Profound Red is the twelfth game in the Carol Reed series. In the title Carol is contacted by her friend Stina. The hotel she works at received a suicide note through a text message from a woman called Louise Elliot, but no one knows the connection to the hotel. Carol investigates in Norrköping to find out who she is and whether there is any suicide involved at all. The game uses its trademark first-person view with photographs of real locations and objects in a fixed-screen slideshow style. There are puzzles to solve with items stored in an inventory near the top of the screen. A journal is used to keep track of objectives. Optionally hints can be activated or all hotspots can be revealed. As a long-running series, some locations are revisited in an updated way as life goes on and there is a cast of new and recurring characters. No knowledge of previous games in required to play.