Gamebox 2.0: Games of October 2023
Things were especially spooky this month as we got to enter creepy locations in Haunted House, The 7th Guest VR, and Dark Envoy. Check out our thoughts and reviews below in the Gamebox 2.0: Games of October 2023.
The 7th Guest VR (Zach): A classic of the early days of CD-ROM gaming, The 7th Guest returns in VR for a spooky, puzzle-packed adventure. You arrive at the decrepit Stauf Mansion and you need to explore and figure out what happened to 6 previous guests who visited previously. The evil toymaker Henry Stauf, the owner of the mansion, lured them in with the promise of granting them their heart’s desire if they can survive and solve his various challenges. The original game has become famous for its live-action video and 3D environments and it makes the transition to VR beautifully. The mansion is incredibly atmospheric and spooky and each room feels unique and interesting, especially since each one offers up totally unique challenges from the others. The game uses the full spectrum of VR, having you manipulate various games, puzzles, and mechanisms and physically walk around and explore every nook and cranny. As you progress and clear the challenges in each room, new rooms in the mansion open, and new story segments are revealed. The puzzles are a mix of classic table games presented in a spooky manner, like a Rush Hour-style sliding puzzle with coffins, to some creative unique ones, like using different magic top hats to get your hand into different locations or change its size to manipulate objects. Each room has around 3 different challenges, with some sort of token or marker of progress given for completing each one.
True to the original, The 7th Guest VR brings FMV with live-action performances from actors appearing in ghostly form to progress the story. The acting is the perfect blend of campy and serious and it’s integrated in a great way to showcase the scale and enveloping nature of VR, as you can walk around and watch the scenes from any angle. The 7th Guest is a fantastic VR game with tons of creative and fun puzzles to solve and a great spooky atmosphere to get lost in. The game is out now on Meta Quest, Steam VR, and Playstation VR2.
Haunted House (Chris): When legendary treasure hunter Zachary Graves goes missing, his niece Lyn Graves begins to investigate the last known location of his appearance. Lyn and a small group of her friends, travel to her uncle’s mansion, only to discover that evil spirits have escaped from their magical prison and have taken over the estate. Separated from her friends, Lyn sneaks around the dark halls of the mansion to capture all the mischievous ghouls and free her captive friends and uncle in the Haunted House. Orbit Studios brings a re-imaged take on the classic Atari original. The original 1982 Haunted House is credited to be one of the original survival horror games, and this newest entry adds some fresh mechanics to the series. Haunted House is an adventure game that blends stealth, survival, and roguelite elements. The game is presented in an isometric perspective and has very cartoony graphics. Like the original, Haunted House is not focused on combating the evil spirits but outwitting them. There are many mechanics that are based on avoiding direct fighting.
Lyn and her friends are plucky teens who are armed with flashlights and whatever mystical items they can find in the mansion. They are not prepared to head on to fight against the undead. Most combat can be avoided by silently sneaky around enemies or using items to cause distractions. The house has magical chests containing random items that can give the player power-ups, traps, or currency to spend on upgrades. When the opportunity presents itself, Lyn can creep up to an enemy to use her flashlight to vaporize the spirit completely. However, if an enemy has cornered the player, the flashlight can do some attack damage, but it will not be quick. Taking on two enemies or more at a time is not a great tactic. There is also a stamina bar that affects the player’s ability to run and perform rolls and needs a moment to recharge.
Each room in the house has enemies and objects outlined like a puzzle that can have a few different solutions to figure out. Each room also has an objective that must be completed in order to leave. The room might require the player to find a key item, eliminate a specific foe or survive a time limit with spawning enemies. Completely each room leads the player further into the house until they are able to face off with a boss battle. If the player is defeated, they are sent back to the start of the house and must complete another run with a new arrangement of rooms. The currency the player collects can be used to purchase upgrades from a shop. These upgrades boost passive stats like total health, inventory space, and stamina recovery. These upgrades won’t dramatically change the gameplay but give the player a slight advantage for their next attempt to navigate the rooms. As Lyn frees her friends, they become playable characters. They have the same controls and mechanics as Lyn, however, their stats are different from each other.
The visuals and gameplay of Haunted House are aimed towards a family-friendly audience but don’t expect this to be a simple child’s game. The game challenges players to think tactically about their movements and makes every risky move feel tense. The variety of rooms offers a good mix of interesting encounters that will have you scrambling to avoid taking damage. Restarting a run doesn’t feel too terrible as the game does offer a few methods to either build up stats or plenty of health items to find. The boss battles are fun and feel very distinct from the normal enemy encounters. It is a great satisfaction to finally defeat a boss after skillfully navigating through the rooms. Haunted House is a highly recommended game to play this month when the nights get a spooky chill in the air. Haunted House was released on October 13th for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation.
