YOUR HOUSE

The puzzles may be obtuse at times, and even the help that we do get might not be what we expect. However, that makes everything more true to life. Many times, I felt like I was Debbie in her predicament, getting frustrated over a puzzle I was close to solving. Despite that, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Your House and Debbie will stick with me for a long time.

If you're into puzzles, writing down all the details in a notebook to remember everything, and love these kinds of adventures, we would definitely recommend it. And even though it has its pros and cons, it's a game that delivers what it promises, in a short period of time, for people who don't want stories that last over 40 hours.

Despite a bit of clunky translation and its rather brief runtime, Your House feels like it could be the beginning of something great. Whereas many puzzle-heavy games are quick to give extra clues when it’s clear that the player is struggling, this title asks more. It makes you slow down, and each time something finally clicks, the dopamine rush is more than worth the effort. If the team at Patrones & Escondites end up creating more incredibly satisfying mystery games in this same style, it would be hard not to buy them on launch day.

With Your House, Patrones & Escondites return to their unique style of interactive storytelling with a prequel to Unmemory, offering another intriguing combination of book-style text and visuals in a thoughtful tale of drama and mystery.

Your House is a glorious mashup of video game and book, taking interesting elements from both storytelling methods to create an engaging game.

The third of the game’s five chapters in particular is truly wonderful, presenting a warren of secret corridors and a series of interconnected puzzles that are particularly satisfying to solve with the help of night vision goggles that can reveal hidden writing. But sadly the game can’t quite keep up this pace to the end, and despite the odd flash of brilliance, the quality of the final puzzles never quite reaches the height of those in the middle of the game. The plot, too, fizzles out unsatisfyingly, with a solution to the house’s mystery that seems obvious and yet doesn’t make much sense when held up to scrutiny. Still, the idea of a house with conundrums built into its very fabric remains tantalising: I couldn’t help but give my own house a sweep after playing, just on the off-chance there might be a previously unnoticed hidden message or two.

Your House is a short game, clocking in at about three hours to beat it all in one go, and with five clearly separated chapters if you want to play in small bursts, but because of that, you notice the time to take walking back and forth in tunnels, not being able to take the turns you want to take but having to guess or remember the entire layout and each room's name. This, combined with puzzles that seem to solve themselves and the strained narrative, drag down any enjoyment the individual problem solving might have granted. Your House is a good facsimile of an escape room, but the flaws only become more apparent in the digital realm.