The graphical limitation of the VCS console back in the 80s was extraordinary, even for the 80s. There were more sprites than specifics, and typically the player had to use their imagination more than not to enjoy the experience. For example, in the game Haunted House, the gameplay featured two empty columns that the player traversed as two large eyes. The game allowed players to go into rooms and out of rooms that contained repeated graphical patterns with the occasional run-in with a nasty object that wasn’t anything more than blinky sprites. In other words, you had to tap into your inner-Alfred Hitchcock for your mind to fill in the massive visual blanks of the game to make it more terrifying. Ah, an 80s Atari 2600 experience. So nice.
Well, in its quest to revive such terrifying games, Atari and developer Orbit Studio have brought back Haunted House just in time for Halloween. This time with more intricate details, a rogue-lite backbone, and limitations that make the game panicky but mostly playable. The concept of this new version of an old 80s classic contains the essence of the original, but the additional pieces and parts are hit and miss.
Pack some batteries, make sure that the flashlight works, and let’s get investigating how this new version of the game performs on modern consoles.
Hunting in a Haunted House
There are a few elements of Haunted House that make it far more entertaining than the original without losing the concept and essence that made the 2600 game great. Much like the original game, the story is set in a large mansion that you must go and investigate. While I never paid attention to any possible story that the original game might have contained, the biggest plus and motivation to even play this new version is the story built for it. The story revolves around Lyn Graves, the niece of Zackary Graves, an explorer, adventurer, and mansion owner who has housed a lot of supernatural beings. His mansion has been taken over, and it’s the job of Lyn to take it back, uncover its mysteries, and survive the best way Lyn can.
The story creates an established motivation for the gameplay and gives the player rhyme and reason for taking this rogue-lite journey through Graves’ mysterious mansion. Does the story do anything for the overall gameplay outside of motivating the player to keep pushing forward through difficult scenarios? Absolutely not, but it’s nice to see a story established to help introduce the gameplay. It’s a good departure from the early 80s version.
As previously mentioned, the gameplay is rogue-lite in structure. You play as Lyn who is armed with a flashlight and random temporary tools she finds lying around throughout her adventure. She goes through randomly generated rooms that offer up challenges and encourages a methodical grind as a reason to replay the experience when she perishes. And the player will certainly perish quite a bit, as you would expect from a rogue-lite structure (see Hades for details).
The gameplay design elements for Lyn have her sneaking around in a stealthy manner, rolling quickly to avoid traps and monsters, using her flashlight to drain/destroy baddies, and finding chests that contain traps and distractions (sometimes food). The most useful tools in this trunk of elements are sneaking and temporary goodies from chests. You can get through a majority of gameplay by simply avoiding contact with baddies. I learned this the hard way, as I tried to confront enemies with the flashlight first, but soon found that the enemies’ slow drain was no match for their quick strikes. There is a way for Lyn to sneak up on enemies and explode them with a powerful flashlight blast, but that technique is finite with uses, and it’s incredibly sensitive with what direction Lyn is pointed towards, as that button-push activation can come and go quickly with a small tap of the controller’s thumbstick. I cannot tell you how many times I have snuck up on an enemy and triggered the square button icon to do that flashlight blast technique, only to see the square go away and the enemy obliterate me because I nervously scooted Lyn over a small bit. It’s inconsistent at best, so the safer bet is to stealthily sneak around unless the mission is to take out all ghastly ghostly monster targets. If it’s the latter, you must fight, and there is some frustration.
Speaking of missions, there are a variety.
Mission not impossible
As you go from room to room, you are tasked with certain goals. For example, you might be asked to find a hidden idol in a treasure chest (and there are a lot of these) and place it back on its mantle. Or you might be asked, as previously mentioned, to destroy all enemies. You may also be tasked with destroying ectoplasm that encompasses objects in rooms to release them from supernatural grasp. A more difficult mission is surviving a room full of baddies in a set amount of time. Whatever the mission might be, there is always something different going on when Lyn enters a new place. The mission types help to keep the gameplay interesting, even when it’s frustrating, and there are plenty of moments where you will stumble on constant bouts of frustration, which we will get into in a second. Back to the point, you will have to traverse missions repeatedly, so expect to see repeating goals and grind out the gameplay. Depending on how you feel about the latter, you may enjoy this or truly hate it. For me, I’m okay with a little game grind, especially when I know I’m progressing Lyn’s stats, and as stated previously, there are enough missions to keep the gameplay grind manageable.
