Paranormasight: The Mermaid's Curse
The second Paranormasight title does little to change the formula seen in the first - it remains a visual novel with a chapter-based structure where you hop between different characters across a timeline. The Crypt Keeper-esque Storyteller likewise returns, and once again he'll occassionally interrupt proceedings to point out something or maybe gently guide you through a perhaps sticky situation. Puzzles are similarly light, but the appearance of clever situations that demand your interaction with the game's interface beyond merely going through the menus is always welcome. So far so good, really.
Of course in narrative terms The Mermaid's Curse is its own new story, one complete with a wholly new setting. We're still in 1980's Japan but this time around Square-Enix takes us to the sunny Ise-Shima coast. It's a region so beautiful legend says it holds a portal to heaven itself, and that's just one of the myths the team works into the game together with various mermaid stories including, yes, The Little Mermaid. No, not the Disney movie - I'm referring to the actual Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, the sad one with the musings on love and mortality. Meanwhile the core cast consists of a quartet of goofy teenagers, who lend proceedings a breezy, youthful energy even when the supernatural situation in their (fictional) island home threatens to get seriously dire. Add yet another clever twist on the nature of you, as the player, and it all marks The Mermaid's Curse as a firm favourite as far as games in 2026 go.
