Mystery games have started to become popular again over the last couple of years, but one studio is aiming to put a new spin on the genre with The Eventide. Billed as a supernatural mystery that follows a team of paranormal investigators through a stylized Canadian neon-noir cityscape, players will have to monitor and study strange cases that have escaped the public eye. The twist here? A “perspective-driven” approach to solving strange cases straight out of The X-Files, as you’ll have to use human resources to help crack these mysteries.
The debut game from Studio Reset–a developer comprised of people who previously worked on Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and The Long Dark–the Parallax Deduction system drives players to assign the right investigators to each case. Depending on who you task to work the investigation, the outcome might vary wildly. Each agent brings their own background, beliefs, expertise, and way of seeing the world, and these factors will influence how the final case report comes together.
The roster of detectives will grow as you progress, and some of the agents revealed so far include a cryptozoologist who takes a grounded approach to exploring the supernatural, a former detective who can read people, and a secretive observer who can perceive latent psychic and emotional energies. One agent can tap into the arcane to uncover clues, another uses science to find answers, and each one has a unique perspective.
“We see the world as we need to; not as it is,” Studio Reset’s creative director Kaelin Lavallee said in a press release. “With The Eventide, we wanted to build a mystery game where solving a case is not just about finding clues. It is about experiencing the cases through the characters’ perspective to understand what those clues mean.”
Another unique aspect of The Eventide is its world, as the studio describes the weird city that players will explore as stylish, strange, and deeply unsettled. “Beneath its lights, apartment blocks, back rooms, offices, alleys, underground bars, and forgotten corners, something is pushing through from unseen places,” the description reads. The goal for Studio Reset is to blend supernatural mystery with mature narrative themes, and players can expect a fixed-camera for exploration, agent-driven investigation, and a word-based deduction system.
There’s no release date for it yet, but you can wishlist The Eventide on Steam ahead of its eventual release on PC.
