Finally, after years of shooters, first-person view adventures, and an abundance of in-game stores littering you with cosmetics and DLC, new developer, Lost Cabinet Games, has created something simple, engaging, puzzling, and downright addictive.

Gone are the days of realistic graphics, quick time events, and gaming that feels like ‘have I played this before?’ Prepare to don your long coat, light up your cigarette, slam down that shot of whiskey, and head to the crime scene. The world’s a crazy, topsy-turvy world, kid, and it’s your job to solve crimes that linger from the darker side of town. Welcome to ‘Obsidian Moon’.

Obsidian Moon doesn’t provoke gunplay, chases, or explosions. It challenges your brain. Our noir journey begins in the grimy, smoke-choked streets of Obsidian City. Every clue matters, and each choice chips away at your grip on in-game sanity. Think less L.A. Noire shootouts and more puzzle-solving detective work. Here, ‘trust your gut’ reigns supreme.

As the guilt-haunted homicide detective, Sam Carter, you’re handed your first murder case as a tutorial-esque introduction to the demo. They don’t go light on the details and how to solve a case here, as the hand-holding the tutorial provides will need to be studied or written down, as every case will need to be executed in the same instinctive ways.

The meat of your arsenal is all film-noir based: interrogation, forensics, surveillance, and deduction. You sift through leads, inspect evidence, run forensic tests, interrogate suspects, and decide how far you will bend ethical or procedural rules to get answers.

Every action costs something: time, money, or pieces of Carter’s fragile sanity, and the case adapts to your decisions with over 30 possible investigative paths in this first mission alone. It’s cerebral work. The pacing is deliberate by design, almost languid, which suits the noir theme but can feel like pushing through thick fog at times.

For a text-driven, desk-bound detective sim, controls are simple but effective. You click and drag clues, select actions for characters, and weave your case together like cards on a table. There’s no controller support in the demo layout, as everything plays best with a mouse and keyboard.

The UI mostly works, but it can feel a little cluttered when you’ve got evidence, leads, notes, and excerpts all vying for space on the virtual desk. A few interactions, e.g., dragging clues into folders or navigating dense dialogue options, occasionally feel fiddly, and the demo could benefit from a faster text flow or skip option. Other times, when reviewing clues or case notes, the information floats off-screen, eating up case time and causing real-life frustration.

Obsidian Moon is primarily text, cards, and UI panels with noir flair. The in-game layout is that of a classic cream, vanilla folder, set with the background of a 1920s detective-style office, complete with cigarette smoke lingering and a bottle of whiskey half empty. Simple, clean, and extremely effective.

Besides the paper shuffling, page turning SFX, there are reward/clue-solving jingles, set to the dull blues noir instrumental. atmosphere of rain-soaked streets and late-night interrogations. Again, though not as orchestral as, say, a Halo soundtrack, the simple choices here help set the tone and increase immersion.

Obsidian Moon’s demo is like a criminal’s calling card: iconic, familiar, and captivating to behold. A love letter to anyone who loves a slow-burn mystery, layered deduction, and narrative weight over flashy visuals or combat.

It’s cerebral, moody, and unmistakably noir, offering a taste of what the full release could become. If you’re after smart, psychologically twisting murder mysteries, here’s looking at you, kid.

Written by: James Fraser-Smith