Former BioWare developers at Studio Reset have revealed The Eventide, a supernatural detective game built around multi-perspective case solving, Golden Idol-style logic, and a Canadian neon-noir paranormal setting.
Image: rockpapershotgun.com
Studio Reset has put a name to its paranormal mystery
Studio Reset has fully revealed The Eventide, its first game, as a single-player supernatural mystery adventure in early development for Steam. The Edmonton-based studio, formed by veteran developers Kaelin Lavallee, Kris Schoneberg, and Francis Lacuna, is pitching the project as a detective game where the crucial decision is not only what clue you find, but which investigator is capable of seeing it clearly in the first place.
That is the concrete hook behind The Eventide game: Studio Reset calls its central system Parallax Deduction. According to the studio’s announcement on Games Press, players guide a covert paranormal agency through strange cases in a neon-noir Canadian cityscape, assigning investigators from a growing roster to incidents most of the public will never know existed. Rock Paper Shotgun reports that each case begins with the player choosing two agents from the Eventide Agency’s roster, with those agents detecting and interpreting evidence in different ways.
The immediate tension is clear. The Eventide detective game is openly speaking to players who responded to The Case of the Golden Idol’s clue-gathering and word-based deduction, but Studio Reset is adding an extra layer before the logic board even begins. Your version of a case may be shaped by the people you sent into the room. The studio has not announced a release date, price, system requirements, or console versions, so the reveal is a statement of design intent rather than a finished buyer’s pitch.
Parallax Deduction turns the party into the lens
The Eventide’s clearest departure from a standard mystery format is that investigation starts with staffing. Studio Reset says players assign two agents to each case, and that each agent brings a background, belief system, expertise, and way of understanding the world. The official reveal says those choices affect what players discover, how clues are interpreted, and how the final case report comes together.
That wording matters. It confirms that agent selection changes the information pipeline, but it does not yet confirm how far the game bends around those choices. GameSpot describes outcomes as potentially varying widely depending on which investigators are assigned. Rock Paper Shotgun, while intrigued by the system, notes the open question of whether different agents will ultimately create different routes to the same correct culprit or case resolution. That distinction will define the game’s real shape. A detective game can let players see alternate evidence without changing the truth, or it can build cases where partial viewpoints lead to meaningfully different reports.
For now, the confirmed structure suggests a mystery game about controlled incompleteness. Studio Reset’s creative director Kaelin Lavallee summarized the premise in the reveal materials with the line, “We see the world as we need to; not as it is.” In practice, that gives The Eventide a party-based rhythm that reflects the studio’s role-playing background. Instead of swapping party members for combat utility, players appear to be choosing investigative instruments: science, instinct, empathy, the occult, or some combination that can survive contact with the impossible.
The first agents show how the system could create friction
Studio Reset has detailed three members of the Eventide Agency so far. MobileSyrup identifies Evelyn “Eve” Atwood as The Cryptozoologist, a methodical investigator who explains supernatural phenomena through science. Rock Paper Shotgun’s account of the reveal says Eve grounds the strange in material evidence, systems, and biology. Sam “Brass” Hingle, described by MobileSyrup as The Former Detective, is built around reading people and social dynamics. Kira, presented by MobileSyrup as The [REDACTED], can perceive psychic and emotional energies that more mundane investigators may miss.
That triangle is easy to read as gameplay language. Eve is the laboratory light. Brass is the interrogation room. Kira is the cold spot in the hallway before the door opens. The interesting part is not that each has a specialty, but that the specialties imply bias. A scientist may explain too much away. A people-reader may overvalue motive and contradiction. A psychic may catch a trace nobody else can see, while also pulling the case toward evidence that cannot be neatly filed.
Studio Reset has not shown enough to judge how those biases will be enforced mechanically. The reveal materials confirm that agents interpret clues differently, but they do not yet show whether an investigator can be wrong, incomplete, misleading, or simply narrow. That is the design risk sitting under the stylish premise. If Parallax Deduction only hands out different flavor text, it becomes a theme. If it changes the player’s reasoning process, it becomes the engine of the mystery.
