Mystery News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

The problem with deciding to play every single Nancy Drew mystery puzzle game for a column is that, because they have been coming out since the 90s, Her Interactive have built up enough steam that I may never catch up to the front of the plucky citizen detective train. They have today announced a release date of May 7th for Nancy Drew: Mystery Of The Seven Keys, along with the official trailer.

You might assume that Indika will be dour, given that it's a story-driven game about a nun in a grey, cold, alternative Russia. Then you watch its trailers and find surrealist imagery, genre-hopping, and a bleak sense of humour are part of its arsenal, and suddenly it seems, to me, irresistible.

Trailered last night, Centum is "an unreliable narrative-driven adventure where everything may be a lie", according to the Steam page. Does the suggestion that everything may be a lie also apply to the suggestion itself? Is this an unreliable Steam page? Perhaps the game is secretly a cheerful Playmobile platformer with plentiful ledge-assist, rather than a horrible point-and-clicker that starts you off in a dark cell with a bunch of obviously cursed artefacts, and gets steadily worse.

At the end of last year I played the demo for An English Haunting and got very excited. I like horror that has a generally spooky, creeping dread vibe rather than being wall-to-wall cheap jumpscares and gore, and that sort of stuff is thin on the ground. But it'll be less so from May the 15th, cos that's when this ghosty point and click puzzle adventure is out! Hooray! The demo is still on Steam if you want a taste before then. In the meantime, the release date announcement comes with a new trailer to enjoy.

I have a rule: no more than one post about a horror game per day. The mind can only withstand so much, after all. But POOLS isn't really a horror game. It's just a walking simulator in which you explore a bunch of underground swimming pools. True, their size and layout defy explanation - what is this, a swimming pool for Slender Men? - but look, there are cute covered slides you can ride down in first-person. You know, like the ones you used to enjoy as a kid. Always that element of anxiety though about getting stuck halfway down, am I right?

Earlier today Tom Betts - founder of Nullpointer and former lead programmer at The Signal From Tolva developers Big Robot - emailed me about his new game The Horror At Highrook. In the space of a single, rollercoaster paragraph, Betts earned my curiosity by describing himself as a fellow Soul Reaver enthusiast, lost it again by criticising Soul Reaver’s camera - such insolence! - and earned it swiftly back by mentioning that he’s from Yorkshire. Then, he upgraded my curiosity into attention by describing The Horror At Highrook as a “clockwork narrative” horror experience that takes inspiration from Poe, Stoker and Lovecraft on the one hand, and from boardgames, wiki-hunting and escape rooms on the other.

Chymicalia is an adventure game and/or visual novel "about causing chaos in a small Yorkshire town with unlicensed alchemy". Hey, I'm from a small Yorkshire town originally! I recognise that chip shop with the palsied neon sign! And hey, that looks like the underpass they told us kids to stay away from! And the textile mill they eventually turned into an old folks home! And the teleporting sentient potion shop where we used to hang out and play pogs! Wait, scratch the last one.

It starts, much as when writing articles for videogame websites, with a blank page. More accurately, a white space of indefinite extent. In the middle of the white space there is a curious little yellow machine, a kind of motorised plunger akin to an oil derrick. In the story of Sixty Four, you're late to some kind of social engagement, somewhere beyond that beaming expanse of whiteness. But there is time, even as texts from a friend appear down the lefthand margin, to mess around with the strange yellow machine.

I wasn't as sold on Half Mermaid's Immortality as the internet at large, but I'll give Sam Barlow as much rope for his FMV games as anyone else. He recently Xeeted about the studio's upcoming projects C and D, described as "next level FMV, hold onto your seats", and "reinventing 3rd person horror again", respectively. The games now have heavily redacted Steam pages, and Barlow revealed a few more details on Kinda Funny Games (helpfully transcribed a bit by VGC if you can't be arsed watching).

Feral Cat Den and Fellow Traveller have announced Nirvana Noir, a follow-up to cosmic philosophical jazz-me-whatsit Genesis Noir. Revealed as part of yesterday's Day of the Devs showcase, the game continues the adventures of spacey watchmaker No Man, who must solve mysteries that spans two parallel realities, Black Rapture and Constant Testament. In Black Rapture, the Big Bang never happened. I feel 'universe in which the universe never began' is an... unpromising choice for a setting, but I am not an astrophysician, nor very much of a magic-realist, and I know eff-all about jazz. Here's the trailer.

Viewers of might be wondering exactly are in the series and when each new episode comes out. The series follows Mickey Bolitar who starts a new life in suburban New Jersey. But when one of the children in his school disappears, he teams up with his friends Ema and Spoon to uncover a web of mysteries about several missing people from the past.

Fans of may be wondering exactly are in the series and when each new episode comes out. Grantchester is a British crime drama series that focuses on a Cambridgeshire clergyman named Sidney Chambers, who finds himself investigating a series of mysterious crimes in his hometown of Grantchester.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is the latest game from Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka and Too Kyo Games, and it will put your mind to the test in much the same way. As in Danganronpa, collecting evidence in Rain Code is relatively linear and straightforward, so you probably won’t need much help there,  but things get tricky once you delve into the game’s signature Mystery Labyrinths.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is the latest game from Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka and Too Kyo Games, and it will put your mind to the test in much the same way. As in Danganronpa, collecting evidence in Rain Code is relatively linear and straightforward, so you probably won’t need much help there,  but things get tricky once you delve into the game’s signature Mystery Labyrinths.

Calling Armored Core 6: Fires Of Rubicon’s latest snippet of video a ‘story trailer’ is maybe a bit generous on FromSoftware’s part. There are dashes of story setup here in enigmatic dialogue between a mysterious Handler Walter and their even more mysterious anonymous boss. But let’s be real: you’re here for mechs rendered in gloriously gritty CG. On that front at least, Fires of Rubicon’s latest look doesn’t disappoint.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is the latest game from Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka and Too Kyo Games, and it will put your mind to the test in much the same way. As in Danganronpa, collecting evidence in Rain Code is relatively linear and straightforward, so you probably won’t need much help there,  but things get tricky once you delve into the game’s signature Mystery Labyrinths.

Shinyuden will release mystery adventure game Retro Mystery Club Vol. 1: The Ise-Shima Case for Switch and PC via Steam on August 24 in the west for $9.90 / €9.90, the company announced.