Dreams in the Witch House

Incredible game. I beat this over a year ago and I still occasionally think about it. It's so well executed and really invokes the feelings they want you to feel. Good Lovecraft games are few and far between but this one is amazing.

Surprisingly captivating and a faithful adaption of the Lovecraft novella. I got the worst ending (confirmed by an achievement lol) and would wholeheartedly recommend this to any fans of the author's works and/or dark mysteries point & clicks. While on the topic: I expected a pure point & click game, but Dreams in the Witch House mixes in some life sim elements. Each of your days as a Miskatonic University student provides you with a limited pool of hours for you to study for exams, research old archives, socialize with peers or write your thesis. In your free time, you may talk with fellow citizens, watch a movie, enjoy some imported Innsmouth fish at the local food festival or just treat yourself to a fine meal in the coffee house. The fickle Arkham weather might make you consider staying home and studying a borrowed library book from there. If you stay cold and/or wet for too long, you might get sick, hindering you from your studies. Handling your weekly allowance unwisely may cause you to starve if you don't get lucky and find some food in a trash can. You might make ends meet by doing some odd jobs for your landlady but GOD FORBID you loiter too long in the city and knock o…

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…

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 lig…

A nice indie game to add to your list if you're into old school Point n Click adventure games with some stat management added to the top. Quick pros and cons at the start followed by some more detailed text. Pros: - Art style - Animation - Music - Atmosphere - Lore/story Cons: - No voice acting - Replayability I stumbled upon this game while looking for Lovecraft themed games to play. I didn't really know what to expect other than pointing and clicking and an artstyle close enough to what I'm familiar with. If you have ever player Arkham Horror or similar boardgames, the experience you get with this game is similar, excluding the fighting. This text will be a bit clunky to not spoil anything. Some of the mechanics and events in the game are things you need to figure out as you go so I decided to not make any detailed references to any of it. You need to solve a mystery that is slowly being revealed to you as the game goes on. You are not given a task at the start of the game that you aim to accomplish, which can be an issue to some players, but IMO it works quite well in this setting. The game doesn't hold your hand much, so expect to fail on your first…

I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would. I started on normal but then switched the difficulty to easy because I felt too stressed out on normal even though it seemed fairly well balanced. I wanted the best ending and felt that it wouldn't be possible for me on normal difficulty. I will most likely do another playthrough in the future on normal so as to get a more messed up ending. I really liked how the game has a random element to it. It's definitely one of the more unique point and click adventure games I've played. Looking forward to The Dunwich Horror.