I felt so sorry for that family, in the end. That really added atmosphere.Īnother thing I loved about this game was the back story. My favourite thing about the game was how everything was black and white, except for the blood. I turned the game off before completing the work room, after finding the photograph of the baby (I think it was Alrena?). I almost started crying at several points, I was so scared. I screamed again when the hanging body popped up. When the lights went out again after I out them on, I actually moaned ‘No, no, put the lights back on!' and clicked on the switch frantically, trying to find illumination. I wasn't scared of what I could see, but what I couldn't. The workroom scared me the most at the start- everything was so dark. It was the first time a game had ever made me scream- indeed, the only time anything visual had ever made me scream. In the bedroom, at the end, when the little girl's face popped up, I actually screamed. Unlike the first game, by the third room I actually feared the sound of the heartbeat- I knew it signalled the biggest scare was near. But when I did, and found the body in the shower, I actually cried out: ‘I don't want to play anymore!' When the ghost at the window appeared, my fear returned- I couldn't bring myself to open to shower curtain again. but then I realised I'd missed clicking on the toilet, and things got going again. The atmosphere started to fade a little in the bathroom, when I clicked everything a million times and nothing happened. Like when the light switch made a fizzling sound on the first levl, i actually found myself thinking: ‘Dear God, don't let the light go out!' Well, at least I know that if we have to wait another five years for the next installment it will be worth it. Instead everything is built around sucking you in and making everything else cease to exist.Īnd then, once you've forgotten your surroundings, and then you've forgotten the adverts on the side, and even the shell of your browser, then when you are focused on nothing but the grainy black and white photos and your own beating heart, THAT'S when the game gets you. That is, there isn't really any obligatory bones thrown to any specific genre, and no real attempt to make a game where there isn't (a game I'm currently playing, for example, makes you solve like three different puzzles to plug in a laptop, and you get the feeling like this is specifically so the game designers could say, "see, we provided puzzles"). But, I think very few games are so completely themselves the way The House and The House 2 are. No, they aren't standard point and click adventure games as we know them today. One of the things that I love so much about the original and this new installment is that they so completely and totally own their own little niche. No sooner did I hear the manic piano stomping viciously into my ears and see the grainy black and white images of the dilapidated old house did I think, "I'm back."