Four nuns did a murder and it's your job to learn why

Image credit: nanonimo

What's the next logical games industry career step after being a cinematic director on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a lead cinematic consultant on XCOM: The Bureau, and a director at Ubisoft Montreal working on Assassin's Creed Unity and the recently reborn 1666: Amsterdam? If you answered "explore abandoned convents with a camera crew, proceed to make a horror game about it", then you are clearly Jesse Malcolm Sweet, developer of Sisters of Solitude, and I'll thank you to keep your nose out of my drafts. G'wan, get thee to a nunnery!

Despite being inspired by a real-life film project, Sisters of Solitude doesn't appear to feature much found footage. Nor does it look like Sweet's prior credits in the realm of cyberpunk and revolutionary Paris, though I guess you could trace a throughline from the witchy endeavours of 1666: Amsterdam. It's a top-down 8-bit pixelart affair, with players roaming a haunted convent as they try to solve the mystery of a murdered Mother Superior.

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The ghosts of the four sisters who killed her are still here. In the course of some open-ended exploration - "from the desecrated chapel, the greenhouse, [and] the cemetery to the old theatre" - you'll dig through old diaries, find secret doors, and make use of some gadgets to flush out the spooks. You might also "have to dabble in the very rituals that trapped these souls in the first place", according to the Steam page. Seems unwise. Dabbling all too easily becomes doing. I dabbled in writing amateur videogame reviews 20 years ago and look what happened.

Your chunky ghost-hunting tools are pleasingly arranged along the left hand margin. They include an electromagnetic field detector, used to discover both hidden documents and vengeful spirits, and an instant camera for the capture of "spectral imprints". There's also a tape deck with which to record the silence of each room, then play it back with the volume turned up so you can hear any astral whispering. Some additional career context: after leaving Ubisoft, Sweet spent four years as an artistic director at Kino Montreal, a movie-making non-profit. I am hoping his evident expertise in film technology will extend to some nicely in-depth forensic Paranormal Activity-style puzzles.

Sisters of Solitude is out this year. If I've left you in the mood for a convent murder mystery, Misericorde is already available and said to be extremely good. For something table-toppier, maybe try The Horror at Highrook.