The Mermaid Mask Review: It’s Tangle Tower 2, in the Best Way

I recommend SFB Games’ Tangle Tower to anyone and everyone that I can. It’s a beautiful, funny, charming murder mystery game. It’s taken seven years for SFB to follow it up (they made the funky horror game Crow Country in-between), but boy oh boy, was the wait worth it. Released this month, The Mermaid Mask is the long-awaited sequel to Tangle Tower, and it raises the bar in every single way.

Before I dive in (pun not originally intended), let me just say right off the bat: You don’t need to play Tangle Tower to play The Mermaid Mask. Similar to what I wrote in my Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector review, if you’ve played the first one, you’ll likely appreciate the evolutions and quiet lore references here even more but it’s definitely not required. The Mermaid Mask is a great standalone mystery game, period.

I’m on a Boat

Well, technically a submarine, but the sub-heading was too good to resist. In this new chapter of Grimoire and Sally’s adventure (this is their third official outing), the detectives have been invited to a seafaring town to investigate a locked-room murder mystery aboard a vessel.

The Mermaid Mask is a visual and audio feast, perfect for a point-and-click detective story. Every handcrafted location oozes with character. I often gasped upon entering a new room on the submarine — the colors, the details, the variance, the vibes! The maritime setting mixed with a Victorian flavor works so well for creating spooky tension. Each character is wonderfully drawn, animated, and written. They all have unique personalities and quirks, making for an exciting cast of suspects.

Just like in Tangle Tower, the game is fully voice-acted. Edwyn Tiong and Amber Lee Connors return as Grimoire and Sally, respectively; they’re written to have so much humor and heart, and they’re performed perfectly. Eric Morgan Stuart as Dr. Zephyr, Tara Langella as Tadpole, Alex Bankier as Godrick Gripp, and Justine Leah Hince as Symmetry Silkmoth were particularly fabulous to listen to; I never skipped ahead through their dialogues.

The Mermaid Mask is a visual and audio feast, perfect for a point-and-click detective story.

This is all amped up by an excellent soundtrack, led by returning composer Raphael Benjamin Meyer. Each room has its own musical theme. When you enter the Parlor, there’s a lustrous creepy jazz song playing — Sally comments that it sounds like “music that would play at a party for vampires.” In another room, I recognized one song that played during a pirate puzzle mini-game as a twist on “Whiskey in the Jar,” a classic Irish trad song.¹ The OST for The Mermaid Mask is so catchy that I’ve just been listening to one character’s theme on repeat as I do emails! I need this on Spotify ASAP.

The Mermaid Mask dances along the lines of realism versus fantasy, and all of these aesthetic choices help set that scene. The vibes of The Mermaid Mask are stellar, and they’re especially impressive when you consider how far they’ve come from 2019.

The Art of the Sequel

The Mermaid Mask achieves something I love to see in sequels: Do it again, but better. That’s so hard to pull off! It requires that developers look at what made their last game work and force themselves to somehow elevate it, also while grappling with shortcomings and trying to improve. SFB Games, co-led by brothers Tom and Adam Vian, demonstrate an impressive commitment to evolution.

In The Mermaid Mask, clues are now three-dimensional, which adds a whole new layer — literally. You can turn an item around, open it up, shake it. This adds so much more texture and possibility for investigation. In Tangle Tower, if you showed a character a clue that had nothing to do with them, they would have a rote response to that effect (which, to be fair, is standard fare for many detective games.) Here, you can also ask every character about every single clue and they’ll have a unique response, which is really impressive — that is a LOT of work!

Especially compared to Tangle Tower, this game paces dialogue well with short clips on the screen paired with a variety of unique animations for every character. Furthermore, whenever characters recount something from the past, a specific visual style of 3D poly-block appears as they recount their tale to represent their movements (though it’s up to you how much of it you believe!). Because of these design choices, lore dumps that might have felt like a long visual novel instead felt like an engaging interactive television show.

