Dreams in the Witch House

It's one of those hidden indie gems. It mixes some resource/time management with the classic point & click adventure, all wrapped up in gorgeous pixel art. The whole thing feels authentic to the source material. Only few Lovecraftian themed games are worth your time and this is one of them. The developer has Merit through and through. Recommended!

Si has leído a Lovercraft, si eres jugador de rol clásico de "La Llamada de Cthulhu" este juego te VA A ENCANTAR, porque no solo está inspirado fielmente en el relato de Lovercraft, sino que capta la atmósfera de este, la investigación de cualquier partida de rol bien narrada ( libros de ocultismos, matemáticas, archivo, viejos periódicos e incluso los "libros prohibidos" si eres lo suficiente valiente para leerlos y hábil para hacerte con alguno ( o insensato). Si llego a saber que era tan bueno lo habría tenido mucho antes, vale cada euro que pagues con él y... tiene muchas formas de acabar y ...no esperes que la primera vez q lo hagas sea la buena... o sí..

The "adventure" is tainted by "survival". Even on easy difficulty, taking care of this dude is obnoxious. He's hungry, cold, sick, wet, tired, there's no wood, rat ate through the plank.... it takes LOTS of effort to take care of every issue. And I played on easy mode, I had more money to work with. Sure, it was easier, but it wasn't exciting at all. After taking my 1st exam I realised this game is insane. The results depend on your stats (I couldn't sleep becaue of nightmares so I was tired, even though I used earplugs), knowledge of the lecture, but also player's answers to the exam questions. Let me tell you, I got an F. And, ofc, there is another exam I have to take in one week. The freedom to do whatever you want impressed me at first, but the fact that you have to waste so much of your free time trying to survive, looking for books, and LITERALLY studying them is frustrating. Even the one "quest" I did with looking for a girl's library card was tedious as hell, you had to ask her what books she had read and then look them up and check each one individually. The day/night cycle is unclear. You don't know how many hours performing an action will take, I wanted to quickly light up the fire and it took me one hour. When you're spending time in locations without the crossed clock icon, according to the witchopedia, every 1 min in real life equals to 30 min in game. What time is it? I have no ****ing idea, because I don't know the exact hour. There is merely a general description provided in the menu like dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, late afternoon, dusk, evening, late evening, night. If I take a 3-hour-long nap in the late afternoon, will it be dusk, evening or night? If I had a meeting scheduled for "around midday", can I study for 5 hours in the morning? If I go to sleep in the night, will I wake up in the morning so I can work? It's confusing for no reason, and these choices matter because some objectives are available only during certain times of the day. I'm curious how the game will develop and I want to find out what the cosmic horror is, but when I realised I have to go to the library again, borrow a book, read it, pay attention to what's in it, go to bed, fix my stats, go shopping, earn some money... I just turned the game off. Poor student simulator, not much adventure to be found. If there is something more, it is buried under these tedious chores. An interesting game in theory, but I dread giving it another chance. EDIT: Played for one more hour. There's something to it, but I still can't get over how obscure the day/night cycle is. I still struggle on easy mode, can't imagine playing on hard difficulty. Also: got robbed, almost died. 90% of this game is resource management and doing tasks, I have no time to focus on anything else. Got the worst ending, maybe I'm stupid but I want constantly stuck and couldn't get the drunk to talk. Good atmosphere but the gameplay is horrid and a single run is way too long. This game requires more than one playthrough to get better ending, but the gameplay is so full of chores that I'll watch it on youtube.

This game is AWESOME! Don't let it fool you; it isn't as simple as it appears on the surface. FYI there is nothing resembling a walkthrough available and this game is HARD and easy to screw up if you miss any little thing. Don't expect to play it once and get the good ending. The story is amazing through and it's weirdly addictive. If you can't figure out how to get Dr. Armitage to talk to you about the things in the your room, hit me up geeky_equestrian @ yahoo . com I had to play the damn game twice to figure it out and still almost missed it.

Such a good game, loved the day to day tasks combined with the supernatural. I will eventually play it over to see if I get a different ending.

Probably one of the best Lovecraftian style video game I have ever played! It is quite adictive and fun. Easy to understand while challenging. The music and sound effects are chilling! I had some scary moments for sure! My real life sanity dropped a few points! Good job to the developpers. I would like to see more games in this style of game play, remininscing of games such as Maniac Mansion. I would give it 10/10.

