Image: Fool Moon, Finnegan Motors & Raw Fury

At first glance, I had honestly assumed that Hillthorn, laid out on a desk with various heavily-shadowed character and item cards, would be another management game wrapped in an esoteric interface, like Cultist Simulator or Stacklands. I was very pleasantly pleased to find myself entirely wrong - this is a supernatural point-and-click mystery adventure, just told almost entirely through cards. It is also out today.

So, what we've got here is a classic detective mystery adventure. You're a small-time investigator, hired by a wealthy dame to look for her missing daughter, last seen off hiking around Mt. Hillthorn. You get there, only to find a park ranger, his outfit mysteriously muddied, grudgingly willing to tell you the path to a village on the mountain, but firmly telling you not to stay out past midnight. Bad things happen after midnight.

And all of this is done without a word. Instead, you equip interaction verb cards like Talk, Investigate, Travel, and Listen, and use them on the cards representing things in the scene. Look at the park ranger to reveal the stains on his shirt, then talk to him with the 'stains' card to have him dole out a 'mud' note. Find a locked door? You need to have the right key card on your desk. It's shockingly intuitive after just a few minutes.

Before long, it starts to do fun stuff with that concept. There are clearly strange things afoot in this town. After midnight, you find yourself at the foot of the mountain again, time rolled back and your inventory cleared, but all your memories intact. Another week, another card-based time-loop investigation mystery! But there's other smart stuff going on here. Attend a local religious service and listen too many times to the preacher, and your vision narrows, eventually blacking out, until you find yourself outside again.

Dark areas are lit by a torch card that must be moved around your tabletop as if it were a physical light source. You pass the time by winding your clock forward, as it sits in the top corner of the screen. During the opening section, you can turn off the background music by interacting with the radio card that you found on your desk card. A few moody bits of interstitial artwork or the occasional cut-in aside, showing unique actions, EVERYTHING is cards here, and it just works. A whole haunted world on a desktop.

From the little I've played so far, this has immediately launched high up my to-play list. And I recommend you try it yourself. It won't even cost you anything.

Hillthorn is out now for £13/$15, with a 10% launch discount until November 17th. It's also available in discount bundles with excellent card-based and mystery adventures like The Seance of Blake Manor, The Incident at Galley House, The Horror at Highrook, Call of the Sea, and Blue Prince. There's also a demo available now. Not available in card form, though.