Perhaps most successfully of all, The Mermaid Mask gets its overall storytelling pacing just right, especially the final act. There are a few scenes in particular that are both technically impressive and narratively satisfying. Its predecessor was a bit rushed in its last hours, so it’s awesome to see The Mermaid Mask stick the landing.

Seaworthy Puzzles

After some initial interviews with suspects, The Mermaid Mask really opens up and allows you to explore and decide your own path.

SFB Games thoughtfully included three different sets of hints (such as what room to explore or what clue to ask someone about), all of which can be turned on/off from the menu. I disabled all of the hints for most of my playthrough because I liked the challenge of figuring things out on my own, but I appreciated that I could occasionally turn a room suggestion back on if I ever felt stuck.

Similar to Tangle Tower, most rooms have hidden puzzles that can reveal important clues. Each puzzle is self-contained, which I appreciate, so you don’t have to go run around and fight a little doo-dad or history tidbit from some other room in order to solve it. These were fun but not impossible, and each activity includes optional hints as well. Again, taking advantage of the addition of 3D objects, puzzles are often rotated and turned around, adding to the challenge. I liked that I could pace out when I was in the mood to do a puzzle versus explore versus talk to a suspect. There are also a variety of logic/deduction puzzles peppered in.

The Mermaid Mask shows how much progress SFB Games has made as a studio, especially in terms of scope management.

Through the Periscope

I finished The Mermaid Mask in about 11 hours (I took my time poking around environments and talking to characters) with 100% achievement completion. This was a great length for a mystery game; it felt rich without losing focus.

That being said, there were a few times where I felt the lore got a little tangled up in itself, likely a result of the game being in development for so long that the developers occasionally lost track of all of the threads. For example, Grimoire and Sally recognize a late-game clue as fitting into another — but I didn’t know that. Perhaps I simply missed that reveal, but there were a few — again, just a few — moments like that where it was clear that a factoid had once been more prominent or explicitly explained, and it had been scrapped as part of the game’s scope. This is never egregious, but I did find it a little noticeable in the game’s final act.

I also wanted the loop to close on some characters’ backstories and a few clue details. For example, there are a few off-screen, pre-game deaths that I would’ve liked a little more context on by the time credits rolled. Similarly, two of my favorite personalities didn’t get a proper goodbye and I would’ve liked that for closure. Both of these shortcomings are a fault of quality — SFB Games has created such a lush, rich world with interesting characters that I simply wanted the full story every time they cracked the lid on a bit of lore.

SFB Games has thoughtfully curated an Art Gallery mode filled with commentary that unlocks once you’ve completed the game. I loved reading the creators’ notes on their concept art and process. Their notes, particularly by studio co-lead Adam Vian, validate my read on the game — that they had a lot of things they ended up cutting to focus on creating a tight, quality product.

So, while I always want more, I think The Mermaid Mask is pretty much perfect in terms of scope, and I think they’ve made all the right choices on what to focus on.

The Mermaid Mask is the long-awaited sequel to Tangle Tower, and it raises the bar in every single way.

Final Thoughts

There are a few times in The Mermaid Mask where characters, such as a tormented author, will make comments about how hard it is to make a sequel or that “this is a lot of work; I don’t know if I’ll do it again.” And I can’t disagree; it seems incredibly difficult.

I’ve been editing my own novel for a few years now and it is… quite painful. But what keeps me going is the idea that some day, I will create something I’m proud of and that, hopefully, my mom might get to read my book and really love it, and perhaps some day other people will, too. So, I say to SFB Games and brothers Vian, if you have finished your journey with these games, I would understand, but I’d be sad — The Mermaid Mask is an excellent game, and I can only imagine how brilliant the next one would be.

Score: 9.0/10

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The Mermaid Mask, developed and self-published by SFB Games, released on July 16, 2026, for PC, Mac, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch 1 & 2. MSRP: $19.99. Version reviewed: PC (via Steam Deck).

Disclaimer: A review code was provided by the publisher.

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1. I went to Ireland a few years ago and went to several trad music nights at pubs. I fell in love with the genre and I frequently listen to Irish music in my car, including with my windows down in Philadelphia, which always earns me a confused look from passersby. ↩︎