Dark Auction

Dark Auction is an adventure visual novel video game that casts players in the role of 18-year-old Noah Crawford, an investigator searching for clues of his father's disappearance. The plot is set in November 1981 in West Germany. The game features a 3D environment with point-and-click mechanics. Players explore the area in first person while rooms lock them into place, forcing them to investigate from a fixed perspective.

In exploration phases, players talk to other participants, search rooms and floors, and reveal lies and trauma that leads them to the truth that each person may keep hidden. Once players retrieve information, it is placed in their Word Cloud, which is then used to solve mysteries during every auction. Rather than being an auction with bids of money, the game's auctions are instead bid with the participants memories. They must attempt to win by offering their own memories as bids, using an EPO memory reconstruction device.

In Dark Auction, players control the protagonist Noah Crawford. Leonard Crawford, Noah's father, has been missing for a few days after receiving a mysterious invitation to attend an auction involving items connected to Dictator X. Concerned for his father, Noah travels to Geheimnis Castle, the site of the auction, located near the Black Forest mountain range in West Germany. Upon entering the castle, he finds his father's dead body slumped on a chair with a strange device on his head.

The Auctioneer, the man in charge of the auction who wears a parrot mask, says that he will tell Noah the truth about his father's death as long as he both takes his father's place as a participant and ensures that the other five participants' auctions succeed. Noah does not realize until later that he and the other guests are trapped and unable to escape. In auctions, guests bid for items with their memories. Noah works to solve the mysteries related to the dictator hidden in the auction items, slowly revealing his father's secret.

Dark Auction was produced by Shinsuke Umeda, and planned and written by Japanese video game designer Rika Suzuki. Character design for the game was done by manga artist Kohske, while the game's score was composed by Yuko Komiyama. Umeda had described it as "authentic mystery adventure". In an interview with Netto's Game Room, Umeda had explained that during the initial stages of development, he and the rest of the developer team sat down and talked with Suzuki about multiple artworks that were lost to wars and natural disasters throughout history.

He explained that "There are a wide range of artifacts and works of art have been lost that have a long history or certain legends about them that can really add an extra element to storytelling. We decided to incorporate that idea into the thematic core of the game."

Upon release, Dark Auction received "mixed or average" reviews from video game publications based on the review aggregate website Metacritic aimed towards the PlayStation 5 and PC ports. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received fair approval, being recommended by 50% of critics.

José Viana of PSX Brazil commented on the game's story in the first few chapters, calling it "quite interesting". The reviewer praised the game for its art and soundtrack, but noted that they were "nowhere near enough to save this game." Push Square's Jenny Jones wrote "The story premise is slightly bonkers but surprisingly compelling. [...]