Some game pitches sound a lot like they were conceptualised during fever dreams, and — certainly — if you’d told me that I’d be playing a point and click game about a fake psychic solving mysteries with a talking weasel mascot then I’d probably think you were pulling my leg. Anyway, that’s Dark Tides, and I played the demo while at AdventureX.
Dark Tides’ demo starts off with Theodora Green — a fraud psychic who has recently, unexpectedly, gained the ability to read minds — as they emerge into a mansion. They’re there for a rather simple reason, and that’s to prove that they’re a real medium so that they can ask a favour of the owner, however, nothing is ever simple.
The solve, in the case of the demo, comes in operating a delightfully engineered faux séance. This séance is, at its heart, a checklist of a handful of smaller tasks that must be completed within a 5-6 screen area, however, what makes this really shine is that they’re all, individually, quite silly. Loosening fastening, setting up lights to flash and triggering a small explosion are among the list and that variety captures something that only point and click adventure puzzling can do well.
In this way, and with its sense of self-aware humour, it hits the same notes as classic multi-component genre puzzles such as Monkey Island‘s Three Trials, or proving that you’re dead (or making a hero) in the Discworld games. While a lot of modern point and click games follow the standard one item, one puzzle; This is a real treat because of that multi-stage puzzle.
There are, of course, always some weaknesses. The mind-reading feels a little weak and could almost have been represented with eavesdropping or having your sidekick listen in from nearby — it also can’t be retriggered either which doesn’t help if the prompting is vague. All of that aside though, while I can’t quite see the horror aspect (at least mechanically, I can see the setting) Dark Tides looks to be a solid point and click adventure game…. We’ll have to wait until launch to find out more though.
Dark Tides is in development for PC.
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