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Fish#641 rated The Open House

Fish#641 rated a game 4 years ago
A browser game made in HTML5.

Although I thought I had heard of this game or the person who made the game, I looked through their games and realized that I hadn't actually heard of them before! Although I think that I am going to have to dig into this person's backlog because I really enjoyed this game and I want to get more of it. I do feel like I know their brand of horror well; this brand of horror feels incredibly up my alley and I truly enjoy it so much.

The feel of this game? It reminded me of old games that I would discover on random websites when I was a kid. The young me would dig around looking for any horror games I could find on old buggy Flash websites and I would discover some real surreal gems; this game sparks that same joy in me. The feeling of the basic, free-use Unity assets made me feel warm and cosy, you know? It felt like finding the old books you used to read as a kid. The house in this game is used so frequently but I think that really increases the feeling of this game, it makes me feel oddly nostalgic.

The clanky nature of it felt like both one of those old Flash horror games and, as the in-universe narrative in the game, felt like it was a clunky alpha of some corporate product. The setting of this game is that it is the alpha version of a virtual house viewing made by some rundown letting agency. the PNG of the letting agent with a Microsoft Paint speech bubble and the tank controls; all of it made me feel nostalgic and brought back a lot of good memories of those ancient horror games from those deep dark websites.

Although the game does take a little time to get into the surreal horror, there is enough spooky stuff placed around the house to make it good! The glitching when interacting with the murder weapons and the blood, it was fantastic. The crossed-out eyes of the letting agent, that was fantastic as well. The game does certainly reach those surreal areas of horror really quick. Although it does start with the house being plunged into darkness and then shifts into finding a corpse in the middle of the kitchen, you quickly encounter a wall of flesh.

It was a fantastic experience; I did really love how the UI that was previously used as set dressing for the virtual house viewing made a comeback at the end! The lexical ambiguity of "make an offer" was really beautiful.

I honestly really loved it. This game was fantastic.