The House on Highfield Lane by Andy Joel (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.
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!