House of Fear: Revenge
ViDi Games' point-and-click adventure House of Fear: Revenge offers no explanation for why you're loitering around outside this gloomy place on a snowy night, nor why you immediately feel motivated to start smashing things and breaking in. Maybe you're role playing as the person who dies first in a horror movie to clue the main cast in that something strange is going on? You can go ahead and feel justified in your felonies and property destruction, however, as it quickly becomes obvious that there's some serious Scooby Doo business afoot here, so you should probably explore further. There's no changing cursor to indicate interactive areas, so you'll have to click to pick up items and explore on your own. Clicking the square in the bottom left corner will open your inventory and its many buttons... click to highlight an object you're carrying, then again on whichever icon corresponds to the action you want to perform. The magnifying glass allows you to examine objects more closely, while the interlocked puzzle pieces will let you try to combine two items, and the separated puzzle pieces are for disassembly. If you actually want to use an item somewhere in the game, you need to click the hand icon once you've highlighted it. Maybe this place is haunted by the spirit of clunky User Interface design? Wooooooooo!
For the gentle souls around us, fear not... House of Fear: Revenge is only a "horror game" with finger quotes around the word, likely only to terrify if you find the old fun house rides with rubber skeletons and spooky noises scary at state fairs. The scariest thing about it, actually, about from its overly clicky inventory system, is the way so many of the items you need to gather are small and drab enough that they blend into the background. It's an incredibly ambitious game, with its beautiful visuals and surprisingly meaty chunk of gameplay, and for the most part puzzles that make sense and are even clever... if you know where to look. If the game provided some more gentle nudges to make up for how dark and occasionally unintuitive some of it can be, it would be a lot stronger for it without sacrificing design for difficulty. There's a lot to like here, from the creepy-cool creatures you'll encounter, to the plethora of puzzles, clues, rooms, and more, all rendered in beautiful detail. It's also clear the development team has a lot of talent, and hopefully we'll see a lot more from them in the future as they incorporate feedback from the people who matter most... their players. You'll need patience and a keen eye to play, but despite its missteps in design, House of Fear: Revenge has a lot of potential. And skeletons in the closet. And murderers in the attic. And giant angry flame beasts. Why was coming here a good idea again?