- Unique concept and fun strategic gameplay.
- Immersive gothic atmosphere and detailed art style.
- Satisfying house expansion and torment mechanics.
- Strategic depth with effective genre blending.
- Limited card and room variety.
- Lacks content and replayability.
Verdict
Mixed
Summary
Positive 72% · Negative 28%. Score: 28 / 100
Positives:
- The game's core concept, which involves playing as a villainous haunted house, strategically combining base building, card gameplay, and rogue-like elements, is widely praised as fun, engaging, and well-executed. Players enjoy the unique blend of mechanics and the overall premise.
- The game's distinctive art style, gothic theme, and sound design create a strong, immersive atmosphere. Details like procedurally generated room decor, creepy tones, and well-crafted house details enhance the player experience.
- Players find it satisfying to torment NPCs, expand their haunted house, and grow more powerful. The novelty of playing as the haunted house and the ability to create elaborate traps contribute to the enjoyment.
- The game effectively blends elements from different genres and games, such as tower defense, card-based gameplay, and rogue-like mechanics. Players appreciate the card synergies and the unique twist on deckbuilding.
- The game requires strategic thinking, planning, and adaptation. Losing is a part of the game and helps players learn new things and unlock new cards.
Negatives:
- Reviewers express concerns about the limited variety and synergy of cards and rooms, which restricts strategic options. The card draw system and room arrangement mechanics are also criticized for being awkward and ineffective, hindering the player's ability to develop unique play styles and adapt to increasing difficulty.
- The game is criticized for lacking content, depth, and replayability, especially considering its price. Players find the experience repetitive, short, and ultimately unfulfilling, with little to no meaningful progression or variety to justify continued play. Some reviewers explicitly state the game feels unfinished.
- The game suffers from balance issues, particularly with enemy stats scaling too quickly and requiring specific, often luck-dependent, strategies. This leads to difficulty spikes and frustrating situations where players feel overwhelmed by enemy health, sanity, and special abilities, especially in the mid-to-late game.
- Certain enemy behaviors and level design elements are seen as unfair or exploitable. This includes enemies bypassing intended defenses, spawning in unintended locations, or exhibiting behaviors that undermine the core gameplay mechanics, leading to frustrating and sometimes game-breaking situations.
- House building balance is flawed; distant rooms are more expensive, but a single path negates AI and visitor choices. An update introduced a cost for placing objects, with the cost increasing the further away from the heart the object was placed, restricting player freedom in placement.
Gameplay:
- The core gameplay loop involves a day/night cycle. During the day, players strategically build and expand their haunted house using cards and essence. At night, they defend against human intruders using cards to scare or eliminate them, managing resources and adapting to different enemy types.
- Players can defeat intruders by depleting either their health or sanity, each yielding different amounts of essence. Killing enemies grants more essence, while spiritual attacks are less alarming. Corpses can scare off future intruders but attract stronger ones later.
- Strategic base construction is key, with limited essence requiring careful planning. Room placement is crucial for defense, with smaller rooms trapping visitors better and bigger rooms allowing for power-ups. Players can create winding paths or dead ends to confuse and delay intruders.
- Different human intruders possess unique traits, abilities, and vulnerabilities. Players must adapt their strategies to prioritize targets and counter specific threats, such as those who can break down doors or resist mental attacks.
- Cards have usage restrictions, such as targeting single or multiple humans, or requiring empty or occupied rooms. Special room effects often require larger rooms, adding a layer of strategic depth to card usage and room placement.
Performance:
- Multiple players report crashes and bugs, including game-breaking ones occurring at various points in the game. These issues range from crashes after several hours of play to immediate crashes upon restarting or specific actions, indicating general instability.
- The full release has better optimization compared to the demo, and the game runs smoothly even on less powerful hardware. This suggests improvements were made to enhance performance and accessibility.
Recommendations:
- Reviews are mixed, with some recommending the game while others suggest waiting for a sale or patch due to concerns about price, bugs, and missing content. Some players find the game enjoyable despite its flaws, while others are disappointed that it doesn't live up to its potential. This suggests a need for further development and balancing.
- The game blends tower defense, roguelike card mechanics, and base-building, appealing to fans of strategy and horror themes. However, some find the card unlocks tied to out-of-game experience to be a poor design choice. The game's success hinges on effective deck building and understanding card synergies.
- The full game is considered more satisfying than the demo, and the developers have a promising roadmap. Players are happy to support the game's development. This suggests a positive outlook for the game's future.
- The game includes difficulty modifiers, allowing players to adjust the challenge to their preference. This caters to a wider range of skill levels. This is a positive feature for player customization.
Miscellaneous:
- The game has planned future content updates, including free updates and a DLC. This suggests ongoing support and expansion of the game's content.
- Players noted that removing a room does not refund energy. However, the demolition action can be reverted, offering some flexibility.
- One reviewer mentioned enjoying playing as the monsters, despite not typically liking horror games. This suggests the game has broad appeal beyond typical horror fans.