(Zach): Atari has brought back another of their classic titles but, unlike the Recharged series that presents classic games with updated visuals but the same basic gameplay, Haunted House takes the 2600 classic and completely reimagines it as a stealth-based roguelite. You play as Lyn Graves, who arrives with her friends at her grandfather’s mansion, concerned that something has happened to him. Upon arriving, Lyn’s friends are captured by evil spirits haunting the mansion and Lyn has to team up with a friendly ghost named Spooky to recover the pieces of a magical urn that can clear the spirits and save her grandfather and her friends. The game plays from an isometric perspective that feels like other roguelites, like Hades, but the gameplay feels extremely unique for the genre. Instead of hack-and-slash action, you need to carefully sneak your way around the Haunted House, as you are way outmatched against the various ghouls stalking the hallways, even with a magical lantern that can defeat the creatures Alan Wake style. There’s a sound meter and you have to be aware of how much noise you are making and figure out the patterns of the enemies to either avoid them and sneak past or possibly get behind them for a one-shot kill. Combat is definitely a last resort though and if you get detected by an enemy, your run is basically over as they can quickly destroy all your health and it’s extremely difficult to escape them once they are on you. The entire game is a lot more difficult than you might expect from its fun spooky art style and humor. The emphasis on stealth and the deadliness of the enemies really makes the game one of the most difficult roguelites I’ve played in recent years and you are going to be doing a lot of runs as you will probably be dying over and over.
There’s a great variety to the enemies, with lots of different behaviors and methods of avoiding or defeating them, which keeps things interesting, and each room you enter as you progress deeper into the house offers up some unique challenge. Some rooms have you searching for an artifact, clearing out a certain amount of objects, or defeating all enemies. If you can manage to survive long enough, you’ll take on bosses that are even more challenging than the already tough normal enemies and require you to avoid them until you can find special artifacts in their boss room that, once collected, will make them vulnerable. Along with your magical lantern, you can also find different power-ups and items throughout the mansion, like boxing glove jack in the boxes that can stun enemies or snowglobes that can freeze them. You can only carry three at a time, so you need to figure out which ones you want and may need to leave some behind. Like most modern roguelites, you gain currency throughout your run that can be used to purchase permanent upgrades that will help you make it a bit further in your next run. Along with the main mansion runs, you also gradually get keys that will unlock rooms in the mansion’s basement, which offers another area for runs. The game has a fantastic art style and atmosphere that perfectly blends spooky and fun and feels like it has Maniac Mansion vibes. Haunted House is a great upgrade of a classic game but be ready for a challenge, as even the most seasoned roguelite player will probably be challenged by the game’s emphasis on stealth instead of combat. Haunted House is out now on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One Series X|S, and PlayStation 4 & 5.
Dark Envoy (Zach): In case you haven’t had your fill of huge RPGs with stuff like Baldur’s Gate III releasing, Dark Envoy brings you a steampunk/fantasy world to explore. You play as siblings Kaela and Malakai, relic hunters in a world that is ravaged by a war between two factions that represent magic and technology. The siblings soon learn they may have a bigger destiny than just hunting for treasure that could reshape their entire world. Right out of the gate, Dark Envoy lets you customize both characters, from their appearance to their class and attributes. It’s cool that you can try and get a duo that compliments each other right out of the gate, instead of the usual RPG system of just making your character and then meeting other party members that you mix and match to figure out the best combo. The classes are a mix of technology, like gunslingers, and magic, like sorcerers, and you can choose a base class and then specialize further in that class, with different specialties offering up unique armor and weapons. Once you’re out into the world, you explore via a top-down/isometric view that will feel at home for RPG players. Enemies have a zone of awareness and combat won’t start until you enter that zone. Once in combat, you can slow down the action a la Dragon Age to tactically queue up actions and see the battlefield. There are lots of environmental elements that you can use to your advantage along with your character’s weapons and special abilities. Personally, if it’s going to be a tactical game, I prefer the gameplay of games like X-Com, where it’s turn-based with a certain amount of action points each turn. Dark Envoy is real-time but it feels sort of like Diablo without the direct control over your attacks. You can direct your characters on where to go and who to attack, along with popping off their specials, but there’s a bit of looseness times. There appears to be an X-Com style cover in the environments but your characters don’t crouch behind it and it doesn’t seem to offer up that much of a tactical advantage.
As you progress through the adventure, you find new allies and you can eventually build out a party of 4 characters and you can even team up with a friend for online co-op. As you progress through the story, there are choices that affect the story and possibly the chance to gain new allies or get into/avoid fights. The game looks good, especially for being from a smaller team, and the mix of high-tech enemies, like robots, with more traditional fantasy enemies makes it feel like a more unique world than similar games in the genre. It’s a jam-packed market right now for RPGs of all kinds between Baldurs Gate III, Diablo 4, Starfield, and more but if you’ve somehow beaten those or are looking for another game in that genre, Dark Envoy is out now on PC.