Your House review – scavenger hunt through a delightfully difficult puzzle
Just over a year after the couple and their children had moved in to their home, Clough sent them a cryptic note. This clue led them to a hidden panel, behind which was a book, which in turn led them on a scavenger hunt through their own apartment. Clough had crammed the rooms with hidden messages and complex puzzles that it took the family weeks to solve. One involved wrapping a piece of leather cord around a bed post to reveal a message. Another involved removing two decorative knockers then joining them together to form a crank, which was used to wind open a hidden panel in the dining room, behind which were various keys and keyholes. All of this eventually led to the hidden poem.
Spanish indie studio Patrones & Escondites replicates this puzzle gauntlet in Your House, but rather than rich New Yorkers, you play as the troubled Debbie, who is having a terrible 18th birthday. She's just found out that her boyfriend is cheating on her with her best friend – and she's been kicked out of boarding school to boot. But at midnight she receives an anonymous postcard with a key and an address, which leads her to a mysterious, deserted house.
Your House acts as a standalone prequel to the 2020 game Unmemory, but whereas this previous title utilised photos and film, Patrones & Escondites has adopted a comic book style here, reminiscent of artists like Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) or Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets). These illustrations – created by artist Jon Ander Torres – look gorgeous, but the majority of the game is delivered via text, presented like the chapters of a book. The occasional interactive word is highlighted in bold, and clicking on it will, say, take you to the named room or let you interact with a particular object.
This mechanism works best when the text gets playful, such as when Debbie walks through a narrow tunnel and the words spool out in a long horizontal line while the margins get smaller and smaller. But the ingenious puzzles are the real star of Your House, involving things like working out the correct sequence of notes to play on a piano to open a secret panel, or looking for the hidden pattern in a series of portraits. Most will require copious notes on pen and paper. The very best ones will leave you fruitlessly scratching your head, only for the answer to pop into your mind with a sudden rush of adrenaline, followed by a sense of elation as the combination clicks into place.
The third of the game's five chapters in particular is truly wonderful, presenting a warren of secret corridors and a series of interconnected puzzles that are particularly satisfying to solve with the help of night vision goggles that can reveal hidden writing. But sadly the game can't quite keep up this pace to the end, and despite the odd flash of brilliance, the quality of the final puzzles never quite reaches the height of those in the middle of the game. The plot, too, fizzles out unsatisfyingly, with a solution to the house's mystery that seems obvious and yet doesn't make much sense when held up to scrutiny. Still, the idea of a house with conundrums built into its very fabric remains tantalising: I couldn't help but give my own house a sweep after playing, just on the off-chance there might be a previously unnoticed hidden message or two.
Your House is released on 27 March
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
17 minutes ago
- Spectator
Monaco, the people-watching paradise
I'm lying on a sun lounger in Monte Carlo and there are so many women with extended blonde hair, hornet-stung lips and bazooka breasts stuffed into tiny monogrammed bikinis that I can't distinguish between them. They make me feel as though I'm part of a different species. My battered copy of Bret Easton Ellis's The Rules of Attraction and a sweating glass of champagne complete the scene. Like Bret, I'm drawn to the dark side of glamour, which means Monaco is a people-watching paradise. Along with the bazooka babes, ninety-something men also aren't in short supply. A leathery, wispy-chested man in that age category is slumped next to the pool, with a bandage on his foot, plasters up his arm and a wheelchair tucked away to the side. He is chain-smoking cigars and chugging beers. I fear his obit is due any minute, but what a way to go. One striking feature is the sheer number of newly installed British expats. With Labour's changes to non-dom status and the tax raids on private schools, can anyone be that surprised that our ultra-rich are fleeing to places like Monaco? Though I've heard there have been complaints from