Horace

If you are afraid of the British, then you should consider this a survival horror game. Horace is seeping in charm and pop culture references (the good kind), although I feel is held back by some gameplay. The cutscenes I feel are the best part about the game, though they may not be for everyone. Horace and the loveable cast of characters are all spoken for by a text-to-speech program, and while that may seem like an odd choice, it absolutely adds to the charm of the cutscenes. The quality of the cutscenes is not what makes them great, as they are relatively low budget. It is instead the writing and humour found within the cutscenes that make them excel. It often feels like you are watching a sitcom, and given the amount of references to sitcom's in this game, that's probably what they were aiming for. The music itself, most of it (from what I gathered) is remixes of classical music. I quite enjoyed the majority of these more video game-y esque renditions of songs you recognise. In between the episodical cutscenes, there's a game. Unbeknownst to me going in, this is a platformer game, and quite a difficult one at that. Some checkpoints can be forgiving, but rooms in the game just do not have any. Pair this with having to backtrack quite often through a lot of the games, and it can get frustrating. Easily the best part of the platforming is found in the mansion which appears halfway through the game, where the game suddenly transitions into a medium-sized metroidvania game. This is where the platforming shines the most, as all the rooms have fun and unique challenges, and you also have to often come back to some of them with power ups you unlock from later areas. Though, you do have to backtrack around the place often (there are shortcuts, but not many). Annoyingly the gameplay is what's stopping me from rating this game any higher. I would say the majority of the platforming is great, but around half of the bosses are enjoyable, as some of them often do not telegraph their attacks very well. I also felt that the game didn't quite know when to stop. This wasn't so bad in the fact that there were more cutscenes to enjoy, but it also meant that yet more platforming was ahead, and it got quite tiresome near the end. It is quite funny in the fact that when I felt I was nearly finished, was when the game decided to drop an entire metriodvania type level on me (the mansion). Maybe the length of the game isn't off-putting for those who want a hard platformer to go on for a while, but it often felt rather exhausting during a lengthy play session. It's absurdly charming (personally a huge fan of the Monty Python references) which makes the lengthy play time, and hard platforming challenges absolutely worth pushing yourself through.