Grinding the gameplay, and dying repeatedly, is how you enjoy Haunted House and stick with it. Lyn will die, sometimes incredibly unfairly, but will retain everything she collects, sans the temporary items found in chests (basic power-ups). Outside of the temp items, Lyn also collects money and tri-colored objects from chests. The money and these tri-colored objects can be used for stat upgrades for Lyn at reset points in the mansion. These upgrades equal items such as better stamina, a stat she needs for running. Upgrades could also mean more powerful flashlight beams, opening an item slot to carry more items and various other stats like health and more stamina longevity. Because of these upgrades, the game gives you a reason to come back to it, even when you are cursing it. Collecting permanent forms of stat upgrades helps to create motivation to keep trying. If you go into this game with that in mind, you will find the gameplay far less frustrating and just a bit more rewarding. Trust me, it took me a while to get to this realization, as I was cursing up a storm quite often with my poor gameplay performance at the beginning which showed little return. As with any good rogue-lite, you do eventually see the fruits of your deathly labor. All of this helps to create encouragement to return to the gameplay, even when it’s a bit wonky.
And that wonky part is tough to get over at times.
The wonky
The game is featured in an isometric viewpoint and every room is packed with breakable objects, obstacles Lyn must figure a way around, and random traps that are hard to see due to bad lighting. The latter part of that sentence is perfect for a haunted house scenario, so I’m not going to fault the game with that detail. Every haunted house is dark and spooky, so it makes sense.
The traps are a bit unforgiving in the game. For example, I made a break for it in a room towards a treasure chest, which alerted enemies to my presence, and a ghost in a painting grabbed me which required me to QTE my way out of the grasp. There wasn’t a tip-off for that ghost, other than the existence of the painting, and it meant an instant death for Lyn because the amount of time it takes to complete the QTE was far more than what it took for the other enemies to kill me. I don’t mind that cheapness, especially when stealth is a strategy, but it frustrated the hell out of me.
Equally as frustrating were the obstacles in the game that weren’t actively trying to murder Lyn. The bookshelves, tables, and railings are tough to see because of the isometric viewpoint and the lack of lighting. When trying to figure out how to traverse a room, sometimes you might think there is an opening between objects, but it ends up being something you just couldn’t see and how restrictive and blocked the area might be due to the viewpoint. This sends the gameplay back to a methodical stealth game, which shouldn’t be the strong go-to option for Lyn. This problem was a constant for me, and being forced to choose stealth as a gameplay style, which wouldn’t make this playful game as much fun. It should be more balanced, and the room designs should be a lot more flexible with movement. There are a massive number of rooms to get through, so it’s okay not to be immediately restrictive to the gameplay.
In addition to the obstacles standing still, there are also obstacles, such as small tables, that can be tipped over if you stand too close to them as you sneak by. It’s ridiculously easy to tip a table and alert ghosts. While the alerting part is certainly a good portion of consequence for not being careful, the big problem comes back to the isometric viewpoint, as it doesn’t clearly give you a safe path to process how far Lyn is away from said object. I have had to keep a healthy distance from tables just to ensure that there wasn’t accidental touching. Sometimes that meant not being able to safely avoid other obstacles and ghosts around Lyn. Again, it’s frustrating and a tough gameplay element to get used to, even if it’s a proper obstacle.
Beyond these frustrations, the game does more good than bad. It brings a great strategic element to the gameplay and takes that original HH concept and makes the adventure a bit more worthwhile. I enjoyed the game’s grind, its slow build, and the bevy of approaches that it offers when trying to play the game, even if this feels slanted. Now, the addition of difficult boss fights that have multiple layers to them makes it even more fun and helps counter some of those wonky negatives. The bosses are brutal but fun. It’s certainly a tough climb in the game and one that rewards the player properly./
Anyway, you’ll get a lot of use, especially this time of year, around Haunted House’s fun creepiness and the way the game cleverly designed the gameplay to carry the original’s intentions. It isn’t at all perfect, but it’s good enough to warrant the price of admission.
On that note, let’s wrap this review up.
Conclusion
Haunted House from developer Orbit Studio and publisher Atari is a fantastic upgrade to the original 2600 game. The rogue-lite adventure is packed full of strategy with a properly grindy backbone that will encourage you to come back for more. The game also carries some faults which are small road bumps that you will occasionally feel on your journey. It is certainly worth a go, especially if you’re a fan of the original.
