The Castle of Dr. Hoot

The Dark Souls of edutainment parodies. Looks great, nails the atmosphere, and is entirely punishing to play. Half the puzzles are intentionally easy to set you up for the horror misdirect, while the others are so obtuse I either couldn't understand the goal or how the mechanics work before I died, even after restarting the game several times. Because if you make a mistake on the first day, you have to start over completely, including replaying several intro segments. And making a mistake could mean clicking on the wrong weird little thing in a point and click, like the wrong icon on the computer, resulting in instant game over. And I'm pretty sure you have to explore those icons to advance the story somehow, but I can't do another 45 minutes of intro segments. I guess there's probably a market for hardcore permadeath point and clicks, but not for me.

The game is very good haven't made it to the ending quite yet as bug progress loss, the screen and speaker on the spelling minigame not appearing but I can still click where the speaker is and hear the word, the astrology minigame star map becoming my entire screen and I am unable to do or click anything and the comets bug out on the screen and I lose progress , when the pop quiz appears upon clicking the first letter e.g on ribs the r is just removed and I cannot correctly make the word and lose progress, dying to a jumpscare from Dr. hoot after the letter machine game has been completed but he appeared in quite literally the last frame of the game closing, and upon trying to use the free pop quiz item thing if accidently clicked in the classroom it sends me to the main hallway and traps me in hell of unable to click any staircase or even press esc to quit the game. However even though these bugs have frustrated me to no end I love disguised horror games and this is a great premise and I'm sure these bugs can be fixed and I applaud the dev for a cool game, just has some bugs, ♥♥♥♥ happens.

meh! pretty good

First review, huh? As a fellow bird, I suppose I'll get this party started. The Castle of Dr. Hoot is, if it weren't obvious enough, yet another game in the long lineage of edutainment-inspired horror games. As far as these experiences usually go, however, this one is a bit more interesting than the usual Baldi's-adjacent games I've seen in the past. You play as a student (name of choice) who is delegated with engaging in Dr. Hoot's educational fare, which includes a very simple spelling minigame, a minigame involving placing arrows on a screen to move letters into a chute and a spot-the-constellation minigame. From 7 AM through 3 PM, you're instructed to complete these minigames repeatedly to accrue funds, while taking care to not lose too much energy in the process. While the game starts off slow, its difficulty ramps up considerably by the third day, with every minigame introducing some sort of tricky gimmick to overcome. The bone of contention is, however, most of these minigames are based around use of the mouse and rely on quick reactions. Pair this with the fact that some of these minigames can be quite buggy, you can lose attempts of these minigames rather quickly in unfortunate ways. When it works, it's not bad - when it doesn't, however, you lose an entire day's worth of progress. Yikes. The game also sports a variety of chance encounters and spooks, which, wouldn't be so bad if they didn't consistently cause you to lose great amounts of progress. I encountered at least four these events, which meant I lost about twenty minutes of progress over all of these encounters. What a waste. It seems that there's a very specific means to unlock a certain ending in this game which, should I manage to fulfill, I'll write some more on it in an update to his review. All in all, The Castle of Dr. Hoot is an interesting experience, but it certainly needs a great deal more polish. The letter assembly minigame often has many issues with collisions (trying to click viruses may move your arrows); additionally, the virus spawners often push you to making incredibly narrow paths that leave you with few opportunities to click away viruses before they end your run. Additionally, the penalty for making any mistakes in a minigame is incredibly unkind as it completely disorients the screen, likely potentiating an additional mistake. It's not needed - the player already fouled up, no need to precipitate an extra error. The knights that appear are also extremely frustrating as they can spawn multiple times in front of the player without warning and considerably drain their energy. The spelling minigame sometimes has the issue where letters may glitch between two spots or may disappear altogether. The astronomy minigame has no tell for where or when stars will fly at you; there's an initial animation but it shows only one star on the left side of the screen. Sometimes, this will play and the stars will fly from the right side of the screen. There's also a chance that your game will completely softlock due to something related to the coin accrual animation. The secret ending is bugged, by the way. I've managed to trigger the sequence that occurs when you purchase everything but I'm left in a glitched screen that loops without input. Whether this is intentional, I have no idea. Lastly, the opening warning for the game looks very amateur-ish. I would suggest trying to redesign that first image to look a little more professional with some nicer fonts and potentially even a UI that reflects the rest of the game. It very much broke my immersion. You can still have the warning, I just think it could be written much more formally. I want this game to succeed. There's the making of something quite interesting here, but I think the fact that there's so much grind to this game and how punitive it is towards the player can be a major deterrent. You can have a challenge while being fair to the player. You can make for a spooky experience without throwing the player to the main menu or crashing the game every 15 minutes. The music and visuals are quite charming, plus I do find the whole journey of this game captivating. Should my criticisms be remedied to some extent, I'll switch my review over to a positive one.

What a great game! This hit everything I wanted in a point and click old school-style adventure game. The dev did such a good job with the art, character designs, and sound design! It felt like a real educational kid game from the 90s/2000s. Each mini-game felt unique, fun, and I appreciated that they were less than 30 seconds (so it didn't feel like a slog to grind out the extra credit points). If you like the OG FNAF games or the Amanda the Adventure games - where you're meant to poke around, break things, and die to find secrets - you will absolutely love this game. I'm so excited to see what else BitWizard creates.

Game is unwinnable? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SPOILERS BELOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When you get to the part where you can move with WASD and when you have to collect everyone's items you can't talk to Hank to get his quest. I've tried this part a few times and it won't let me progress.

Un giochino molto simpatico che riprende le atmosfere dei giochi educativi di fine anni 90 e inizio 2000, se ci fosse stato quel tintino di horror un più sarebbe stato ancora più bello, ma sinceramente va bene anche così, ha i suoi momenti inquietanti lo stesso e una storia da scoprire. Penso che forse potrebbe uscire un sequel visto il "True Ending".