Almost My Floor

An interesting game, but short

Начало бодрое, но концовка какая-то скомканная. 6,5/10

Almost My Floor is a psychological horror adventure that takes an ordinary journey home and twists it into an unsettling trip through distorted reality. Developed and published by Potata Company, it uses the familiar structure of a point-and-click adventure while surrounding its puzzles and investigation with grotesque imagery, dark humor, paranoia, and supernatural uncertainty. Its greatest achievement is making a seemingly mundane apartment building feel increasingly hostile. House #9 becomes more than a location; it is a labyrinth where familiar hallways, neighbors, elevators, and rooms can transform into manifestations of fear without warning. The narrative is presented through two playable characters whose different motivations give the mystery additional depth. Alex simply wants to return home, but his journey becomes increasingly surreal as the building refuses to behave according to ordinary rules. Monsters and disturbing residents stand between him and safety, while the boundary separating reality from hallucination becomes progressively less reliable. His predicament gives the story its strongest psychological dimension because survival is accompanied by the equally important challenge of preserving his sanity. The second protagonist, detective Adam Trust, approaches House #9 from an investigative perspective. Instead of merely attempting to escape its horrors, he wants to understand what happened and uncover the truth surrounding its residents. Alternating perspectives gives the story more variety and helps transform what could have been a straightforward haunted-building scenario into a mystery that gradually reveals different sides of the same nightmare. Alex experiences the horror personally, while Adam provides the investigative element necessary to piece together its underlying events. Gameplay revolves around exploring locations, examining objects, speaking with characters, collecting useful information, and solving environmental or inventory-based puzzles. The puzzles are generally approachable rather than deliberately obscure, making the game suitable for players who enjoy adventure mechanics without wanting progress to grind to a halt because of excessively complicated solutions. There is enough interaction to make investigation meaningful, but storytelling and atmosphere remain the priorities. The possibility of dangerous consequences also adds tension to exploration, since poor decisions can lead to unpleasant outcomes. Choices play an important role in shaping certain encounters. The player is sometimes given responsibility for deciding what happens to characters, fitting nicely with the game's recurring uncertainty about who can be trusted and what is actually real. These decisions do not turn it into an enormous branching role-playing game, but they provide additional involvement and encourage players to pay attention to conversations and circumstances instead of treating every scene as a simple puzzle waiting for one predetermined answer. The hand-drawn 2D presentation is one of its strongest characteristics. Its comic-book aesthetic gives characters exaggerated expressions while allowing the environments and creatures to become grotesque without clashing with the overall visual direction. The artists can move freely between relatively ordinary apartment interiors and bizarre nightmare sequences. This visual flexibility is particularly effective when familiar locations suddenly become disturbing, creating the sensation that reality itself is being rewritten around the protagonist. Despite its horror foundation, the game is not relentlessly grim. Parody, satire, strange comedy, and dark humor frequently appear alongside the psychological material. This unusual mixture gives the experience personality, although players wanting consistently oppressive horror may find some comedic moments disruptive. For others, these tonal changes provide useful relief before the story returns to more disturbing imagery. Rather than copying the presentation of conventional horror adventures, the game embraces an eccentric identity of its own. The overall experience is relatively focused, and that works both for and against it. Its manageable length keeps the mystery moving at a healthy pace and prevents House #9 from exhausting its central gimmick. On the other hand, players looking for an especially long adventure or highly demanding puzzle design may wish some concepts received greater development. The emphasis is clearly on atmosphere, narrative discovery, visual creativity, and accessible problem solving rather than mechanical complexity. Steam Deck compatibility is encouraging from a technical standpoint, but there is an important distinction between compatibility and official verification. The game supports Linux in addition to Windows and macOS, and full controller support is listed, both of which make it well suited in principle to handheld play. However, its Steam listing does not provide a clear official Steam Deck Verified or Playable classification. It is therefore best described as not officially Steam Deck rated rather than claiming a Verified status. Its controller-oriented support and modest technical demands nevertheless make it a reasonable candidate for Steam Deck use, with individual configurations potentially affecting the experience. Almost My Floor ultimately succeeds by combining a traditional point-and-click structure with a distinctive psychological-horror identity. Its dual protagonists, sinister apartment setting, hand-drawn artwork, choices, accessible puzzles, detective elements, and surreal transformations work together to create an adventure that feels more imaginative than its simple premise initially suggests. It may not satisfy players demanding extremely complicated puzzles or lengthy exploration, but those who value atmospheric storytelling and unusual visual horror should find plenty to appreciate. House #9 is memorable precisely because the game takes somewhere ordinary and gradually convinces the player that absolutely nothing inside it can be trusted. Rating: 8/10