Blood on the Thames is amateur theatre meets H.P. Lovecraft
Ever wonder what it’d be like if a local amateur theatre company put on a production of The Call of Cthulhu? The answer is Blood on the Thames, a PC horror game that has you roaming Victorian London unravelling the murder of your husband.
After a brief prologue chapter, you’re plunged into Blood on the Thames’s real mystery, discovering what your husband may have been involved in. I’ll steer clear of spoilers, but cursed cigars figure into the story. That should give you an idea of the tone it’s going for.
Blood on the Thames doesn’t have any voice-overs, not so far as I’ve seen. But each character is represented by a very modern-looking (albeit black and white) image of an actor in period dress. Developer Team Firestorm hasn’t even attempted to grain them up, so they’re not remotely convincing as Victorian.
Instead, it feels like you’re participating in a murder mystery evening. Can I can see some turning their nose up at this? Absolutely. But I love its low-rent aesthetic and, coupled with the 90s-style in-engine graphics, it can be a delight to experience. There’s a catch, though, if you’re expecting the game to scare your socks off.
The trade-off to its amateur appeal is that that while Blood on the Thames’ story is suitably Lovecraftian, involving slimy things, a cult and so on, it’s yet to actually terrify me. When a giant, scuttling horror leapt out, I was convinced someone was pulling it on a piece of fishing wire. The writing, too, is occasionally a little off, but it adds to its murder-mystery evening feel.
There are puzzles aplenty, which are just taxing enough to be fun. But you also get to point out contradictions, Phoenix Wright-style, using facts you’ve gathered. Nailing someone’s lies is every bit as much of a blast as it is in Ace Attorney. And, at the end of each encounter, you get to spell out their heinous deeds.
As a Victorian woman, your wits are absolutely your best weapon. Even with her money, protagonist Mina has to push extra hard to get anything done. Her husband is barely cold in the ground, and she’s getting letters from her family telling her to remarry. I absolutely appreciated being able to write back in a suitably acerbic fashion.
Another neat touch is the way Blood on the Thames exploits its sepia graphics. Blood on the Thames isn’t out-and-out terrifying, but it’s still unsettling to pull open a door to find a bloody altar, the only hint of colour in that otherwise unassuming location. Despite the monochrome graphics, interactables are easy enough to find, and there’s an option to highlight them in blue.
There is a little unintentional jank, such as the way you have to click on the first half of a sentence for it to count. The dev did squash the progress-blocking bug I encountered, but I still ran into the odd glitch or four, and had to restart one chapter at one point.
Blood on the Thames has more than a few rough edges, but if you can appreciate its amateur theatre feel, you’ll get a kick out of this wobbly but oddly appealing adventure. For a taster, you can download a demo of the first chapter right now.
Blood on the Thames is available now on PC.
