It is good to have Atari publishing games in 2023. Not all of their latest titles have been hits with the crowd or the critics, but it is safe to say that they have a very strong sense of style, standing out among other releases on any storefront. The recent Mr. Run and Jump is proof enough of that. I wanted to preface this review with a positive note because Haunted House by Orbit Studio is unfortunately not a very successful project.
This game is a grounds-up remake of their 1981 title of the same name. On the surface, it is a perfect subject for a modern rogue-ification: a pair of eyes walking through rooms of the titular location trying to find randomly placed objects, as randomly spawned ghosts, spiders, and bats try to stop them. With a new coat of paint and deeper mechanics, this seemed like a surefire success.
The issues begin with the actual choice of a genre. This is a roguelite, not a roguelike, meaning the game is built more so around the fact that the player will be going through sets of randomized rooms multiple times before completing the main objective, coming back to a hub, and upgrading their core abilities before each new run. This has been a prominent type of progression system for a lot of indie titles over the past few years and ended up being a crutch for many of them.
Haunted House is, unfortunately, no different. The game has many collectibles waiting to be discovered throughout the mansion: cats, kitchen utensils, and Atari Cartridges. Fun stuff. There are a total of 60 things to be found throughout three different floors, spawning seemingly at random. Throughout the four and a half hours of playtime and around 15 attempts it took me to beat the main game, I managed to encounter five of these objects in total.
They reward the player with materials used to upgrade the core abilities of all five characters simultaneously. This is a very poor reward—the same objects can be found in chests that appear after clearing a room, and after beating bosses. There is no shortage of them. Admittedly, even after upgrading characters, they can be used for renovating the hub, but the general feeling I am left with is that completing optional tasks is not rewarding enough to warrant the sheer amount and rarity of collectibles.
I think the title would work much better if the game was linear because the layouts and challenges are solid enough to warrant going through them once, but not 10 times. I encountered repeats of rooms on each run, the only difference being a slightly different objective, and even then not always. The mechanics are enjoyable, if a bit iffy right now. I think a short, replayable experience would work better than a roguelite in this case.
Speaking of the mechanics: like I said, they are really solid. The player takes control of one of the five kids (starting with one, with the ability to unlock a new one being provided through a basement key acquired after each of the three bosses on the main path) who take possession of a lantern able to destroy the different types of monsters and obstacles. They can also run, walk, or stealth, with each type of movement emitting a different sound radius.
Stealth is a big part of the experience, because while some enemies have a cone of vision, a lot of them will be asleep or blind, allowing for the kids to sneak past. If some get in the way, they can be fully destroyed by either flashing the light on them for some amount of time or by a stealth execution if approached from behind. I had most fun with Haunted House in crowded areas where I weaved through enemies. After completing the objective, nearly every enemy in the area is destroyed. The only ones remaining are these annoying jumpscare creatures.
They can be found in several types of inanimate objects, or under the water. After being grabbed, the player has to wiggle themselves out, but will inevitably lose health while doing so. This makes cleaning up any room a pain, because by the time the player reaches the third floor, they can deal damage equal to a quarter of some characters’ HP, and their grab ranges and activation are very inconsistent. I had moments where the game had to pull my character model back into the frame after I dodged one.
Hitboxes and collision are altogether a big issue here. The perspective sometimes makes it difficult to determine whether the character is close enough to an object or enemy to interact with it, and there is a slight delay for the button prompt to appear. This is an issue when, for example, you are sneaking behind a ghost and need to destroy it before it turns around in a millisecond, as they never stop moving.
Additionally, for how solid the designs are, it is difficult to determine whether or not an enemy can be executed from certain angles. For about half of my time with Haunted House, I was unaware of the fact that the octopus-like enemy could even be executed, because they rarely had their back exposed. I would waste the consumable attack items on them, alerting other monsters and losing health in the process.
But I eventually got the hang of it all and started reaching the bosses. These have two encounters per floor, one where the player has to search their lair for three artifacts and escape, and then the boss battles after a few more rooms. These encounters are honestly horrendous, all for different reasons. The first has poorly communicated attacks, the second is incredibly easy, and the last is more so a simple puzzle.
All these gameplay issues were exacerbated due to the game refusing me the ending when I beat a full run. The key allowing me to free the final kid was provided only after beating the third boss, but the game required all five friends to be unlocked before accessing the final section. This meant having to go back to the hub, beating a special basement floor with the same basic boss as all the other times, and then using the shortcut to redo the final floor once more. Thankfully there is a shortcut to each floor, but this is just very artificial padding.
I am also sad to say that Haunted House did not deliver on the audiovisual side. There was a patch today as of writing this that improved the default graphics quality, but during my time with Haunted House, everything looked pixelated and hazy. Even now there are still no graphical options in the menu, which is a shame because the game’s backgrounds are very detailed and all the designs are great. The aesthetic is just the right mix of childlike and eerie. The music, on the other hand, is very cliché, and its dynamic implementation often breaks on itself, causing short, jarring loops.
Like I said in the beginning, I do not think Haunted House is a very successful project, but it is not one without merit. This reimagining has elements that do work and a strong vision for this property, I just do not think the way it compellingly implements these things. There are also some fundamental issues with the gameplay that should have been ironed out. I truly expected something special going into Haunted House; it is a shame it fell into all the possible trappings found in other roguelites.
Mateusz played Haunted House on PC with a review code. Haunted House is also available on the Atari VCS, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5.
