Detective Games Don’t Get Better than The Séance of Blake Manor

By Bee Wertheimer | November 10, 2025 | 12:00pm

Video Games Reviews The Séance of Blake Manor

Detective Games Don’t Get Better than The Séance of Blake Manor

2025 has been a fantastic year for detective games. Following the release of titles like Type Help and Blue Prince earlier this year, The Séance of Blake Manor arrives in excellent company. But Blake Manor’s approach to the genre is so compelling it places the title as a strong contender for game of the year.

There aren’t any major spoilers in this review, but I still strongly recommend you at least begin playing The Séance of Blake Manor before you read on. Going in blind is the best way to experience any game, especially a mystery, and I promise it will prove worthy of your time.

Developed by Irish studio Spooky Doorway and published by Raw Fury, The Séance of Blake Manor is a dazzling supernatural detective game set in 1897 Ireland. You play as Declan Ward, a private investigator who has been anonymously commissioned to investigate the disappearance of one Miss Evelyn Deane. The investigation sends you to a remote hotel in Connemara called Blake Manor, which has attracted an eclectic crowd of guests in hosting a Grand Séance that is said to mark humanity’s first ever communion with the dead.

The game is rendered in a gorgeous comic-book style consisting of cool tones and striking black shadows, with hand-drawn cutscenes and UI elements blending seamlessly with the 3D environments. The majority of the dialogue is voice acted, which adds a rich depth to the diverse cast of characters. As you navigate the manor, your actions—which include rifling through drawers, profiling the hotelgoers, breaking into bedrooms, and cracking safe codes, to name a few—will progress the in-game time. You have the weekend to solve the mystery before the Grand Séance takes place on Halloween night, so you must choose your actions wisely in order to solve the case before time runs out. And time can actually run out.

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However, the time limit is not as intimidating as it sounds; most actions consume only a minute, with the exception being special events like dinners and talks (the Séance-goers give panels over the course of the weekend, which evokes the vibes of a magicky, old-timey GDC). The time mechanic mainly serves to benefit the game’s extremely tight pacing as well as provide dynamism to the environment, as characters can be found at different locations over the course of the day. That is to say, you have plenty of time to futz around and obtain extracurricular information that enriches the playing experience. One of the most intriguing areas in the game, the library, offers additional insights on a variety of topics such as the cultural significance of white heather and the history of the Magdalene laundries, and these topics are also entwined in the narratives of the hotel guests.

The Séance of Blake Manor

The game’s cast is a delightfully odd bunch. There are two dozen people connected to the disappearance of Evelyn Deane, and most of them hate her guts. They are all affiliated with the occult in some way, coming from a variety of ethnic and spiritual backgrounds, including a fringe branch of Catholicism that believes we are actually in hell and don’t realize it. While the sheer size of the cast and the nature of the investigation doesn’t lend itself to the most fleshed-out characters, they are nonetheless charming in their own fashion and end up connecting with one another in unexpected and deeply endearing ways.

The main character in The Séance of Blake Manor, though, is the manor itself. The house is teeming with supernatural entities, including apparitions flickering in the corners of your eyes, strange visions haunting your dreams, and arcane sigils protecting the manor’s secrets from you. As you acquaint yourself with the manor’s floorplan, the essence of each location in the house reveals itself to you through mysteries interwoven with Irish history and folklore.

Spirituality is the crux of The Séance of Blake Manor, and, like any oral history, is malleable and contradictory; each character’s religious beliefs serve as lenses through which the cast interprets the true nature of the manor, so that they all overlap one another in beautiful ways. One example of this (light spoilers ahead) is a questline that channels three forms of the same being: the Haitian Vodou Ioa Maman Brigitte, the Celtic goddess Bríd, and the Catholic St. Brigid.

The game’s love for Irish culture is palpable and inspiring. A game structured around the discovery of information is inherently wonderful, and The Séance of Blake Manor doesn’t disappoint with its wellsprings of historical knowledge and unyielding respect for the victims of said history.

I won’t speak too much on this point, but the game’s ending recontextualizes the entire story and absolutely rules. It’s hard to wrap up a compelling mystery in a way that’s both subversive and satisfying, and The Séance of Blake Manor not only rises to the challenge but defies all expectations.

With its one-of-a-kind charm and narrative chops, The Séance of Blake Manor is a master class in the detective genre and a delicious supernatural treat for the exact kind of freak I am.

The Séance of Blake Manor was developed by Spooky Doorway and published by Raw Fury. It is available on PC.

Bee Wertheimer is a writer, cultural critic, and gamemaker based in NYC. You can find them on Bluesky or visit their site beewertheimer.com.