Studio Reset, an independent studio comprised of former BioWare developers, has officially revealed its first game: The Eventide. This paranormal detective adventure game features a distinctive watercoloured art style and a reality-warping narrative set in a neon-noir Canadian city. A debut trailer showcases the game's premise and its unique investigation mechanics.
The Eventide centers on investigating unusual crimes where the fabric of reality is unstable. The game's core mechanic, dubbed "Parallax Deduction," allows players to choose two investigators from the Eventide Agency's roster for each case. Each agent possesses different methods of detecting and interpreting clues. For instance, Eve, a crypto-CSI expert, focuses on grounding supernatural occurrences in material evidence and biological systems, while Brass, an ex-policeman, specializes in social dynamics and reading people. Kira, a psychic, can perceive energies that her more grounded colleagues might miss.
This system encourages players to select agents whose skills align with the specific nature of a case. Once evidence is gathered, players return to base to make deductions. Studio Reset emphasizes that the investigation process is filtered through the chosen detectives' perspectives, suggesting that their individual biases and skills will influence how clues are perceived and interpreted. "We see the world as we need to; not as it is," stated creative director Kaelin Lavallee. "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."
The investigation style of The Eventide draws inspiration from games like The Case of the Golden Idol, focusing on finding clues first and then piecing together the narrative. The game aims to blend supernatural mystery with mature narrative themes, featuring fixed-camera 3D exploration and a word-based deduction system. It promises a detective fantasy experience filled with case files, redacted truths, and the ambiguity between events and their comprehension.
The game's presentation combines aesthetics reminiscent of the PSX era with a painterly art style, characterized by expressive strokes and splotches. The Eventide is currently available to wishlist on Steam, though a release date has not yet been announced.
