Introduction

I never hurt you in anger (Blackstone Chronicles VLP)

John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles: An Adventure in Terror is a point&click adventure game with a very long name. It was released in 1998 as the sequel to John Saul's serial novel Blackstone Chronicles published in six parts between 1996 and 1998. It's a forgettable book completely overshadowed by the game it spawned.

John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles: An Adventure in Terror was designed and written by Bob Bates, who earlier worked on a number of late Infocom's and early Legend Entertainment's interactive fiction pieces, such as Gateway 1&2, Eric the Unready and Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels (the game where you can shoot Holmes dead less than a minute in).

John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles: An Adventure in Terror is horror game achieving its effect without the use of jump scares, buckets of blood or mass hysteria. It's a very chill and collected trip through the history of pre-neuroleptic psychiatric treatment, when healing the mind usually involved systematically hurting the body.
I'm keeping my commentary to a minimum here because the game has lots of good but unsubtitled narration.