Hands-on with Inkblood, the highly stylistic investigative adventure game [Preview]

What happens when you mix a Victorian setting with wild plots, magic items a camera and a lot of murders? A surprising amount of fun!

PAX is always good for finding video games that are completely out of our realm. Sometimes a bright screen will catch our eye as we’re walking past, we’ll stop, we’ll get a closer look, and then we’ll end up sitting down and playing through a demo that we probably would have missed if it was just on Steam. Inkblood, from Hey Bird! and Critical Reflex, is that kind of game. It takes a second to realize that it’s not like any other game near it, but then we’re swallowed in, melting into the monitor and making everyone disappear around us.

The project, a wild investigative game that mixes Victorian and midieval worlds with modern-ish technology, has us take on the role of an inquisitor that has to solve a series of brutal murders and crimes using only the gear within our carriage. We never leave that carriage, in fact, just peeping through window curtains, taking photos, and grabbing objects that may be relevant. It’s almost like looking through a picture book diorama, holding up a magnifying glass to see find clues and hints.

Our goal in each location is to sift through those cluse and piece together a CLUE-like breakdown of the case. The first is rather simple: who killed this person. I move the magnifying glass around the window, which lets me see things that happened in the past, to figure out who it was and then state my outcome on the board. Easy peasy.

The SECOND case is much more complex. It involves a traveling band, and Inn, and a lot of jealousy. I move my magnifying glass around the window, grab a photo here and there (is that someone on the ground? is that someone peeping through a window at the Inn?) and I start stacking them in places I THINK they belong. Later I realize that the items I’ve been handed, several instruments, hide secrets of their own, being able to be opened, taken apart, and uses in the murder itself. The result is a multi-layered retelling of the events and a clear (I hope!) accusation of the culprit.

It’s a neat concept, catapulted by some really striking visual ideas that look like high contrast chalk paintings against a dark backdrop/world and audio that is almost ethereal at times.

Inkblood has some novel adventure game ideas in it, and if it succeeds in continuously pulling its concept forward then it could be a really engaging experience that’ll have us putting string and sticky notes up on our game room walls.

This preview based on hands-on at PAX East 2026. Images and video courtesy publisher and SideQuesting. This video first appeared on The SideQuest for April 02, 2026.