It isn’t often that a game can be described as an action murder-mystery RPG, but that is just what Omensight is. The game blends traditional hack-and-slash action RPG elements with a time-travel investigation. What that means is that anyone who has read this far thinks that is either super awesome or completely stupid. Fortunately for those that love mystery, Omensight does its job very well.

The first thing to understand about Omensight is that the keywords here are mystery and time-travel. The game focuses on a single day and a single murder – the murder of a priestess. This priestess is the only thing protecting the land of Urralia from the void, so after she is killed, the world has only a single day before the void overruns and destroys it. That is where the player (as the Harbinger) comes in.

The Harbinger is a warrior entity summoned to fix this mistake. The player will use him to explore that day again and again from different paths. Each path will follow a different character (or suspect) and the levels are full of clues and hints that the Harbinger must collect to solve the mystery and ultimately stop the murder from happening, or at the very least stop the Void from creeping into the world.

The background for the event centers on a war between two anthropomorphic factions –dog-people and rat-people. The Harbinger – existing outside of time – will be able to choose one of the huge players in this war to follow each day. There is a cat general, a bear freedom fighter, the bard-like mouse leader of the rat-people, and a bird-man that certainly looks the most evil of the lot.

Following each character will provide clues like when the priestess left for her temple, who she interacted with, and what happened that led to the final battle between the factions and the priestess’ death.

A good sign for handling time-travel is the developer behind the game, Spearhead Games. Spearhead Games previous game Stories: The Path of Destinies also dealt with time and anthropomorphic heroes (see a theme?). It also received rave reviews and one a number of awards including best indie game and best new game.

Like Frostpunk, Omensight is a small indie game by a studio that does one thing, but they do that one thing very well. For gamers looking for something other than the usual AAA developer fare, Omensight is a welcome vacation.

Omensight is available now for PC or PS4