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Review
Other than the title, I have a few main qualms with this game. Two are a bit nitpicky, and one is more substantial. This review is kind of unreadable without spoilers. If you're interested in whether you should play, the last paragraph is more oriented towards that.
I'll start with the biggest one: I'm a paranormal investigator, and I was called in to investigate this case. The game doesn't explain, to my memory, why I was chosen for the case, beyond my profession. When I saw the (Spoiler - click to show)wisps, I assumed I was called in because I knew how to (Spoiler - click to show)interview the dead. But then, I had to (Spoiler - click to show)visit the secret library to (Spoiler - click to show)learn how to perform a seance. To me, this feels like (Spoiler - click to show)if I played a game where I was a detective at a crime scene, but I had to find a book on a body in order to learn how to collect fingerprints. What am I doing at this crime scene if I don't know how to do that? Why am I learning things that should fall under my qualifications AT the scene of the crime?
Personally, I think the gameplay would make much more sense to me if I was, perhaps, a friend of the victims who they had told of their plans earlier in the night, coming to the manor to check on them after they didn't come home on time. Alternatively, I could have been a real police detective, the only one on the force with a vague understanding of the paranormal, and chosen for the case because of that. Then I could have interesting, detective-like interactions with bodies - There's blood all over the floor, but no footprints. Did whoever - or whatever - killed this kid even touch the ground? - instead of my character just observing that there's a dead body and observing little more than that.
Campbell frustrated me. There were a few things I could talk to her about, but telling her about major developments like finding a body, discovering the (Spoiler - click to show)sigil, or (Spoiler - click to show)learning about Arovus just earn the response that I need to "focus on the case." For me, this broke the immersion of trying to solve a case, because why is this police officer utterly uninterested in key details about a case she sent me in to solve?
I also was sad that I couldn't interact with many nouns given in descriptions. I know that this kind of thing must be tedious to program, but I like in other games where examining one thing gives me new things to examine. Observing the first body gave me blood to examine, but I couldn't examine his injuries, which feel relevant for someone trying to solve a case, but I also couldn't examine things that are less relevant, like his clothing. This is just something that makes a game feel more polished to me, and makes my experience feel fuller.
The puzzles felt very intuitive for me, with the exception of needing to (Spoiler - click to show)interview Thornfell. Overall, gameplay felt smooth and generally satisfying for me, although the (Spoiler - click to show)hidden library did feel clunky, along with my previous, more substantial issue with it. (Spoiler - click to show)It would have been cool if I could search the other library, and find nothing useful, which would maybe prompt me to search for a second, hidden library!
Overall, I feel like this game could have been a lot more meaningful and more memorable to me. The gameplay was smooth, the puzzles were intuitive, but none of it really felt meaningful, my player and the characters felt kind of hollow and more confusing than anything, and a space with as much potential to be interesting as a haunted manor only ever really felt meaningful in the puzzle spaces.
I would love to see this game get revamped or more fleshed out. I love short interactive fiction and I think this one has a lot of promise.
