Spooky Doorway's supernatural whodunit just hit Xbox and Game Pass, and its time-is-everything investigating had me hooked.
Verdict Play It Now
I didn’t know what to expect from The Séance of Blake Manor. I’d heard good things and seen the strong reviews, but a slow detective game where you read a lot of conversations isn’t usually where my head goes. Then it got me. This thing is smart, it’s engaging, and it’s one of the best written games I’ve touched in a while.
The Séance of Blake Manor is so well written it feels like reading a great book.
CMoney, OnPoint 4 Gamers
What it is
The Séance of Blake Manor comes from Spooky Doorway, the team behind The Darkside Detective, and it’s published by Raw Fury. It first came out on PC in October 2025, and on October 27, 2026, it landed on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC and the cloud, included with Game Pass Ultimate and Premium. If you’d rather buy it, it’s $19.99, and it’s an Xbox Play Anywhere game.
It’s 1897 in the west of Ireland. You’re Declan Ward, a private investigator who shows up at Blake Manor, a remote hotel in Connemara, looking for a missing guest named Evelyn Deane. Nobody there seems to care that she’s gone. Instead the place is packed with mystics, mediums and true believers from all over the world, all gathered for a Grand Séance on All Hallows’ Eve, the night the veil between the living and the dead is supposed to be thinnest. It pulls from Irish mythology and the spiritualist craze of the Victorian era, and the whole thing is drawn in a gorgeous comic-book art style.
You are the detective
This is a real detective game, not a hallway with clues glowing on the floor. You examine documents, you study people, and you build your case. Look closely at the hotel manager and the game points out his cracked glasses, the way he keeps checking his pocket watch, the look on his face. Every guest is a puzzle.
My favorite moment early on was the first real break in the case. Ms. Deane supposedly left in the night and left a letter behind. I compared the signature on that letter with the one she wrote in the guest book, and they didn’t match. Somebody forged it. She never left. When you put that together yourself and then lock it in as a hypothesis by filling in the missing words, you feel like a genius. Using the good old noggin pays off here.
The characters are just as strong. Every guest feels unique and fleshed out, and one of them ended up turning the tables on me in a way I did not see coming. I’ll leave it there.
Time is the boss
What makes it special is the clock. Almost everything you do, looking at an object, asking a question, opening a drawer, moves time forward, and you only have so long before the day ends. Early on I spent time poking at things that didn’t matter, and I felt it later. It makes you think twice about every move. It reminds me of what The Blood of Dawnwalker does, where every choice costs time, and I love it. You have to be smart and methodical with this one.
The creepy side
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It’s not a jump scare fest, but it has its moments. Something falls for no reason, things move when you’re not looking, and the nights get strange. The sound design really helps. With a good headset, the footsteps and the noises around the manor hit hard. There’s a nightmare sequence with a puzzle that I solved clean, and I’m not going to lie, I felt good about that one.
Verdict: Play It Now
The Séance of Blake Manor is so well written it feels like reading a great book. It’s slow paced, and you’ll do a lot of reading, but it’s intriguing, engaging and smart, and the time mechanic makes every decision matter. I wasn’t expecting to love the writing this much. If you have Game Pass, you have no excuse. Download it and Play It Now.
This is not a review, so there’s no score here.
Screenshots captured by OnPoint 4 Gamers from gameplay. Featured image: OnPoint 4 Gamers.
