Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator

In this series of Adventure Games by indie developer Francisco Gonzalez aka Grundislav, we follow Ben Jordan, a young man from Philadelphia who, after being a long time fan of TV shows about the paranormal such as The X-Files and encouraged by his grandfather, Arthur, and his stories about his travels around the world, decides to become a paranormal investigator.

Even though his line of work is rather obscure, Ben is getting work on his hands pretty fast. Later, even he starts to find this fact suspicious.

As his cases take him to many different parts of the world, Ben encounters many life-threatening situations and creatures of legend, but he also finds two friends: Simon Booth, an English ghost hunter, and Alice Wilkins, a young woman from California with a strange connection to one of Ben's early cases.

At the time of writing, the series is almost complete, with seven finished episodes and the last one currently in production. The finished episodes can be found here.

A fan film was made about the series as well, Chateau Macabre.

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The following tropes are common to many or all entries in the Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator franchise.
For tropes specific to individual installments, visit their respective work pages.

• 108: Conveniently, Case 5 is set in Japan... and the most points you can get? 108. Coincidence?
• Acceptable Breaks From Reality: If the Osaka Police department worked the way a police department REALLY did, Ben would probably have not only been a) Probably turned away before he could do anything, b) have had a LOT harder time obtaining evidence if he wasn't turned away, and c) would have made for a boring game.
• Art Evolution: Most evident with the character portraits.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Case 1 has Ben searching for the Skunk-Ape in the Everglades.
• Bigger on the Inside: "The Horror", in Case 4, traps Ben and Simon in a place like this. And it has no obvious exit.
• Bilingual Bonus/Gratuitous Spanish: The ghost captain in the case 2 remake speaks actual, proper Spanish, though it can be somewhat difficult to understand with the heavy reverb effect.
• Bittersweet Ending: Case 3. Sure, Ben might have stopped the witches of Smailholm, but his love interest, Mary, is dead and is going to haunt him for many Dream Sequences to come.
• Busman's Holiday: Case 6 starts out as a vacation.
  • Likewise in the movie Ben's on vacation in France when someone tells him they've seen a ghost, and he decides to investigate.
• Confessional: One appears in case seven. Ben can confess to many silly "sins" he has committed over the course of the series.
• Cliff Hanger/DownerEnding: Case 7. Simon is killed, Ben is taken captive by Percy who turns out be The Mole, and Alice has mysteriously disappeared.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: To solve one of the early puzzles in Case 6, you have to get a guy arrested and steal his camera. Just so a local will tell you a good tourist destination.
• Darker and Edgier: While first two episodes are pretty lighthearted, the series takes a slightly darker turn around Case 3. Case 1 and 2 has since then been remade to fit with the atmosphere of the later games.
• A Fete Worse Than Death: The whole endgame scenario of Case 3.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Skunk-apes, ghosts, witches, zombies, demons... Most obvious with case 6, which introduces elements of Greek Mythology.
• Fish People: The villains in Case 6. It turns out, however, that the real and benevolent Fish People had died out a long time ago, and the real monster is a creature of which even they were afraid.
• Game Show: Ben gets involved in one in Japan.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Hercrabbiness, who is currently doing a Let's Play of each game in order, is the voice of Annie Roberts in Case 2.
• Improvised Weapon: Ben's quite fond of these. Objects he has used to defeat his enemies include: a table with some cocaine on it, a crowbar, a sharp hook on a rope, part of a drain pipe, a camera, a customized vacuum cleaner, a rusty old trident, and a 2000-year old amulet with a demon trapped in it. Oh, and a stolen gun.
• Informed Flaw: In the Chateau Macabre, Ben thinks Percival's "really let himself go." He looks just as healthy and a good deal younger than he does in the games.
• The Movie: The Fan Film Chateau Macabre.
• Multiple Endings: Case 3. Also, the creator announced that the yet unfinished, final Case 8 will have multiple endings.
• Myth Arc: Though you won't notice that there is one until Case 7 unless you pick up on the hints.
• Never Accepted in His Hometown: Ben's family not understanding his job is somewhere between a Running Gag and a Running Pain In The Ass.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The murdering zombies in Case 5 turns out to be people who have been poisoned by tetrodotoxin from blowfish sushi, just enough for them to appear dead for a couple of days and still be confused enough to be receptive to orders when they awoke.
• Predatory Business: "Bean There, Done that".
• The Remake: Case 1 was later remade into the Deluxe Edition, which has better graphics, more puzzles, an extended storyline and voice acting. Done again with Case 2.
• Sadly Mythtaken: Simon describes Sirens as taking the form of a beautiful maiden and causing sailors to go mad with desire, jumping off their ships to get to them. When they got close, the Sirens would reveal their true form and eat them. In Simon's version, Odysseus tied himself to the mast and plugged his ears with wax, but he's wee bit off: in The Odyssey, it was the rest of the crew who plugged their ear with wax, while Odysseus tripped out on the Siren's songs, after they'd tied him to said mast.
• Schedule Slip: The final episode is taking a really long time to be made - and it's the reason the Case 2 remake was done: while development of Case 8 stalled, Grundislav decided to remake another earlier episode rather than doing nothing.
• Shout-Out: When they confront the ghost in Case 4 Ben says he was half-expecting a skeleton with an apron and machete.
  • In Case 1 (Deluxe maybe), there's a reference to Laura Bow with picking stuff up and "putting it in your purse".
    • The music that plays when examining a victim of the skunk-ape is also the same as in the second Laura Bow game.
  • Also in Case 4, one of the books on the bookshelf in the lobby is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Later, a door appears upstairs where there was no door before...
  • When Ben Jordan meets someone standing outside an apartment building in case 7, he asks if there's been a doorman strike.
  • One of the office doors in the Basilica in case 7 is labeled "U. Eco"
  • The maze on Minotaur Island in case 6 is almost blatantly inspired by the minotaur's maze in King's Quest VI. Biggest difference is that this time the minotaur's been quite dead for a while.
• Shown Their Work: Yamamoto in Case 5 is actually aware that fingerprints at a crime scene are worthless to the police database if they don't match anyone in said database. Forensics aren't magic.
• Thriving Ghost Town: Many of the towns Ben visits are practically ghost towns. Several of them are pretty much meant to be small towns. Even lampshaded in 2, where the person working at "Bean There Done That" says that there really aren't that many other jobs. (Medicine Man, Grocer, and Bartender are all taken.)
• Town with a Dark Secret: Smailholm. All of its inhabitants are witches.
• Trouser Space: "You pick up the chain and somehow manage to fit the entire thing into your pants."
• Virgin Sacrifice: Case 3. Also a subversion of A Man Is Not a Virgin.
• The Unfavourite: Even though it's not really that bad, Ben's relationship with his parents still has strong vibes of this.