The Blackwell Legacy

The game opens with protagonist Rosangela Blackwell throwing her Aunt Lauren's ashes off the bridge. As Rosa walks away, the player sees a wispy spirit, hinting at the game's ghostly theme. Soon you learn that Aunt Lauren had been sedated in a hospital for 25 years. Limiting the medication allowed her to speak but she was prone to incoherent outbursts and was deemed to have dementia. Her mother also suffered from similar symptoms of dementia, and both spoke of someone named Joey.

When Rosa returns to her apartment, a building service strike means there's a new doorman, and she can't initially get into her apartment without proving she lives there. You learn that she is a very reserved person, slightly socially anxious and doesn't personally know her neighbours. She goes to find one of her neighbours in a park, but initially needs to get her attention away from the crowd who are listening to her flute playing. Most of the puzzles in the game are based on conversation rather than using or combining items, but it's quite strange that the very first challenge is based on movement, and this is apparently where a lot of people get stuck. You notice the dog follows you, and its leash is very long. By walking around the lamppost, the dog gets stuck.

After getting into her apartment, her boss contacts her and tells her she needs to write a report on a suicide at a nearby university; a student named Joann. There seems more than meets the eye, so she ends up playing detective. Soon she meets Joey. Joey is the ghost who explains he is like a spirit guide and has been partnering up with Rosa's relatives. This is where the game gets more interesting as the paranormal elements come to the forefront. Joey's aim seems to be to help ghosts leave to the afterlife. I thought the game would consist of helping many ghosts throughout the story, but the brevity means you spend most of your time resolving 1 ghost (Alli, Joann's friend), then when you meet the second, it quickly concludes.

In the options, you can enable Director's Commentary, and there's the one from the original release, in addition to the modern commentary for the re-release. The director's commentary notes that when you meet Kelly, most players get stuck because they cannot tell Joey to use his ghostly ability. You have to go back to your apartment in order to talk to him. So I think once you meet Joey, it seems you might have to leave your apartment then instantly go back in to trigger the mandatory dialogue in order to progress.

The game builds on the mechanics of Dave Gilbert's previous game The Shivah. This had an underutilised mechanic of combining notes to piece together information. It also had you using a computer to research people, but here there is no typing interface; you just select from your notes. The voice acting is inconsistently recorded and still has breathy dialogue for some characters. Also like The Shivah, it is short (it's longer than The Shivah but short for an adventure game), so once it begins to get going, it then concludes. My time on Steam shows 4.4 hours but there was a period where I was wandering aimlessly and I had convinced myself I had combined 2 specific notes together when I hadn't. The game's structure is very linear, so there is only one objective at any one time. So if you are stuck, then there's no secondary objective to work on.

I like the theme, and if the future games have more substance to them, then this could be a great series.