The grounds are also richly illustrated, including a dramatic temple of Apollo folly straight out of neoclassical England.
And in an homage to classic horror, the mansion reveals modern secrets hidden beneath its Victorian appearance.
The game’s murder mystery is set in a beautifully creepy mansion complete with ramparts and mysteriously locked rooms. The styling in Impostor Factory is really inviting, with art that I enjoyed more than in any of the previous games. Freebird has always excelled at nonverbal cues. These are sometimes more interactive and, at other moments, take the form of fleeting glimpses of memories that are seen only in passing. This is when the game picks up a familiar mechanic from To the Moon and Finding Paradise: you explore scenes from someone’s memories in order to gather orbs that let you break through to the next area. He even begins to suspect the household’s little cat in an imaginative scene that made me laugh out loud.īut that’s just the beginning, because Quincy learns some truths that would change his perspectives on the events around him. He runs around the house, confronted with gory scenes that grow more elaborate, which then suddenly vanish. Or… are they? What unfolds is a slapstick horror comedy with Quincy at its centre. Then things start to get bloody when he finds the hosts gruesomely murdered. The hosts’ staff say he’s the first guest to arrive, but he runs into fellow guest Lynri when he goes upstairs. As the unfortunate fellow, Quincy arrives at a fancy party, although he appears to be dressed casually. You start with a classic story opening: some guy just shows up. However, Impostor Factory is a standalone experience, and its weighty emotional climax will especially reward returning players with a complex sci-fi plot with ties to the previous games.