itch.io

What I liked about this game: very unique art style for RPG Maker, a scary house full of murderous weirdos that recalls both the SNES Clock Tower game and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Was full of some good scares too with the eccentric cast of characters.

What I didn't like: I wish that the body horror didn't feel so male-gazey and fetishized though. Alesa is forcibly stripped with gratuitous body shots, multiple shower scenes, and much of the horror she is subjected to feels like a kink (e.g.: ero guro). I know it's just a fictional horror game, but also what kind of social worker would take a shower with someone she just rescued from a nightmare housing situation?

I watched a playthrough of this and thought it was wonderful. So many horror games on here are half-baked, but you REALLY captured the spirit of the PSX era of games. I loved the old Silent Hill, Clock Tower, and Fatal Frame games and the puzzles and quest-fetching reminded me of that. Your homage was spot-on and carefully rendered. Great atmosphere. Just enough campy and corniness blended with serious scares. Fabulous tribute. I'd love to see you attempt a longer game with a similar PSX-era concept.

Loved the art style and the world-building: animate toys with a "hand of god" nearby that can choose to be silent or stick a hand in or tap on the dollhouse. Very provocative plot about what it means to play god and care for others.

If you ever decided to expand the game, it would be interesting to have the toy owner's "silence" impact the game. I played a few times and it didn't seem to matter whether I was silent or tapped. Similarly, I was slightly disappointed that the 'food choices' during the "Dahlia is favorite" path didn't impact much, and similarly wish the various things the toy owner could build for Huxley in his path mattered beyond just a slight dialogue divergence.

That being said, I really liked how choosing Dahlia or Huxley had parallelisms between things going astray. Both of the main paths mirrored each other to an extent. Although I wished there had been a happy ending, the fact that everything goes to heck no matter what path you go down was poignant.

I just wanted to say I love what you are doing. I don't often check out horror games in Itch (which is like...90% of the games), but yours caught my eye. I love the graphics, the smooth animation, the characters which feel quasi-mature: older than Sesame Street, but maybe not as mature as Avenue Q (I mean this in a good way).

I adore that we start in-media-res and just accept the logic of the game: we have this gruff dude who already has a mission and has some dialogue with a sock puppet (amazing voice acting in this game too, btw). The puzzles were great. The scenery was too. I love that this is a subtle horror that comes from obnoxious muppets who never stop rambling to themselves or wanting to hug you. I love the literacy-themed weapons: it reminds me of first-person-shooters from the 90s like GoldenEye and Hexen. As does the ability to have cheats. God, I miss cheats that you earn from beating the game. Both wacky ones, challenging ones, and ones that reward the player.

Please just keep doing what you're doing. I'm so bored by jump scares, the same old creepiness factors used again and again. Your vision is unique. I hope you never feel pressured to give into the horror theatrics so that so many game developers are using. Keep doing you. I'm excited for the final product.

I adored this so much. It reminded me of reading the Redwall books I read as a kid. I didn't screencap my build, but I got very lucky and found a way to generate mana and use the wand that only required mana (no energy). I was able to beat the final boss on my first playthrough(!). Although my build was so strong that endless mode didn't feel that interesting.

My only immediate suggestion is that perhaps gold and mana could be stored separately outside of the main bag in some separate GUI? I understand for story purposes you're storing everything in your bag, but it felt weird for two almost-essential elements to have them be optional.

Either way, this game was fantastic and it feels like you probably already have an idea on how to continue to improve and balance it. Keep up the good work!

This was a delightful game, the perfect amount of quirk, nostalgia, and originality. It reminded me of a deep-cut NES game called "Pinball Quest" that combined pinball with an RPG. This was a similarly fun, unique, and colorful world to play in too. Also, this felt like the perfect length.

The final area was really tough, but I like that if you failed enough you could charge up and use the potion tech to fully heal.

The only thing I wish is that you could buy more in the shops, such as different bowling ball parts for your Customize menu. I would have liked to experiment with that a little more because after I found a build I liked I stopped messing with it. Either way, great game!

Cute game and fun little atmospheric platformer for fans of VVVVVV or Celeste. Definitely worth the 5-10 minutes it will take to complete.

I tried playing the game twice: once trying to kill all the ghosts (easy) and once trying to avoid them all (near impossible), but it didn't seem to have much impact. I thought there might be something deeper going on here, especially with the creepy monster in the dark hallway, but [unless there's something I missed] I guess there's just not much substance other than a cute cat hopping their way through a nightmare looking for a tasty snack.

