A well-known horror-adventure game. A good story, crippled by the technology available at the time of development.
The game starts with our Mr. Moustacheman telling us about receiving a letter saying there’s an antique piano at a nearby house, and he’ll get $150 for picking it up. He ends up coming to the creepy-ass house to look for it. The intro is a little long—first you listen to the plot, and then our guy walks all the way to the attic while we just watch.
Shortly after walking around in the attic, a massive bird-like creature jumps in through the window and attacks. And this is where things get a bit annoying. The controls are really bad—moving the character feels like docking a cargo module into the ISS. Also, to be able to fight, you need to select the “fight” stance. This stance and the way the character moves instantly reminded me of a game called Little Big Adventure. Turns out, the lead designer was the same for both games!
Once (if) you manage to deal with the bird, a zombie comes into the room, and it’s pretty much the same story: really bad controls and not-so-fun combat. After some annoying action scenes, the game turns into a classic adventure game where you check rooms for items and clues. The house really gives off that horror-adventure vibe—not quite like Silent Hill but still good enough.
And BAM, the floor collapses. You’re dead, probably didn’t save the game. That means you’re going all the way back to the beginning.
Back to the beginning. Watch the intro, kick the bird, slap the zombie, and go downstairs. Avoid the floor this time. There are a few rooms to investigate; one of them has some notes. There have been a few more bird and zombie attacks, but it gets easier after a while.
Finally, I felt like I was done on this floor and wanted to go one level down. The stair puzzle was a bit weird, took me a while to figure out, but eventually, I did. The game was interesting, and I wanted to know what would happen next. I moved downstairs and instantly got killed by knight armor that suddenly came alive. Luckily, I had saved the game just seconds before that—it was a very obvious trap.
Rooms, rooms everywhere! I checked the rooms, found some notes, got attacked by some birds as usual. It was going okay until I reached the bathroom, where a jellyfish-like creature attacked me, and I died. I think that was my limit because I knew there was no way I could beat this creature with these controls and the responsiveness of our Mr. Moustacheman. I was sure I had to take at least one item from the bathroom, and I really couldn’t deal with it.
I can’t say the game is bad. It seems very interesting, but the technology wasn’t ready for that kind of action. I’m sure there are a lot of people who perfectly mastered the controls, like they were an extension of their body, but I don’t have that skill.
Enjoy!
Hardware Specs used in the video:
Gigabyte GA-6BXC
Intel Pentium II MMX 266mhz
128MB SDRam
NVIDIA TNT2 M64 32MB
Creative SoundBlaster Live!
40GB Seagate HDD (IDE)