bored wives trapped in their new gilded cages abroad, missing the verve of British society, which nothing can ever replace. Poor Rachel Reeves. The left-wingers in her party want to bring in a wealth tax, which everyone with a brain knows will drive away even more high-earners, but she's too weak to rule it out. Ever since her horrific breakdown in the Commons, she's been singing for her supper in the City, with a desperate smile screwed to her face. Oh well, at least some of the expats seem to be enjoying their time here. I watch an English man with big gnashers devour an entire watermelon while casually transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars from one account to another on his laptop, which has a terrier drinking a cocktail as its background. A week before I flew to Monaco, I had a padel lesson as part of my attempt to ingratiate myself with the world's elite. Forget Wimbledon or even polo, these days it's all about padel in high-society land. Clare Stobart – of the haulage dynasty – took her helicopter to a club in Oxfordshire to meet me and we pranced around with a dashing Spanish instructor (they are always Spanish and always hot) firing balls at us. Goldman Sachs-type guys in caps battled it out on the next-door court while yummy mummies waited their turn. I've been a Francophile since my late grandmother, Anne, first told me stories of her summers in Paris. During the second world war, when she was wee, the family had hosted officers from the Polish tank regiment at home in Kelso. One of those officers, Romain, died in battle in France and was never forgotten by my family. One day at the end of the war there came a knock at the door. A Parisian woman in a powder-blue Dior suit asked to come in – her name was Agnès Chabrier. She claimed to be Romain's fiancée and wanted to see where he had been happy. As it turns out, Agnès was a fierce writer in the Saint Germain set. She released political manifestos under her own name (she wrote scathingly against the USSR, saying that 'When the Russians take Paris I'll be the first to hang from my balcony!') and potboilers under the name Daniel Gray. She became close to the family and invited Anne to spend summer with her in Paris, in her apartment on Boulevard Raspail. The characters my grandmother met there became my fairy tales: the Japanese woman in the kimono who came to tell of the horrors of Hiroshima; the Slav who put his gun on the mantelpiece; the Dior model on the train; the American soldiers celebrating Bastille Day. So began my lifelong pursuit of France and society (I once lived for a year on an oyster farm on Ile de Ré – but that is a story for another time). Monte Carlo, though, is more humorous than France, so extravagant is the richesse. At breakfast at the Hotel de Paris, I enjoy watching the super-rich on the terrace front row being attacked by hungry gulls. (The secret is to ask for a table a row or two back.) Schadenfreude is delicious. And hubris is punishable. On my final night, I request room service on my balcony and brush off the server's warning about those gulls – I want that sea view. So when, like harpies, they circle, swoop and attack, I flee screaming inside only to see my dinner be snatched up and the glasses smashed. I suppose it's only fair enough.
Time Out
3 hours ago
- Time Out
A 1.5-mile mural showcase just popped up under the BQE in Brooklyn
Next time you're sitting in traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (knock on wood), take a glance out the window and you may spot this new addition to the neighborhood. The Atlantic Avenue BID, in collaboration with Thrive Collective and NYC DOT Art, has transformed 1.5 miles of the BQE underpass between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street. The open-air mural is one of the most ambitious street art projects in NYC right now, as seven massive works now line the streets connecting Atlantic Avenue with the Brooklyn waterfront. The mural features bright, colorful and eye-catching paintings of iconic NYC culture—pizza, pigeons, coffee (in a traditional bodega cup, of course), the Staten Island Ferry and a smiling cartoon version of the Statue of Liberty. Most importantly, the people of NYC and Brooklyn are heavily featured, with themes ranging from immigration and industry to biodiversity and community healing. For the south wall, seven artists were selected by Thrive Collection to build the six art pieces and interpret the complicated past of the thoroughfare, while still celebrating the future. The pieces were each given individual titles: "Dockyards" by Will Power, "Industrious" by Vince Ballentine, "Restore" by Jodi Dareal, "Biodiverse" by Peach