The Picture in The House

Let it be known that I played for a second time because I played it offline the first time, and apparently your playtime isn't recorded, and therefore you can't leave a review. Three pros: illustrated cutscenes are nice, voice acting is good, and the game is theoretically 23 minutes long. That's it. I've streamed this game, so I have it documented that it took me 1 hour, 50 minutes, and 42 seconds. 6,642 seconds. That's 5,262 too many seconds. I make no claim that I'm an elite gamer by any means, but there's a difference between being slow and not understanding something because of really bad game design. The biggest offender of this is the secret room puzzle. Even though the solution is simple, there's no indication that the levers actually have a set amount of switches before it resets its counts with a wiggle animation. First impression is that it meant I was doing something right, but it took far too long to realize that it was by no means the case. Other real complaints I have are the sound design and sluggish walking. The secret room puzzle is the biggest offender and motivation for typing this review out, so they pale in comparison. The last Lovecraft story-based game I played, I thought it was inoffensive for a free game. I can't have the same sentiment for this.