Developed by Pentadimensional Games, Tenebris Pictura (or “A Dark Picture” for those of you versed in Latin) is a particularly intriguing experience. With some apparent flaws, the game is rich in atmosphere, has a rather unique approach to combat, as well as plenty of cleverly-designed puzzles. Despite a somewhat lacklustre narrative and some gameplay bugbears, it has enough new ideas to be worth checking out for those looking for an action-puzzler with a difference.

In the game you play as Magnus Blom, a paranormal investigator with a connection to the spirit world. Blom has been invited to a mysterious island to locate Sophie, the daughter of an old friend who has vanished. Guided by the Aeter Pendulum, a strange artefact pointing Blom towards paranormal events around the island, and taunted by an enigmatic spectre, Blom must unravel the island’s mysteries and get to the bottom of Sophie’s disappearance.

Tenebris Pictura’s plot is basically a detective story, where the mystery is established, then the detective fights demons for several hours while doing minimal detective work, until it’s kind of resolved all at once near the end after the detective has banished a sufficient number of demons. It led to weird pacing problems, where I often felt unsure of if I was doing the right thing due to the lack of progress that had been made in the central mystery that the game had set up at the beginning as Blom’s driving goal.

Although there are semi-frequent interludes where Blom argues with a mysterious ghost who is haunting him, the subject of those conversations rarely progresses the plot forward or provides new information, even if it was interesting enough to explore Blom’s backstory a bit more. I would have preferred more frequent check-ins with Sophie’s father and butler, or at least more of Blom’s private eye monologues recapping what he is learning from all the otherwise essentially-plotless demon-hunting excursions, if only to give more of a sense that the plot is meaningfully progressing.

Fortunately, despite the underplayed narrative, the actual gameplay of Tenebris Pictura has a lot more going on. Each location is essentially separated into puzzle zones, and then usually one or two combat encounters. Blom’s main ability is to astrally project himself like Doctor Strange, with his ghost form able to float around, possess objects, and fight supernatural creatures, all while leaving Blom’s physical body immobile. I have to praise the puzzle designs; the game is very good at constantly presenting new scenarios, hazards, and solution types on a regular basis, without feeling like it is straying too far from a core set of mechanics.

Most puzzles involve possessing or manipulating objects as Blom’s spirit form in order to clear a path for Blom’s physical form to be able to reach the exit. With the exception of the handful of levels involving a lot of platforming, which from the game’s isometric camera view felt quite unreliable, I enjoyed many of the game’s challenges. These can range from pushing blocks around to redirect lasers towards giant boulders, to navigating an art gallery by jumping in and out of its paintings. Tenebris Pictura is also generally fairly welcoming of unconventional puzzle solutions, especially once one particularly interesting new ability is unlocked late in the game.

The combat is similarly ambitious, even if it did sometimes feel frustrating. Similarly to the puzzle gameplay, Blom must astrally project in order to fight his foes. This means that the start of most encounters involves creating barricades around Blom’s physical form so that he isn’t hurt during the fight. The actual combat feels kind of like an isometric beat-’em-up, with Blom’s spirit form being equipped with melee attacks and a handful of special attacks on lengthy cooldowns. The other clever string to the combat’s bow is that merely reducing the demons’ health bars to zero isn’t enough to defeat them; Blom must also lay down a blank canvas somewhere in the room, into which the demons will be absorbed once they’re sufficiently weakened, which reminded me of Ghostbusters, appropriately enough.

In regards to the combat, it does become somewhat repetitive and annoying before long. You don’t learn any new basic attacks, and the special attacks you can obtain are either mostly useless, like the one that lets you teleport a single demon, or way too powerful, like the one-two combo of the power that pushes all enemies far away, plus the one ranged area of effect spell which is extra-effective after all the enemies have been pushed into one corner. The fact that nearly all the foes had mostly ranged attacks when Blom didn’t was also slightly irritating, as it rendered a lot of the crowd control abilities to have limited utility when preventing the enemies from getting closer to you doesn’t do much to prevent them from continuing to attack you.