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The Mermaid Mask Release Date, Platforms, and What It Is

The Mermaid Mask release date is July 16, 2026, bringing SFB Games’ handcrafted locked-room submarine mystery to PC, PS5, Switch, and Switch 2 on the same day.

The Mermaid Mask release date is July 16, 2026, bringing SFB Games’ handcrafted locked-room submarine mystery to PC, PS5, Switch, and Switch 2 on the same day.

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The Mermaid Mask launched on July 16, 2026 for Windows PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2 as a handcrafted point-and-click locked-room mystery from SFB Games.

Eight suspects, one sealed room, and a body at the bottom of the sea — that’s the shape of it. The wait was long and the game shipped under a name it wasn’t announced with, but it landed on every promised platform on the same day, with no staggered console rollout to sit through.

Release date, platforms, and developer

Detail Answer
Release date July 16, 2026
Platforms Windows PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2
Developer and publisher SFB Games
Genre Point-and-click mystery adventure
Premise A locked-room murder aboard the Mortuga Submarine, with eight suspects

The PC build runs on Windows through Steam, and Nintendo owners are covered on both Switch generations, with the Switch 2 version listed apart from the original Switch release.

Official screenshot from The Mermaid Mask.
Official screenshot from The Mermaid Mask. Image: SFB Games

The locked-room murder aboard the Mortuga Submarine

Captain Magnus Mortuga is found dead inside the Illusion Theatre, a sealed room aboard his own submarine, lying beside an ancient stone cauldron with a single fatal wound and no weapon anywhere in sight. The sub is moored in pitch-black water off Silkwirm-on-sea, a fishing town that was abandoned long before any of this started.

Mortuga was a recluse, and the stories about him grew taller the longer he stayed under. Some said he was an immortal time-traveller; others swore he was a vampire, cursed to stay hidden beneath the waves. What’s left behind is a crew of eight suspects, each more eccentric and harder to read than the last, and a door that shouldn’t have let anyone in or out.

You play Detective Grimoire, with his partner Sally Spears alongside you. The detective is called aboard by Sinthia Seafoam, who takes over as captain the morning after the murder — and hiring you doesn’t get her off the hook, because she’s a suspect like everyone else. Whether the crew sails on or sinks comes down to what you work out.

Official screenshot from The Mermaid Mask.
Official screenshot from The Mermaid Mask. Image: SFB Games

How the investigation plays out

Activity What you do
Interview suspects Question the crew and collect testimony from everyone aboard
Explore the submarine Search the crime scene and the rooms around it for physical clues
Examine evidence Rotate, open, and close full-3D objects to reveal inscriptions and hidden compartments
Find contradictions Match clues against what people told you and catch the gaps
Solve puzzles Work through the locks, mechanisms, and riddles standing between you and the next room
KEY!Everything runs on conversation and on looking closely at things. You question the crew, push on the parts of their stories that don’t sit right, and carry what you find back to the people who’d rather you hadn’t found it. There’s no combat and no action sequence to fail — the only thing between you and the killer is whether you noticed what you were looking at.

The puzzles are tricky by design and they gate your progress rather than sit off to the side as optional busywork. Expect to be stuck for a bit, and expect the game to enjoy that.

Official screenshot from The Mermaid Mask.
Official screenshot from The Mermaid Mask. Image: SFB Games

Where it sits in the Detective Grimoire series

This is the fourth Detective Grimoire game, and it comes from the studio behind Tangle Tower and Crow Country. The handcrafted art, the sharp humour, and the puzzle-driven structure all carry straight over from Tangle Tower, which is the closest thing to a template here.

Length is the one expectation worth setting. Early estimates put The Mermaid Mask in Tangle Tower’s four-to-six-hour range, while SFB Games says its own game runs at least twelve hours and probably more.

Why you’ll still see The Mermaid’s Tongue

The game spent years in development as The Mermaid’s Tongue, which is why it still surfaces under two names. Old trailers, old links, and the original website all carry the earlier title, and the store listing kept its place through the change — nothing forked off and nothing was replaced.

So if you wishlisted it, bookmarked it, or argued about it in a thread under the old name, all of that still points here. The rename changed the words on the box, not the game inside.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Mermaid Mask’s release date?
July 16, 2026. SFB Games locked the date in on June 6, 2026, leaving a little under six weeks between the reveal and launch.
What platforms is The Mermaid Mask on?
Windows PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2. Xbox isn’t part of the lineup.
Is The Mermaid Mask on Mac?
Not at launch. A few platform databases list Mac next to the PC entry, but the Steam listing covers Windows, so Windows is the PC version to buy on day one.
Is The Mermaid Mask a horror game?
No. SFB Games made Crow Country, and the vampire legends and cursed cauldrons here can make this look like a companion piece to it. It’s a comedic point-and-click whodunnit instead — the pressure comes from the case and the crew, not from anything hunting you.
Do you need to play Tangle Tower first?
No. The murder aboard the Mortuga is self-contained. The earlier games fill in who Grimoire and Sally are and how they work a scene together, which is a nice bonus rather than a requirement.
More questions
What was The Mermaid Mask originally called?
The Mermaid’s Tongue. It was announced under that title and kept it through its first teasers and demo footage before the switch to The Mermaid Mask.

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