House is a creepy game that leans into the RPG Maker horror aesthetic from games like Misao thrown in with a dash of old school cult hits like Maniac Mansion. Instead of a haunted school or mansion, you are exploring your home that gets darker and more monstrously aggressive as the day quickly turns on. And, oh, does the day move on, which each in-game second translating to rapidly increasing minutes inside the house.

The best parts about this game are the pixel art and the designs and the discoverability. As you begin to discover items and play around with them, you organically begin to find solutions to your problems. This type of logical reward for the player is one of House's strengths. The ghosts, monsters, demons, etc. are also well-drawn, creepy, and charming. The first time midnight approached, I seriously was filled with a deep dread as the father came home.

This is where my raving praise begins to slip though. I don't know of House fully uses the 'time loop' of being trapped in this Groundhog's Day-like setting to its fullest potential. To be honest, although I knew what I needed to do for certain tasks, some of the enemies can quickly end your run in what ends up being an ultimately frustrating experience. The first time you laugh about it and feel trolled. The second time you begin to wonder about hitboxes. I've had weird issue with the rat hit box, annoyed with how it feels like you have to get pixel-perfect to escape the rug in the hallway, and not to mention bad RNG with the shadow people. After 15-20 runs, it feels like certain obstacles should no longer be a run-ending issue.... yet they are. The tedium of repeating runs for dumb missed-by-a-pixel mistakes pushes up against the genuine joy of the game's surprises.

I also think I would like House more if I didn't feel like it was so "front-loaded" in terms of trying to rush to save my family members. Certain tasks feel like they have to be 'pixel perfect' or that I have to be conducting a speed run, which ruins some of the atmosphere for me. There are moments like uncovering the hatch in the mother's room that I wish felt a little slower and carried a deeper emotional gravitas. Even some lighter content feels rushed. An example: after befriending the rat I learned I could talk to him (and that he had dialogue for different items I was carrying), but I also had tasks to do & every spent with lore (which I would have liked!) meant another disaster was happening elsewhere in the house. So, I ran off.

The runs aren't that long, but even a quicksave option might make this game a little more enjoyable. At a certain point the tedium of having everything start over knowing the spike rug might get me again turned me off of House. Finally, I just ended up getting too frustrated that I couldn't accomplish what I set my mind to do and quit, instead watching a YT video of someone else's best runs.

The story, artwork, item/object interactions, and discoverability are worth the sticker price for an interesting, imaginative game, I only wish it was more fun to play and didn't feel like each run was a pixel-perfect speed run racing against the clock.

T-Gotchi is an interesting experiment, combining the nostalgia of Tamagotchi with the question of what would it be like to take care of a human with their own wants and needs versus an anime creature. Beyond the Tamagotchi staples of food and hygeine, your T-Gotchi has her own emotional well-being which must be nurtured. As the game hints at, we will see T-Gotchi in some unwell mental states and have to deal with that based on our choices as a player. Ultimately a very interesting game and a thoughtful take on the 'digital pet' genre.

My main critique would be the game says "your choices matter!" but they ultimately do not. Every game ends with a type of cruelty to the T-Gotchi. Unless there's a secret ending I missed past the 8 the game shows me, I left feeling not-so-great about the time I put in with T-Gotchi. Cruelty is an interesting narrative device to elicit a reaction in a player, but I think when the only option is cruelty for every single route, the cruelty becomes less impactful. The player grows numb to it. I can't speak for others, but I played through all the endings hoping for one where maybe I could remove T-Gotchi from her cruel fate, but there was no salvation in the end. After getting 7 of the endings, the 8th ending was just a declaration that the game was complete, which let me feeling a little deflated. Perhaps that's the nihilistic lesson the creator intended, but I've experienced a lot of cruelty in the horror gaming genre, and it doesn't do as much for me without a little light. Overall, the game left me wanting more—especially since I would not normally pick cruel routes (AKA 'genocide runs') if I could avoid them.

Unless I missed some lore, it would have been interesting to learn more about Daddy, or wanting to know more about the figure that speaks to you between games (perhaps he IS Daddy?), or give T-Gotchi medicine after beating all the other endings, or be rewarded for not spying on her during her showers. Or even just somehow break her out of her 'jail cell' of the game itself in a final ending, where once she's free the game is over forever (a little like what happens in Oneshot).

Ultimately I enjoyed the journey and the experience of the game and say it's definitely worth the $5--I just wish I was able to play the game in a way that did not make me feel like a sadist for trying to also be a completionist with the character's ultimate well-being in mind.