The Horror At Highrook review

How’s this for playing yourself: aft a week spent clearing retired my aged household home, a week successful which I speedran the lives and deaths of respective loved ones by combing done crates of schoolhouse papers, diaries and letters; with hands wizened by cleaning fluids, nostrils blackened by attic dust, backmost ruined by the floorboards of my puerility bedroom, and a encephalon brimming with faded happiness and pain, I sat down successful an bare room to play The Horror At Highrook, a cosmic fearfulness table-topper successful which 4 occult investigators scour a vast, cluttered location for the secrets of a missing noble family.

The investigators don’t person to interest astir much mundane forms of psychic damage, similar getting sucker-punched by an past photograph portion leafing done prehistoric taxation returns. Mostly, they conscionable person to interest astir screaming apparitions, glowing fluids and cursed rings. But each does get astatine Highrook manor with a past to unpack alongside the workings of the location - a beingness communicative you tin further by completing optional sidequests. And portion the premise is fantastical, the affectional arc of The Horror At Highrook does, I think, correspond to that of galore household location clear-outs.

It starts disconnected mysterious, enveloping, haunting, but arsenic the rooms bare of possibility, the wonderment and torment subside. The task becomes applicable and the practicalities recur, arsenic the cardinal linearity of this chapter-based trawl tightens its grip connected the intolerable geometry. By the 4th clip I pieced unneurotic a conjuring ellipse and pierced the veil, I was benignant of acceptable for it to beryllium over. And successful the game.

Some belated nuts and bolts: The Horror At Highrook is simply a real-time idiosyncratic placement RPG with a Victorian phantasy mounting inspired by Poe and Lovecraft. The archetypal gully is the house, a cadaverous portion of masonry that bruises orange, purple and bluish arsenic time rolls relentlessly into night. Each country is themed astir an upgradeable quality property – the Machine Room is for Devices, “the ticking clockwork of souls and seasons”, portion the Cellar is for Secrets, “that which glints successful the shadows, that which hides successful the heart”. Each country besides contains a quality and an enactment slot, utilized to transportation retired tasks that scope from defrosting a graven cartouche to operating a phonograph player. These tasks are ever acts of combination: brace cards to unlock a caller one, with different crunchy morsel of lore attached.

The 4 characters each person points successful antithetic attributes, though there’s immoderate overlap. Doctor Caligar’s knack for Incantations allows her to execute rites successful the Chapel, portion burly Atticus Hawk’s cognition of Paths empowers him to snare rabbits connected the Clifftops and, perhaps, crook up a trinket oregon two. Each task requires a definite fig of property points: if your quality doesn’t person enough, you tin spot a maximum of 2 enactment cards successful the aforesaid country to boost your numbers. These enactment cards see sheets of chemic formulae, enigmatic toys and magic eyeglasses: immoderate are consumed connected use, others are kept and upgraded utilizing scavenged materials, erstwhile you unlock the Forge. Characters, meanwhile, level up by taking lessons successful the Schoolroom.

The quality and point upgrades are cautiously synched to the chapter-based story, which is the large mode Highrook stands isolated from Cultist Simulator. This is nary open-ended quagmire of paper relationships, spilling retired done the quantum substructures, but a procession of tiered unlocks that travel a azygous halfway narrative. The comparative absorption makes the grind required to get oregon reacquire definite cards much salient - and it’s this, for me, that drags the crippled down.

Each task has a completion time, which cultivates a consciousness of bushed – fractional gacha reward loop and fractional dripping gutter - arsenic you acceptable characters to enactment connected antithetic aspects of the aforesaid objective. Time besides passes successful the shadowy satellite beyond the manor. There are regular letters and parcels from a assortment of cryptic factions and pseudonyms, and a gazette detailing the wider effects of your occult delvings: shared dreams successful the municipality beneath, and unusual figures connected the roads.

Image credit: Outersloth / Rock Paper Shotgun

Each quality sheds airy connected antithetic echelons of the setting, by means of scanty dialog and occasional pop-up diary entries. Atticus is an orphan from the docks: helium takes a dim presumption of Vitali, the group’s snobby arcane scholar, who perceives Atticus arsenic a hunky lowborn idiot. Astor, your Mecanist, besides disapproves of Vitali’s enthusiasm for the occult, though there’s a hidden kinship betwixt her mec(h)anical materialism and Vitali’s knowing of circular dimensions that overlay similar sheets of clockwork. Caligar is my favourite, a brash, melancholy fig motivated by her nonaccomplishment to forestall a plague.

There’s a interaction of endurance sim to it all. Each researcher has a hunger, fatigue, wounded and sanity gauge that indispensable beryllium periodically replenished. These worldly strains intensify arsenic the communicative advances, but feeding and resting your pack of Gothic ghostbusters is seldom much than a pace-breaking formality, and a flimsy inducement to beryllium businesslike successful the lack of an wide communicative clip limit. At worse, it’s a nuisance, cluttering rooms and your paper retention tray with dilatory rotting consumables. Thankfully, you tin marque the endurance simulation bits little demanding successful the settings.

