and discover this manor is planning on hosting a séance at the end of the weekend. Thus the game proceeds as you attempt to find out what happened to your missing person and also, what is up with that séance, this manor, these Blakes, and the 25 ish other guests and staff within the manor.

Most of the gameplay is based around you exploring the manor and talking with the guests, in order to unlock new information to solve various of the mysteries. There are many sub-mysteries to the main one and each character has their own mystery to solve for why they find themselves at the séance. In doing so, you can slowly eliminate your suspects and discover more and more secrets. You can then make a "hypothesis" about the mystery (which is essentially a small word puzzle).

I love how the mysteries were done, there is a real sense of discovery. The facts/clues/evidence you discover all gets put into this detective web that guides you a bit to the next objective. Every time you "interact" with certain objects or talk to people it advances the clock 1 time increment. This was very well done, as it allows events to progress with a sense of urgency, however, not real time urgency as you can strategically plan what to do. Each hour guests change location and new events happen, so sometimes you need time to pass to progress. It's all just done very well.

The story also is very interesting. The main mystery is more and more intriguing, but especially the characters and side stories. They all have interesting secrets and backstories, and I loved how they were relatable and morally grey characters, and how many of their mysteries were connected to each other in unexpected ways.

Additionally, the manor you explore is beautiful, fun to explore, and the art style is complementary to this.

I just really liked this! It kept gripping me and it said, just one more mystery to solve before we're done with the game session! Then, it was 12 hours later.

Ultimately, The Séance of Blake Manor is a great game that respects your time spent with it and its puzzles & detectiving, backing them with interesting characters and mysteries where you actions do pay out in satisfying manners.

I might get this one when it releases this October. I played the steam next fest demo.

The art style is excellent, cell shaded and mysterious, very similar to something like blue prince. The beginning of the mansion was oozing with style and intrigue.

The detective mechanics are what I was really interested in. "time" only advances when you interact with objects so you must be strategic (but you have plenty of time to literally think about the mystery). I think that's an interesting balance. Everything was satisfying to interact with and created "webs" of deductions. It seemed like the detective system was actually good (a rarity in games).

Also it gives supernatural (?) vibes with the seance so I'm interested in this.