The Séance of Blake Manor
Spooky Doorway
PC
★★★★★
Arriving just in time for the long winter nights, Irish developer Spooky Doorway’s new mystery game, The Séance of Blake Manor (PC), is a gripping gothic whodunit set in a 19th-century “big house” in Connemara.
Spooky Doorway was formed in 2015 by three Irish developers from Galway, Dublin and Dundalk who met at a gaming event in Inishbofin. The studio has since built a reputation for atmospheric adventure games. It had a big critical hit with Darkside Detective in 2017 and its sequel, Darkside Detective 2 – X-Files style supernatural capers set in a David Lynch-adjacent uncanny United States and elevated by an agreeable line in wry humour.
Those games were great fun. But Spooky Doorway has produced its best title yet with Blake Manor – a sleuthing romp that doubles as a headlong plunge into the psychosphere of the west of Ireland 50 years after the Great Famine. The game wears its Irish historical references lightly, but they are absolutely key to the plot. The player takes on the role of Declan Ward, a detective sent from Dublin to Blake Manor to ascertain the whereabouts of the missing Evelyn Dean. She was there as a guest of the Blakes – a creepy Anglo-Irish family who lived in isolation from the locals and whose grounds are traversed by uneasy spirits from Celtic legends.
The Séance of Blake Manor plays out in a Doom-style first-person. You traverse the house – rendered in a comic book artwork reminiscent of Hellboy creator Mike Mignola – interrogating guests who have gathered for a seance which is set to take place in two days. Some of the challenges take place against the clock, requiring the player to collect clues and reach a conclusion under the tick-tock pressure of a fast-approaching deadline.
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Blake Manor is aimed at an international audience, but Irish players will pick up on the Irishness immediately. Early on, the player discovers a message scrawled in Irish; later, they encounter a druid named Domhnall Ó Finn, of Traveller background. The more you investigate the disappearance of Dean, the deeper the story intersects with Irish mythology, and with the political and cultural tensions rippling through Ireland as the 19th century draws to a close.
“Irish culture, generally speaking, is poorly represented in most media. Aspects of our mythology have been cherry-picked into other games, like the Japanese-made Folklore on PS3, and Irish characters for the most part tend to be poorly voiced by well-meaning voice actors hired in for the gig,” says Dave McCabe, Spooky Doorway’s narrative designer and video game writer (one of a team of 16 who worked on the title). “We’ve always felt that our history and mythology are unique and rich with untapped potential in narrative video games.”
The Irish component to the game is crucial, McCabe explains. While on paper, Blake Manor has all the elements of a stereotypical Agatha Christie-type mystery – a big house, a missing woman, a rogue’s gallery of protagonists – at its heart, the tale is deeply Irish.
“Our history and mythology are so interwoven into what is happening in the game that you couldn’t transplant it without massively altering the story, structure and heart. The themes that the game goes into are inherently Irish. Even the international cast was picked to reflect and enhance those themes,” says McCabe. “The location is steeped in history – the very existence of a big house in Ireland in 1897, after the famines, the land leagues, etc, is immediately tonally different to a manor in England. In short, the game wouldn’t work there – or anywhere else. Its Irishness is in its DNA.”
That Irish element has gone down well with gamers across the world – according to the website Open Critic, Black Manor was, as of early November, the best reviewed game of 2025, ahead of massive hits such as Hollow Knight: Silksong and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Such praise is well deserved. Rooted in Irishness yet never clichéd or hokey, it is Cluedo meets a Martin McDonagh play – and absolutely great fun, whether you’re a veteran gamer or a newcomer who fancies some chilling entertainment as the evenings grow darker and the nights turn ripe with mystery.
The Séance of Blake Manoris out now for PC
