====== The House on Highfield Lane ======

//The House on Highfield Lane// by Andy Joel ([[https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=618svjskhrvni2r0|IFDB]]). An [[IFComp]] 2021 entry.

I feel like I only made it a quarter of the way through this game in two hours. The house is a maze, but fairly sparse. I wasn't even sure I ran across a puzzle - it's just mysterious. It's clear that a lot of work went into this, but I felt like it didn't nudge me towards the more useful or interesting bits very well.  Rated 5 of 10.

  * +1 Interactions are fun and/or consonant with the theme
  * +1 No distracting bugs
  * +1 Effective prose
  * +1 Well-sketched setting
  * +1 I admire this

I wrote this review on intfiction.org:

“Horror… without the horror” worked for me. Trapped in a weird house with a mysterious figure you can never quite get a good look at could be super scary, but this is just odd and a little unsettling in a good way. The wonderland logic of the space feels very adventure-gamey and I enjoyed wandering and discovering its surprises.

That said, I didn’t make much progress in the allotted two hours. I found the wire and tied it to the weathervane, and found the boot, and that’s about it - I bounced off most of the puzzles and didn’t really get a foothold on anything. Glancing at the walkthrough I missed a ton of stuff. I’m not sure what to recommend though - I think I might have hit this in the wrong mindset and need to take another run at it sometime.

It did feel like something I’d like to make. Thanks Andy!

{{tag>played "played in 2021" "played on PC" "interactive fiction"}}