Damned Desires

Ethan Blackwood used to be a decorated detective until one night tore that life apart and showed him what really lurks under Abbot's Hollow. Now he's a chain-smoking private investigator working the cases the police won't touch, and most of those cases aren't human.

This first release plays as an origin story, setting up how Ethan ended up picking through the supernatural underbelly of a small North England town for a living. The plot is still just getting its feet under it, but the shape of the mystery, and what it cost him, is already there.

You move through the town in point-and-click fashion, poking around locations and people for the kind of leads a normal cop would ignore. Investigation gives way to turn-based confrontations when things stop being subtle, and horror and voyeurism sit in the margins of the story rather than driving it outright. Every scene is hand-drawn rather than rendered, which gives Abbot's Hollow a rougher, more deliberate look than most games in this genre bother with.