The Curse of Midnight Manor is the first game in the Delaware St. John
series. The player takes on the role of Delaware St. John, who is haunted by
visions and nightmares. He meets Kelly Bradford, who owns a book store but
researches paranormal phenomena in her spare time. They discover the visions
refer to Morrisville Manor, also known as Midnight Manor, built in 1892 by the
wealthy businessman Bernard Armand before a series of tragedies caused rumors
of a curse and caused the manor to close down for good.

As in all Delaware St. John games, the game has been split up into two
stories, here The Fate of Vandals and Done with Mirrors. The entire game takes
place in the manor, but John will research different tragedies which occurred
at different points of time. The first story deals with the recent
disappearance of 5 teenagers in the manor, while the second story goes all the
way back to some of the manor’s original inhabitants. Most of the events are
told through the ghosts who act out what happened to them. After completing
the first story, the second one becomes available. This game also introduces
the legend of The Destroyer and The Protector, further explored in the second
and third game in the series.

The game is shown from a first-person perspective, with pre-rendered 3D cut-
scenes in a third-person view. There are no dialogue trees during
conversations and puzzles consists of inventory-based actions, exploration,
gathering clues, a maze, some more difficult puzzles involving keypads and
riddles, and a few time-based actions where John needs to act quickly so as
not to die. During his search, John is in contact with Kate through VIC, the
Voice/Imagery Communicator. Shown in the bottom right part of the interface,
it can be used to ask for clues, or to send photos or recordings of paranormal
activity for analysis. Many of the puzzles involve helping ghosts find peace
by returning objects.