This might be subject to change as I complete a few more "runs" of the game, but I'm both unsure of that and fairly conflicted in my choice to hit the "not recommended" button as of this point in time. It doesn't feel good to do this.
[I]Dreams in the Witch House[/i] is not my favorite of Lovecraft's stories, not even by a particularly close metric, even when you lower the category to favorite Lovecraft stories involving large rats. By contrast, this game is, in many ways, endlessly engaging - in part because of the many ways it takes that story and expands on it to integrate so much of his mythology. I really enjoyed the bulk of my time with it, and I think it's probably - in theory - one of the best and most faithful-to-the-world Lovecraft adaptations ever made. None of these sorts of games have ever so solidly placed you into the position of one of his protagonists as they navigate the world of the strange and esoteric from the perspective of a somewhat hapless bookworm. This is, in part, because more than a point-and-click, this is a complete life sim - or survival game, almost. University student Walter Gilman needs to get a good sleep, he needs to eat, he needs to study for his exams, and he probably needs some thermal underwear, lest he get sick.
This is a bit of a double-edged sword, but one that at least at first, works well to make the game more compelling. It gives you a reason to do things, and more importantly, a level of sympathy for and connection with Walter. Money is scarce, and in order to get more allowance mailed over each week, he needs to do well on his exams - this means you have to study, build relationships with fellow students, and ensure you're healthy enough to actually take the exam. Studying, doing various activities, etc. raises your stats, which are important if you want to get anywhere. At the same time, you're plagued by horrible nightmares, the weather sucks, every now and again you might get bitten by the giant rat I mentioned earlier, and there's work to be done on your research project equating magic and science.
This is a game of time management more than anything else, though it's not devoid of puzzles and the like either. There's plenty of adventure game work to be done - it's just less guided, more freeform. There's not a huge amount of locational variety, but there's plenty to do and see, with various points of interest that will pop up every now and again completely organically through player choice and curiosity. Again, very compelling.
But let's flip the script here. That's one edge of the sword - the one that sliced my enemy's head clean off. Let's take a look at the end currently lodged in my gut. Money is scarce. [i]Really[/i] scarce. You get 12 dollars per week on the Normal difficulty, and that evaporates really quickly. Food is $2, sleeping pills are $2, earplugs are $2, and you're probably thinking you don't need the last two but you do because if you don't you'll get a bad sleep almost every single night and end up with the Tired status, making your studying worse. So you're already about $6 down there, and you'll still need food. You also need to buy a plank to keep the rat out (that's another $1, or you can bum one off of another character but both the store stock and the guy have really inconsistent stock), warm weather clothing (one-time purchase but expensive), rat poison so the rat doesn't just instantly eat the plank and get back in ($5, five uses). That's if you don't go boardless and attacked by the rat or get struck by a randomly occurring dream sequence that immediately inflicts you with some of the worst injuries in the game, which in either case means you need to spend an additional $2 on five-use pain medication to be able to really study anything at all without a 50% stat penalty.
You can see how this snowballs quickly. Very quickly.
It does a good job at simulating the life of a broke college student, I'll give it that. Simultaneously though, this aspect of the game is just brutal. You can technically get more money than the allowance, but there's only one way to do so and it takes almost an entire day - and you can't start this work after noon, which sometimes you can't really control because Walter decided to sleep in. It also only pays $2, which is pretty pathetic. You can get an additional $7 every few weeks, but only if you do well on your exams, which requires you to spend the vast majority of your time studying and guzzling pain meds, resting to cure your injuries/sickness, and sleeping pills, meaning that $7 evaporates fast and you're still not getting any real money or time to spend on progressing the game's plot. Apparently you can study chemistry to make some of this medication yourself, but I was never given the option to locate and check out chemistry or alchemy books until the last few weeks of the game when my upcoming exam was on chemistry, at which point it was far too late.
This is probably the intended experience, and I think that's fine. Despite how I just talked about it, I actually don't dislike this aspect of the game. The real problem is that on top of all of this, there are a ton of permanently missable things that can just completely screw you and you have to restart the entire game. Missable character interactions, items in this odd horror-game section that disappear forever if you are caught by an Elder Thing (which appear seemingly randomly and are difficult to avoid) leaving you unable to progress permanently in that area, weird time lockouts that unexpectedly leave you unable to complete quests, and more. It's extremely frustrating to have to start a new run because you didn't know that X or Y was going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it except make a separate save for each of the 60 days or restart the game from scratch in a game with runs over 5 hours(!) long.
But in spite of that, I liked this game and will probably play more of it. There is an easy mode, though I am not sure how much it affects things. I can't imagine what hard is like. I'll likely pick up the next game these devs are making too. The reason I give it a "not recommended" is simply because I don't know a single person I actually could recommend this to who wouldn't just be too frustrated and annoyed to see it through to anything except the worst endings of the game. A very ambitious game. A very cool game. But I would absolutely make sure you know what you're in for before you pick this one up. This isn't just a Lovecraft point and click - this game is a giant iron boot to the nuts.
