Developer Hollow Ponds, Richard Hogg

Publisher Annapurna Interactive

Format PC (tested), Switch

Release October 8

Nosiness is a thoroughly British concept. (And even if it isn’t, we’re having it anyway, because taking ownership of things that aren’t ours is just what we do.) There’s something distinctly passive-aggressive about it: peering over fences and snooping into affairs, all while maintaining an air of polite nonchalance. It’s not I Am Dead’s setting - a seagull-filled, rural-accented, North Atlantic island - then, that makes it feel most like a product of Edge’s home country. It’s its central mechanic: sticking your nose into everyone’s (and everything’s) business.

Cut into an armchair and you’ll find loose change, as well as a lost remote

The justification for it is wonderful, too. You are Morris, the deceased curator of Shelmerston’s museum; when the spirit of your dog, Sparky, warns you that the volcano on the island is about to erupt, you must set about saving your hometown by finding the five ghosts who represent its prospective new guardians, and convince one of them to take the job to prevent disaster. It’s a hidden-object game, essentially: Mementos scattered around the island, mentioned in still-living characters’ memories, are the key to summoning the ghost of each Prospect. You find them by using a unique, supernatural but brilliantly logical mechanic: selecting three-dimensional scenes and objects, then using the triggers to zoom in and out, “slicing” into an interior view. Just as if, we eventually realise, a non-corporeal being might pass through walls.