I just realized I never left a review for this! Shame on me, because this is an absolute banger of a debut. The survival mechanics can be very frustrating at times (to be fair, that's kind of the point), but it's just admirable how the developer has managed to integrate three disparate aspects (storytelling, rpg/survival and point and point-and-click adventuring) into such a finely tuned package. News just broke that he's working on a new project based on The Dunwich Horror and I just can't wait to go insane again.

This game is probably one of the best simulations of student life ever released. You have to cope with hunger, tiredness, the cold, exams, studying, money, academic rituals and prayers to the Elder Gods… As I’ve already mentioned, it’s one of the best games depicting a student’s everyday life. Joking aside, “The Dream in the Witch House” is one of the most faithful adaptations of Lovecraft’s prose I’ve ever seen. Because the original story was quite short, the developers managed to adapt it into a game and recreate it almost on a 1:1 scale. As for the gameplay itself, it’s a blend of a classic point-and-click RPG with light survival elements. I don’t have a clear opinion on the difficulty level of the survival mechanics in this game. In my opinion, they haven’t been properly balanced across the different difficulty levels. You’re more likely to lose a life due to an untreated cold than at the hands (tentacles?) of the local pantheon or bestiary. I definitely have to count this tutorial among the game’s drawbacks. It’s poorly put together and isn’t particularly helpful at all. The same goes for the lack of a proper in-game clock (the game only uses vague terms like “morning,” “dusk,” etc.); because instead of helping the player, this mechanic actively hinders them. Instead of forcing the player to buy a raincoat, the developers should have given them the option to purchase a decent wristwatch. [b]Would I recommend it? Yes [/b] Game is superbly executed in terms of its story and adaptation, its mechanics, its graphics and sound design. Its biggest drawback (for me) is the fact that, on higher difficulty levels, the survival elements take center stage a bit too much, and also that it has a relatively poorly designed tutorial. ✅[list] [*] Pixel art combined with an 8-bit style. It's a bit like the classic adventure games from the '90s. [*] Unsettling and spine-tingling soundtrack. It was composed by Troy Sterling Nies. [*] UI typical of adventure games from the 1990s or the early 2000s. A classic, universal standard. [*] Story is great. Developers have skillfully adapted and tailored H.P. Lovecraft’s story of the same title to the new format. [*] Endings. The developers added their own endings to the standard, textbook-style ones, allowing you to take the reins and steer the story in a slightly different direction. [*] A mechanism for learning new, necessary skills and expanding your knowledge. This way, certain aspects of survival are made a bit easier; e.g. instead of buying rat poison, you can make it yourself. [*] I like that the in-game exams test real, intermediate-level knowledge in subjects like physics or chemistry. If you know the answers, you can choose them yourself instead of relying 100% on what you’ve (or haven’t) unlocked in the game. [*] From a mechanical standpoint, the survival aspects have been well designed. [*] Game features an authentic account of the Salem witch trials. [*] An interesting puzzle mechanism in which the correct answer changes with every playthrough. In practice, this means that most walkthroughs and guides for the game become pointless. [*] Player visits locations and meets characters who also appear in other Lovecraft stories. [/list] 😐 [list][*] I can’t believe anyone would come to Massachusetts in March (according to lore, that’s where Arkham is) without a raincoat. It would be better to explain that the main character’s raincoat had worn out or that it had been stolen whilst he was at lectures. [*] Unfortunately, when it comes to the difficulty level, I get the impression that the developers have gone a bit overboard and haven’t balanced the survival-related elements very well. The game can be a real ordeal even on the easy setting, let alone on normal or hard. [*] Every book should clearly show its progress level (e.g. you’ve read 3/5). At the moment, some of them display this information, whilst others do not. [/list] ❌[list] [*] The tutorial is poorly executed. It’s simply a collection of static screens with instructions that essentially throw the player in at the deep end. A better approach would be to present the tutorial as a prologue preceding the main part of the game. [*] Lack of proper in-game clock, which makes time-management unnecessarily difficult. [*] Sometimes longer texts are difficult to read, especially in poorly lit areas or when we’re under time pressure. [*] Lack of VA. [/list]