The Picture in The House

Game breaking bug still not fixed years later

I really wanted to like this game, since the atmosphere and set up was good and I tend to like interactive Lovecraft games. However, many areas of the game are extremely dark, to the point where it was almost impossible to locate certain interactable areas (doors, drawers, and lamps, ironically) and important objects necessary to progress the game without basically clinging to walls and hoping for the best, and you are never given a portable light source. This was made worse by the fact that certain interactive objects required you to stand in a particular spot to work, but you can't see where that spot is in the dark. This became especially nightmarish when trying to navigate through a maze of boxes in the attic. Additionally, I hated the interface for the books, where they are basically shoved into your face whenever you walk to close to them. I had to restart the game when one book glitched out and stayed open even when I had wandered away; the book completely obscured my vision, and I had no way to put it down and continue the game.

I don't recommend it. Even though it's a free game, there are some issues that I've noticed that make the game not worth playing. There is no run option, you're walking at a slow pace almost like you're drunk with moon boots on. There are different glitches that causes your game to just stop (Ladder glitch, blood plate glitch), and with the game being a game where you have to play the entire thing in one go with no saves, it sucks the fun out of it. I wasted an hour because of the ladder glitch, after spending 10 minutes looking for the last two wood pieces it decided to double up my character and show me the image of the ladder. That's it. If you are wanting to play it: make sure your brightness level is all the way up and the shadows option all the way down, it makes searching for the ladder wood pieces much easier. Also the lever puzzle: click the rat/mouse lever twice, owl lever once, and wolf lever 4 times.

The game is interesting and has some really nice moments. However it is very dark (even youtube walkthroughs have to maximize brightness at some point) and the controls are a bit awkward. Also to me it was disorienting at times.

VERY hesitant thumbs up on this one. I'm a massive Lovecraft fan, and I wanted to love this game going in. They manage to nail the story, with fairly minor padding. The atmosphere inside the house is great. The model of the old man... not so great. Bad actually. The real problem with this game is that there are some VERY bad bugs. Like one right at the end of the game, freezing your game and making you restart. BTW, no save feature, so you're doing the whole thing again. Luckily, the game itself isn't too terribly long, so with some persistence (and a bit of luck), you can beat the game. To anyone trying this one out, best of luck!

A lil clunky but not bad for a short indie game to explore around a spooky house and do a couple puzzles. Can't beat the free price too! Works great on a controller if you remap 2 buttons in the controller configurator. Twice I got kind of stuck, had no idea what to do next and was just wandering around for 10 mins, turns out the cutscene that continues the game isn't triggered unless you walk across a certain spot. Fixed by watching a playthrough vid up to the point I was stuck at to find where to walk to make it go.