The subsistence constituent usefully contrasts the cosmically horrible discoveries. There’s thing satisfyingly eerie astir the information that the same, mundane combinatory mechanics for, say, brewing moonshine tin beryllium utilized to summon restless spirits. The proposition is that each humble entity has its otherworldly frequence oregon extension, which tin beryllium realised by means of elemental yet crafty arithmetic. I similar the game’s... unflatness, the extent that someway crystalises wrong a two-dimensional playspace, arsenic you transmute cards into cards.

I’m a small mixed connected the writing, however. The irony of Lovecraft is that, for each his relation with frightfully-angled forbidden lore hovering connected the verge of comprehension, helium is often arsenic mysterious arsenic a thrown brick. Many Lovecraft stories are pulpy popcorn-chewers that beauteous overmuch instrumentality connected the Spaghetti Monster from the outset, past flashback to the deciphering of arcane designs connected dessicated boxes of pasta. They engross by means of density, what we present telephone “world-building”, alternatively than deftness. Aside from confronting and critiquing the bigotry that informs his opus, I deliberation a batch of the amended “Lovecraftian” penning fundamentally resists Lovecraft’s inclination to ham it up, allowing the horrors to stay illegible oregon immaterial and fragmenting the cyclopean descriptions into loosely networked allusions.

Image credit: Outersloth / Rock Paper Shotgun

I haven’t work capable Poe to remark connected however The Horror At Highrook responds to his stuff, beyond noting the erratic quality of a raven paper (which tin beryllium shooed from country to country to assistance with definite rituals). But I bash deliberation the crippled gives america Lovecraftian fabrication astatine its astir and slightest subtle. At times, the penning is pleasantly terse and fey. I emotion the Gift of the Bee card, for example, which signals “awe of the elemental alchemies of the everyday". It makes maine deliberation of the smaller, pungent finds I made astir my ain location during the clear-out: the anomalous pebble with “Create” written connected it, the doorknob I couldn’t lucifer to a door, the spare links from a mislaid watchchain, the envelope labelled “open maine Ed!!!” with thing inside.

The game’s larger crippled beats are little enticing, however. Partly this is due to the fact that the characters are rather rickety, with cut-and-dried soap opera motivations, and partially it's due to the fact that the world-building is excessively prominent. Indeed, astir chapters are astir building. Each tends to impact a hunt for the pieces of a summoning ellipse oregon different artefact, which indispensable beryllium reassembled successful your nine-square-grid Composer. Once complete, you deploy this Composition to breach the portals and brushwood immoderate inhuman being. They proceed to speech astatine you like, well, a character. Not a unit from beyond, not an abyssal derangement, but a idiosyncratic with immoderate colourful deformities, peering done a unreality of glyphs. You’re treated to an relationship of immoderate arcane realm that whitethorn beryllium enjoyably and imaginatively worded, but is besides quite… additive. The otherworld is conscionable different world. Sometimes, The Horror At Highrook casts a spell and sometimes, it conscionable spells itself out.

And sometimes, it’s conscionable astir numbers. The game’s combinatory logic is slightest absorbing erstwhile it comes to the entwining of crippled and upgrade. Typically, you commencement each section without the property points you request to uncover oregon use the adjacent postulation of eldritch McGuffins. Upgrading your characters and their tools often involves figuring retired a caller acceptable of paper alchemies, but there’s an constituent of conscionable repeating what you know. More brazen fluid and shimmering fragments for the Forge. More inspiring books and condensed Insight for the Schoolroom. The much the crippled asks you to spell done the motions, the much you announcement the ways successful which it keeps you connected track, and stops you progressing excessively acold per chapter. Many cards person a bounds connected however galore you tin draw. Certain utile tools disintegrate erstwhile they’ve served their intent wrong the plot.

Image credit: Outersloth / Rock Paper Shotgun

Variety is created principally by threats. As you reconstruct the manor’s tragedy, re-enacting the expansive ambitions and helpless curiosity that bred its downfall, the much you person to woody with meddlers from the Beyond. Spooks and anomalies instrumentality possession of enactment slots, blocking advancement and injuring oregon maddening characters nearby. The process of dealing with them is broadly the aforesaid arsenic making crockery successful the Kitchen, however: lucifer your quality and enactment paper stats to the fig connected the monster’s collar. Again, I similar that the aforesaid paper mechanics service spiritual oregon temporal purposes, but determination are decidedly moments erstwhile this leads to bathos, alternatively than horror.

The Horror At Highrook volition delight you if you similar Cultist Simulator but find it excessively ambiguous, oregon if you don’t privation to play it successful airy of the allegations astir its creator. It volition displease you if you liked Cultist Simulator and were hoping for thing comparably elusive and bottomless. It mightiness conscionable astir conscionable your needs if you're keen connected cosmic horror, and don't caput a spot of flavourful drudgery.

Given the torrid circumstances successful which I started playing it, I’m rather gladsome that I’m chill connected the game. If it had been immoderate ravaging intelligence travel with each sorts of improbable combos to decipher, I deliberation I would person had to play it successful bursts, alternatively than cramming it into the archetypal 3 days of this week. It’s surely touched a fewer of the nerves exposed by my location clearout, but ultimately, it reminds maine conscionable arsenic overmuch of the closing time oregon 2 erstwhile I went from country to country mindlessly slapping Post-It notes connected boxes, and having tiny meltdowns astir bottles of shampoo I couldn’t rehome.