Developer and publisher Causeway Studios, with funding led by Phantom Friends and joined by angel investors, has announced the dark supernatural mystery The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham, following the studio’s first release in 2025, The Haunting of Joni Evers. The game will be featured at PAX West with an exclusive demo as part of the intensely curated PAX Rising Showcase.
The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham, a desert-noir detective adventure inspired by the surreal works of David Lynch, the music of Lord Huron, and the stylings of strange fiction, tells the story of Lilith who finds herself at the center of a supernatural mystery involving mass vanishings. Following an alarming voicemail from her estranged daughter, Lilith is thrust into a tangled web of deceit involving the eerie Alpine Movie Manor Hotel and Drive-In (based on a real attraction in Colorado’s San Luis Valley).
Players must solve numerous puzzles revolving around tactile detective mechanics and world-altering gameplay. With a mystical film reel called The City of Dreams, featuring full-motion video (FMV), players edit the movie and tear through the very fabric of reality. But every edit comes with consequences, as changing the reel also changes the world, and more importantly the people, around Lilith. By manipulating the reel and crafting a Final Cut, she inches closer to uncovering what happened to her daughter.
Lilith is far from alone, with a cast of memorable supporting characters surrounding her. The ubiquitous and enigmatic Host is ever-present, and a malevolent spirit seeks to claim the film reel for her own sinister purposes.
“With The Haunting of Joni Evers, I wanted to get players’ feet wet in The Worlds Across the Causeway and establish our approach to deeply human and personal storytelling,” said Causeway Studios creative director Greg Rogers, in a press release. “The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham elevates our design ambitions, diving deeper into our metaphorical lake, to tell a truly surreal story with tactile gameplay. We hope players spend time drying out on the shoreline to process their choices. Along the way, they’ll need to contemplate how far they’ll go to escape their guilt, and what (and perhaps who) will be left on the cutting room floor.”
The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham is a standalone story, but those who played Causeway’s previous title, The Haunting of Joni Evers, will easily recognize connections between the two. Thoughtfully steeped in personal themes like family and regret, The Final Cut of Lilith Cunningham is the newest addition to The Worlds Across the Causeway, the studio’s connected anthology universe where reality is always stranger than it seems. Causeway’s games and fiction all take place within this shared universe, with short stories and vignettes available to read on the studio’s official website.