The detective investigation genre in gaming is woefully thin, with the likes of L.A. Noire and Disco Elysium being two standouts. Obviously, Studio Reset, a studio comprised of ex-Bioware developers, were aware and wanted to remedy that, and it’s looking like they may just have, and added some unique mechanics to boot in The Eventide.
Full details from the developer below, but the stand-out part is the reveal of the Parallax Deduction mechanic, a “perspective-driven approach to investigation” which means the investigation can evolve and change depending on which of the agents at your disposal you assign to that particular case. Different skills, backgrounds and experiences means they will offer different clues and outcomes to the case, shaping the world around you, and what you choose.
Per Studio Reset:
Studio Reset, the newly formed studio by veteran developers Kaelin Lavallee, Kris Schoneberg, and Francis Lacuna, today revealed its first game: The Eventide, a single-player supernatural mystery adventure in early development for Steam.
Set in a neon-noir Canadian cityscape, The Eventide puts players in control of a covert team of paranormal investigators tasked with monitoring, studying, and intervening in strange cases that most people will never know existed. Players can watch the teaser trailer now and wishlist the game on Steam.
There are planes of existence adjacent to our own. Unknown to most, but not to The Eventide Agency.
As the unseen hand guiding the agency’s operations, players will assign investigators to a growing backlog of unexplained incidents scattered across the city. Each agent brings their own background, beliefs, expertise, and way of seeing the world.
Studio Reset calls this system Parallax Deduction: a perspective-driven approach to investigation where the agents assigned to each case shape what players discover, how clues are interpreted, and how the final case report comes together.
In The Eventide, solving a case is not just about finding clues. It is about deciding which combination of agents is best for understanding the clues in each case.
Every Agent Sees a Different Truth
Every case in The Eventide begins with a question: who should investigate?
The choice matters. From a growing roster, players assign two agents which changes what they may uncover. One investigator may read a scene through science and biology. Another may understand the human contradictions behind a witness statement. Another may sense emotional or psychic traces no one else can perceive.
Among the agents revealed today:
- Evelyn “Eve” Atwood, The Cryptozoologist: patient, methodical, and deeply discerning, Eve grounds supernatural phenomena in material evidence, systems, and biology.
- Sam “Brass” Hingle, The Former Detective: pragmatic, affable, and hard to fool, Brass reads people, motives, and social dynamics better than anyone in the room.
- Kira,The [REDACTED]: quiet, observant, and difficult to explain, Kira perceives latent psychic and emotional energies that others may never notice.
And with further agents in the roster, one may notice a hidden pattern in archaic writings. Another may peer into the ethereal planes to uncover otherwise undetectable clues. Another may use finely tuned tech to understand a mysterious pocket of unidentifiable energy. And sometimes, an agent’s perspective may uncover more questions than answers.
The Eventide is designed around deduction, not guesswork. Players solve cases by comparing perspectives, reading context, and interpreting the evidence agents bring back from the field.
“We see the world as we need to; not as it is,” said Kaelin Lavallee, Producer & Creative Director at Studio Reset. “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 truth is never lost. It exists in this world — or another.
A City Home to the Living and the Dead
The Eventide’s neon-noir city is stylish, strange, and deeply unsettled. Beneath its lights, apartment blocks, back rooms, offices, alleys, underground bars, and forgotten corners, something is pushing through from unseen places.
The Eventide Agency specializes in making the unseen seen: a spirit anchored to a mundane object, an apparition that doesn’t know what it is, an entity pulled from folklore, a hidden signal in the noise of the city.
The game blends supernatural mystery, mature narrative themes, fixed-camera 3D exploration, agent-driven investigation, and a word-based deduction system to create a detective fantasy around case files, redacted truths, and the uncomfortable space between what happened and what people are able to understand.
A Haunting New World From an Experienced Team
The Eventide is being built in Unreal Engine 5 by a team with deep experience in narrative-driven games, worldbuilding, systems design, and production.
Studio Reset is formed by developers whose work spans major studios including BioWare, Timbre Games, Hinterland, and Inflexion Games. With The Eventide, the team is building an original world with long-term creative potential: strange, thoughtful, mature, and rooted in mystery.
The Eventide is currently in early development for PC on Steam, with no release date currently announced.
What do you think about The Eventide? Will you be following it closely now it’s been announced? Do you think the new Agent system will offer a unique mechanic in the detective genre? Let us know in the comments below!
For your next read, check out the massive player milestone WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers just hit, or the new Batman game we’re getting soon.
Luke Addison is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Thumb Wars. Having previously been a part of multiple outlets over the years, including building an entire gaming team from nothing to something, he thought it best to forge his own path and answer only to himself. As likely to be found playing the latest game as he is in the kitchen relaxing (by cooking), he always brings the same bold and brash attitude to everything he does, with a heavy leaning on sarcasm and dry wit!
