The game unfolds across several stages, split into five easy ones, five hard ones, and a final stage that feels completely insane. You move through them in order, and you have to beat each stage to unlock the next. Once a stage is unlocked, you can continue from where you left off or go back and replay earlier ones, though there is not much reason to return.
The early stages do a solid job of teaching the mechanics, with each one introducing something new. Your main objective is to find a set number of books hidden inside a library. You begin in a single room, the basement, but eventually gain access to the attic and the main library. As the game opens up, the challenge comes from juggling different tasks while searching for books.
One of the first threats is a character that tries to sneak in through doors or windows and jump at you. You have to click on it quickly to drive it away. Then there is the stove, which can break and needs fixing by guiding a ball through a pipe without touching the walls. On top of that, your character gets tired, so you need to grab coffee to stay awake. You also have to keep your mind sharp by playing a small game on the computer, although this isn’t that big of a problem.
The character is easily the most frequent and stressful problem. It can appear in any of the three rooms, so you have to rely on sound cues to figure out where it is coming from. A creaking noise means the trapdoor, while the sound of curtains points to the library window. It is an interesting idea, but in practice it does not work at all and makes the game frustrating, especially for players with hearing difficulties. Not to mention that sounds are far too similar.
The character moves fast, so you need to react instantly. The coffee mechanic adds another layer of frustration because of a poor design choice. You have to wait a few seconds for the pot to fill, but if you hear a sound and step away to deal with something else, you have to start the process again from scratch. After a few interruptions, you can end up exhausted without ever getting a sip.
When that happens, your character dozes off for a few seconds, leaving you completely vulnerable while the threat can freely enter the library. This can even happen before the tiredness meter is fully drained, so you are forced to manage it early. If the character catches you during this moment, the game can glitch. The screen either goes completely dark or shows only part of the game, and the only fix is to force quit and restart.
Difficulty largely depends on how quickly you can spot the books. If you are sharp, some stages can be finished in under a minute. The harder stages slow things down by making you search for one book at a time, with each new one appearing only after the previous is found. Even then, spotting them is not easy. The minimalistic visuals make books blend into the environment, and sometimes you do not even realize you are looking right at one.
Things get even more intense when the character becomes more aggressive. It can appear more frequently and sometimes feels unfair, slipping through an entry point you just checked, come from two spots at the same time, or instantly reappearing the moment you leave a room.
At that point, your timing and reactions have to be nearly perfect. A clearer system, like visual indicators showing which room is under threat, would make a big difference. Still, this issue is mostly noticeable in the final hard stages, and you don’t have to bother if you’re not interested in achievements.
