Indie gaming powerhouse Raw Fury has officially teamed up with Montreal-based developer Fool Moon to unveil their latest project: Hillthorn. If you are a fan of atmospheric, mind-bending thrillers that trust your brain to do the heavy lifting, you’ll want to put this one on your radar immediately.
Following in the eerie footsteps of Blue Prince and The Seance of Blake Manor, Hillthorn is a hauntingly dark, card-based investigation game where the ultimate challenge isn’t just solving the crime—it’s doing it without a single word spoken.
The Setup: Silence on the Mountain
The premise of Hillthorn drops you straight into an unsettling, isolated alpine nightmare. A child has gone missing along the treacherous, maze-like mountain trails of a secluded town. You play an outsider tasked with unravelling the truth, but there’s a massive catch: the tight-knit local community, known as “The Flock,” has absolutely no interest in talking to you.
Instead of relying on heavy dialogue trees, text boxes, or voice-acted interrogations, the entire mystery unfolds through visual Clue cards.
A World in Cards: Every unsettling detail, hidden motive, and environmental secret is physically represented as a card. Players must use pure logic and sharp intuition to Investigate, Explore, and—in some bizarre instances—”communicate” with these cards to piece together the narrative.
Mechanics That Play with Time
Finesse is key if you want to extract information from the highly suspicious locals, but you won’t have the luxury of taking your time. In Hillthorn, time is your most scarce resource.
The clock actively ticks down with every action you take, forcing a stressful trade-off between being thorough and being fast. Interestingly, the developers have teased a mechanic that allows you to revisit untrodden paths, hinting at a loop structure where backtracking is possible—but it comes at a distinct, eerie cost.
Why We’re Excited
Raw Fury has a phenomenal track record for publishing games with distinct, unforgettable identities (Sable, Norco, Cassette Beasts), and Hillthorn fits perfectly into that curated lineup. Stripping away dialogue entirely places a massive emphasis on visual storytelling, environmental design, and player agency. It’s a bold mechanic that could make for one of the most uniquely immersive detective games in years.
Watch the Announcement Trailer
Check out the debut trailer below to get a first glimpse of the game’s striking, silent aesthetic:
Hillthorn is coming to PC via Steam, and an updated demo is already live for players who want to start testing their detective skills right away. Head over to Steam to play the demo and add it to your wishlist today!
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