The Tartarus Key
Vertical Reach · 2023 · Adventure, Psychological Horror, Exploration, Singleplayer, Choices Matter
PC
Very Positive93% · 232
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About The Tartarus Key
The last thing Alex Young remembers is being at home alone in her apartment… so why has she suddenly woken up in this strange mansion? All the doors are locked by bizarre puzzles and traps, there are cameras following her every move, and she keeps thinking she sees… things… out of the corner of her eye. If she wants to escape alive, along with the other captives she discovers, she’ll need to use her wits in this adventure thriller.
Inspired by the look and feel of classic horror games, The Tartarus Key serves up a mystery filled with twists and turns, and more than a few deadly surprises. Rely on brains over brawn to help Alex survive, but beware - not everyone might make it out alive.
Leonor Parra: Founder of Vertical Reach and the artist making The Tartarus Key as atmospheric and unsettling as possible. Hates jump scares and vowed to make a game that's downright spooky without them!
Kevin Colegate: The programmer in charge of making a game that plays as smoothly as you remember the classics being! A lover of retro games, he hopes The Tartarus Key surprises people with its blend of authentic vibes and puzzles.
Josie Brechner: Josie Brechner (she/they) is a composer, sound designer, and musician from Brooklyn, NY. She's made emotionally-driven sound worlds for games like EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, Blossom Tales 1 & 2, Mixolumia, Best Friend Forever, Freshly Frosted, and now The Tartarus Key. She has toured the US and performed electronic music internationally under the name Visager. Music from Josie’s three open-source Songs from an Unmade World albums has been used in hundreds of projects around the world.
Inspired by the look and feel of classic horror games, The Tartarus Key serves up a mystery filled with twists and turns, and more than a few deadly surprises. Rely on brains over brawn to help Alex survive, but beware - not everyone might make it out alive.
Features:
- Escape a deadly mansion filled with dangerous traps, and rescue Alex’s fellow captives… or fail, and leave them to a grisly fate
- Uncover three different endings, and dig to the heart of the mansion and the strange secrets it and your captors hold
- Solve puzzles and challenges reminiscent of escape-the-room games in a variety of unsettling and bizarre scenarios
- A tense, atmospheric adventure that relies on puzzles and plot instead of combat or chase sequences
The Team:
Leonor Parra: Founder of Vertical Reach and the artist making The Tartarus Key as atmospheric and unsettling as possible. Hates jump scares and vowed to make a game that's downright spooky without them!
Kevin Colegate: The programmer in charge of making a game that plays as smoothly as you remember the classics being! A lover of retro games, he hopes The Tartarus Key surprises people with its blend of authentic vibes and puzzles.
Josie Brechner: Josie Brechner (she/they) is a composer, sound designer, and musician from Brooklyn, NY. She's made emotionally-driven sound worlds for games like EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER, Blossom Tales 1 & 2, Mixolumia, Best Friend Forever, Freshly Frosted, and now The Tartarus Key. She has toured the US and performed electronic music internationally under the name Visager. Music from Josie’s three open-source Songs from an Unmade World albums has been used in hundreds of projects around the world.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
played though this puzzle mansion and while the game is fine i do think all the added text slows the pace quite a bit stopped opening the optional dialogue just to get through it when i got the game initially i did expect it to be more of a resident evil style puzzle game (from the 3rd person cutscenes) but it's actually just a fairly simple first person puzzle room style game with chill music the puzzles were actually pretty good, but i just didn't enjoy the game, and ended up tuning out when others had to be saved8 found this helpful
8/10 spooky puzzle game. Most of the puzzles are decent and simple, one or two left me clueless. Not difficult to 100%3 found this helpful
A great "mansion full of puzzles" game with some really inventive puzzles. Undermined somewhat by the fact that you get a disappointing and nonsensical "bad ending" for failing a misleading puzzle early in the game which gives you one try, while all of the other puzzles give you unlimited tries. And the only way to change it is to play the whole game over again. (Or save scum, which I would've done if I'd realized that that one early-game puzzle would decide which ending I got.) Still, the puzzles are good enough that this is a recommend overall!1 found this helpful
Killing everyone so I can be alone with Torres
Really enjoyed it. I like that the rooms have their own puzzle and you don't have to leave it to solve it. Though admittedly, I over analyzed some pretty simple puzzles.
A very entertaining escape room mix of Resident Evil, Zero Time Escape and Saw. The dialogue's a little...much and tends to interrupt the immaculate vibes, but other than that, this is a great puzzle game with real consequences for wrong answers. Highly recommended!
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