Golden Idol is the comparison Studio Reset has invited
The Case of the Golden Idol comparison is not an outside label placed on The Eventide by players. Rock Paper Shotgun reports that Studio Reset’s release names The Case of the Golden Idol as an inspiration for The Eventide’s investigation flow, particularly a find-first, think-later style of solving. The reveal materials also describe a word-based deduction system, agent-driven investigation, fixed-camera 3D exploration, supernatural mystery, and mature narrative themes.
That puts The Eventide in direct conversation with one of the sharpest modern detective templates. The Case of the Golden Idol, developed by Color Gray Games and published by Playstack, released in 2022 on PC before later console and mobile ports, according to the provided Wikipedia source. Its structure asks players to collect key words from scenes and use them to reconstruct identities, actions, objects, and events. Wikipedia’s summary notes that it was praised for its deduction-driven storytelling and distinctive visual presentation, received DLC in 2023, gained a Redux update in 2024, and was followed by The Rise of the Golden Idol in 2024.
For players searching for a Case of the Golden Idol style game, the important similarity is the promise of evidence becoming language. Golden Idol’s pleasure comes from the pause after the scene has been searched, when collected names and verbs have to click into place. The Eventide appears to keep that logic-solving appetite while changing the staging. Instead of frozen 18th-century tableaux, Studio Reset is presenting fixed-camera 3D spaces in a paranormal city, where the scene may be filtered through two investigators before the player begins forming the report.
The X-Files influence is filtered through a Canadian city
MobileSyrup reports that Studio Reset previously discussed drawing from The X-Files and from the team’s prior work on party-based RPGs, before the studio had publicly named the project. With the reveal, that pairing is easier to parse. The Eventide is an X-Files inspired game in the sense that its agency monitors hidden paranormal incidents, but Studio Reset is placing that premise in a stylized Canadian neon-noir city rather than a direct imitation of American federal-procedure television.
The official reveal describes a city where strange incidents are scattered through apartment blocks, back rooms, offices, alleys, underground bars, and forgotten corners. Games Press frames the agency’s work around planes of existence adjacent to our own, unknown to most people but known to the Eventide Agency. Rock Paper Shotgun describes the trailer’s look as watercoloured, reality-warping, and neon-noir, with a painterly relation to current PSX-inspired aesthetics.
MobileSyrup adds useful local context. The outlet reports that the trailer hints at a Toronto-esque city and contains Canadian references. Lavallee told MobileSyrup that the locations are fictitious representations inspired by real Canadian locales, including nods to transit stations, familiar but legally distinct donut and coffee establishments, and the provinces and territories. That specificity gives the supernatural pitch a firmer floor. The horror does not float in an abstract noir city; it pushes through places that are meant to feel civic, everyday, and slightly recognizable.
Former BioWare experience raises expectations, but the wait is open-ended
The studio’s pedigree is part of the pitch, and the sources are specific about it. MobileSyrup reports that Studio Reset was formed by Kaelin Lavallee, Kris Schoneberg, and Francis Lacuna, with credits that include BioWare Edmonton’s Mass Effect trilogy and DLC, Dragon Age, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Long Dark at Hinterland, and an unannounced Timbre Games project. Games Press similarly describes The Eventide as coming from developers with experience on Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and The Long Dark.
That background explains why The Eventide’s detective structure sounds less like a solitary puzzle box and more like a party-management mystery. BioWare’s best-known narrative RPGs often make companion perspective part of the dramatic texture, even when the moment-to-moment systems are built around combat or dialogue. Studio Reset appears to be moving that emphasis into investigation itself, turning character perspective into the pacing device between exploration and deduction.
The practical guidance is simple because the announced details are still limited. The Eventide is confirmed as being in early development for Steam, and GameSpot says players can wishlist it ahead of its eventual PC release. There is no release date. There is no announced price. No console versions have been announced in the provided materials. Anyone looking for another logic-heavy deduction game should keep it on the radar, especially if Golden Idol’s word-filling structure was the appeal, but the real test will be whether a future demo or gameplay breakdown shows Parallax Deduction producing hard reasoning decisions rather than stylish alternate viewpoints.