First details floated for The Eventide 

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

"The X-Files meets Golden Idol" in upcoming multi-character, perspective-driven deduction mystery

Most modern deduction games share the belief that "whodunit" is probably someone alive (at least at the time of the crime). Maybe not in The Eventide, however, an upcoming supernatural mystery by indie Canadian developer Studio Reset, a new indie studio founded by veteran developers whose credits include work on the likes of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and The Long Dark.

The titular agency is based in a "stylized neon-noir Canadian city" that spans multiple planes of existence and is home to both "the living and the dead." The company is staffed by a covert team of paranormal investigators tasked with "monitoring, studying, and intervening in strange cases that most people will never know existed." Responding to an anonymous tip, their latest job appears to just be another "routine haunting." However, the inciting incident proves to be just the beginning, as "one case quickly becomes many, scattered across the city." Each has its own circumstances, its own story, its own "different truth." With the mysteries so diverse, so too must be the approach to investigating them. As the "unseen hand guiding the agency’s operations," it's the player's role to "assign investigators to a growing backlog of unexplained incidents." Only by choosing the best combination of agents will you be able to "uncover the facts of each case and expose a deeper truth."

Presented in a highly filtered painterly style with "fixed-camera 3D exploration," The Eventide scatters agents across a variety of "haunting, atmospheric environments," from "rain-slicked city alleys to dusty libraries and abandoned radio stations," where "something is pushing through from unseen places." It could be a "spirit anchored to a mundane object, an apparition that doesn’t know what it is, an entity pulled from folklore, [or] a hidden signal in the noise of the city." What they find, however, depends on which pair of agents you pick to investigate in a "perspective-driven system" called "Parallax Deduction." Each agent in your employ has their own "background, beliefs, expertise, and way of seeing the world," which in turn informs "what players discover, how clues are interpreted, and how the final case report comes together." 

You could send Evelyn "Eve" Atwood, a "patient, methodical, and deeply discerning" cryptozoologist who "grounds supernatural phenomena in material evidence, systems, and biology." Her observations will be much different than Sam "Brass" Hingle's, a "pragmatic, affable, and hard to fool" former detective who specializes in reading "people, motives, and social dynamics better than anyone in the room." Kira, on the other hand, is "quiet, observant, and difficult to explain," whose "latent psychic and emotional energies" give her insights the others might completely overlook. Success in each case depends on selecting the best two agents for each job from a "growing roster" of options. Perhaps a particular case best suits someone able to "notice a hidden pattern in archaic writings," while another may require the ability to "understand a mysterious pocket of unidentifiable energy."

Every clue your agents uncover "adds to a shared case notebook, building a picture that neither agent could have assembled alone." Eventually, after your chosen pair has thoroughly scoured the environment for clues and examined the evidence available, you'll have to engage in a "word-based deduction system" to "fill in the gaps of a case report that only you can complete." Through "deduction, not guesswork," you must "solve cases by comparing perspectives, reading context, and interpreting the evidence agents bring back from the field." In turn, each "resolved case opens new leads, new locations, and new questions" to pursue. 
 
There is currently no target release date for The Eventide, but the game described as "The X-Files meets Golden Idol" is ready now for wishlisting on Steam, where it will launch for Windows PC.

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