In the House of Silence

In the House of Silence is a coffee break rogue-like that you can likely beat quite quickly - and after doing so you will probably scratch your head a bit and go 'what was the point of this?' The core mechanics of the game can be boiled down to two things: 1.) Two Health Bar Mechanics - one for your actual hit points (upon when you run out, you die), and one for your sanity (which decreases every step you take). Regarding Sanity, when you run out of it, it resets back to a maximum (albeit lower then the previous maximum) and when you run out of sanity too many times you die. 2.) Mutated Abominations will run around the levels, and when they see you they will attack you. Killing them gives you bones which you can take to mutators to mutate yourself - ultimately turning yourself into a Mutated Abomination. Looking at the core concepts, there are interesting enough. The games ultimate failing though is that there is very little content outside of the core concepts. Going through the game I found very little difference from one enemy to another - I would just bump into them until they died and that would be it. Going through the levels there wasn't anything really to make them fee…

This is a horror-themed coffeebreak roguelike. There is not much depth and RNG plays too big a part in whether you will survive or not. The levels are small and dull with a very small visible area around you. You fight monsters and lose hp which is only regained by using hearts found on the floor. There's also sanity which is like a hunger clock and can be regained with a pill also on the floor. When you kill monsters you get bones which you can use at a "mutator" to mutate yourself to get better stats like a meaty arm or a sword instead of an arm etc. And that's everything as far as I know. The game is way too simple considering the price tag. It's just not worth this price at all. The 7 day roguelike coding competition is on at the moment and I have no doubt most of the 7 day roguelikes are more interesting than this commercial offering. An annoyance is the slow speed of play. You walk slowly unless you use the run key. The default (at least you can redefine keys- that's something) is shift which makes you think you hold it down in conjunction with the movement keys but no- it's a toggle. Press shift to go into run mode. I don't know why you would ever not want to. When monster…

(Due to the nature of early access games changing, I am just making a note that this is during the 0.4 update.) So, I played In the House of the Silence in the very first version. Although I did have fun with it, I could have best described it as a flash game as far a depth went. Every single run you would be able to get the same mutations and become and unkillable monster. The most recent update has brought the ability to scale back to to reality. I launched the game once the update hit and started my very first run. The starting room was for the most part the same, an old familiar friend which I will be seeing a lot. Entering the first floor I am greeted with a snake with the head of the player. It appears the old monsters have been patch-worked together with the parts of the players. Easily bashing the snake to pudding, I continue on my slaughter-spree of the amalgamations until I find a bone altar. Standing before me, is a great and mighty shop menu. There is a currency now in the form of the pieces of all which I have slain. Unlike before, where I just got an upgrade, I am presented with the choice of body parts. "Oh cool, I'll take a predator leg. Oh wait, I need to re…

This is an "okay" game and it is quite hard to recommend or not. The main problems I have with it are the mechanics and balancing but it has been updated since I played it. I've got a proper review on this below but one thing I didn't mention in the video is the price tag. From what I've seen of the game I don't think it should be $21.50 AUD. Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG76ensFAZg Steam Curator Page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/10995314-Szamer%2527s-Collection/

So you've got this amalgamation of Iter Vehemens ad Necem's anatomy and Infra Arcana's Lovecraftian influences, but in such a manner that does too little of either in order to pull it off properly. You get a part that replaces a mouth, or a heart, or some other organ, but your only options are to replace a head, an eye, your torso, your arms or your legs. There aren't enough body parts to mutate, yet this game emphasizes mutating your body in order to get by. It's too simplistic on that end, and in my honest opinion that's what's holding it back. That being said, I can see this game being alright in short bursts, for those who might like that twin stick shooter Binding of Isaac, as with the way it presents the Lovecraftian side of things, it's more like that and not like, say, truly like Infra Arcana. Which is to say it fails on the horror aspect of it as well. The one time I truly experienced some emotion that resembles some semblance of dread was when I mutated both of my eyes and thus had no range of vision. That's another thing - some of the stats are obviously not explaining what they actually do. I understand that this is early access. That's no excuse for obfuscation. Then…

What is it? In The House Of Silence is an old school roguelike in the style of, well, Rogue. Featuring old school gameplay. What's it look like? A really very subdued visual style prefers to leave most of the admittedly bland scenery in the dark, with only a small circle of light around your character. The monster designs are pretty standard fair, nothing astonishing. The main character has a fun, cartoony style that I really liked. What's it sound like? The sound is bad. A looping music track will slowly drive you insane (pretty fitting for a Lovecraftian horror game) while the sounds of monsters could not be less intimidating. Monster's squeak and pop, which means if you get attacked by multiple monsters it will sound like a black friday sale in a pet store that exclusively sells only the most annoying of dog toys. Is it scary? No! But the game is severely horror-adjacent. Lovecraft-inspired monsters with names like Karth'e'le and such will be attacking you on a pretty constant basis. How's it play? If you are thinking this is a roguelike in the vein of Binding Of Isaac you'd be wrong. In The House Of Silence is an old school roguelike experience. You move from square t…