First details illuminate Dark Nights with Poe and Munro (and a future game)

Written by Jack Allin — May 17, 2019 at 11:14

Two of the more memorable characters in D'Avekki Studios' The Shapeshifting Detective were the late night radio hosts heard regularly over the airwaves (and later visited when they become instrumental to the story). Knowing a good thing when they see it, the developers have decide to feature the pair a whole lot more as the titular stars of the upcoming spin-off prequel Dark Nights with Poe and Munro.

Not much has been revealed about the story so far, but the game will once again be set in the "creepy town of August." As you'd expect of the husband and wife team behind not only The Shapeshifting Detective but The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker before that, Dark Nights will feature "100% Full Motion Video with branching narrative and supernatural themes." Ensuring series continuity, actors Klemens Koehring and Leah Cunard will be reprising their roles as John 'Poe' Pope and Ellis Munro, though for those unfamiliar with D'Avekki's previous titles, fear not as events take place just prior to the last game so no previous knowledge is required.

While the new game's live-action presentation shares much in common with its predecessors, there are several key differences. The most obvious is that Dark Nights will be split into six self-contained episodes, although released together in an anthology format. Another change is that you won't be playing as yourself this time around, but rather making choices "on behalf of both Poe and Munro at different points, and also sometimes act[ing] as an omnipotent controller." There will be "plenty of dialogue" to engage in along the way, but rather than working through standard topic trees, the gameplay here will relate mostly to "multiple slowly-timed hotspot-based choices." Each of the six stories is designed to be highly linear within a single playthrough, but their short length and multiple branching paths will allow players "to replay them to try all the options."

The first "season" of Dark Nights with Poe and Munro is currently on track for release later this year on PC and consoles, but the little UK studio behind it isn't planning to stop there. Not only are future seasons possible, but they have already begun work on their fourth planned game, Pocket Dreadfuls. Promising to be "bigger and more ambitious than Poe and Munro," the only other thing the developers have revealed for now is that the game will have "more 'classic' point and click elements like exploration, puzzle solving, and a new mechanic we haven’t used in FMV yet."