Tao, "Recreate" by Miki Mu, and "Reframe" by Christian Penn. In his piece, Will Power (William Richardson Jr.) featured Brooklyn's dockworkers. This painting honors their courage and the power of solidarity. "In this painting, I strive to capture the indomitable spirit of the Brooklyn dockworkers at Red Hook Terminal. Their silhouettes stand resolute against the backdrop of towering cranes and vast cargo ships, symbolizing their unwavering strength and unity," he said in an artist statement. "These workers are the unsung heroes of our nation's commerce. Their labor ensures the seamless flow of goods that sustain our daily lives and drive the economy forward. This painting honors their courage and the power of solidarity, reminding us that the heartbeat of our ports—and indeed, our economy—lies in the hands of dedicated workers who stand together for justice and dignity." The north wall, "The Avenue," by artist Marrisa Molina spotlights the power of neighborhood voices during land use changes. It also expores the architecture that was preserved as landmarks in Atlantic Avenue's historic districts, highlighting the 60-year anniversary of the NYC Landmarks Law. You can see this represented in the paintings of construction workers carrying steel beams behind Atlantic Ave road signs. Although the BQE is a regular part of life for New Yorkers nowadays, back in the 1940s when it was first constructed by urban planner Robert Moses, the expressway was viewed as a tragic mistake. By displacing thousands of people and severing the connection between Atlantic Avenue and the waterfront, the previously pedestrian friendly street became car centric. As long as the BQE remains a part of Brooklyn's infrastructure, its walls should be used to celebrate and honor Brooklynites. "As long as the BQE remains a part of Brooklyn's infrastructure, its walls should be used to celebrate and honor Brooklynites, particularly those whose neighborhoods were fractured and displaced by the expressway," Antonio Reynoso, Brooklyn's borough president, said in a statement. The mural was commissioned after the Atlantic Avenue BID was awarded funding to redesign the Atlantic Avenue BQE Underpass via a $60,000 Public Realm Grant from the NYC Department of Small Business Services. —so you can take a stroll and experience these powerful works of art even as the sun sets.
Time Out
5 hours ago
- Time Out
The Pope's former private chef has opened a restaurant in SoHo
Chef Salvo Lo Castro's resume is truly a journey. The Italian-born chef has cooked all up and down the peninsula, from firing the burners at the three Michelin-starred Enoteca Pinchiorri to manning the kitchen of the five-star hotel San Domenico Palace in Sicily's Taormina region. But perhaps the most stunning of them all in this CV flex: For over a decade, chef Castro spent his time as a private chef for the Vatican, preparing meals for both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. As of 2022, the chef moved stateside to introduce New Yorkers to the way that coffee should be consumed with the opening of CASASALVO. Made the Italian way, his four cafes sell espressos, Americanos and cappuccinos at the low price of $2.51. Continuing to cater and work as a private chef on the side, Castro decided it was time to break out on his own, opening his first NYC restaurant in SoHo. As of July 20, chef Castro's restaurant, also named CASASALVO, is now open on 195 Spring Street. The restaurant reads like an elevated neighborhood find with a dining room marked by crisp white tablecloths, Italian walnut paneling and lemon and olive trees that frame the whole thing. The illuminated onyx bar comes fully stocked with over 350 wines for the choosing, sourced from the reaches of Italy and France to New Zealand. But if you are more of a cocktail stan, you can take to the terrace facing Spring Street, as the streetside bar is dedicated to the one and only Aperol Spritz. The menu explores Castro's Italian and Mediterranean influences with starters that include truffle-topped beef carpaccio and deconstructed Mediterranean salad with blocks of feta. However, the meatballs may be his most personal, as the dish takes a page from his mother's kitchen. Pastas and risottos travel all around Italy: Think bowls of paccheri with guanciale and pistachios, and Carnaroli rice with parmigiano crema and summer truffle. From the sea, Dover sole is cooked in a tomato sauce and garnished with mint, while the whole branzino comes with a touch of flair, getting deboned tableside. All meats are cooked over charcoal, including the filet mignon, Colorado lamb chop and house ossobuco. And on the sweet's menu alongside seasonal fruits, eclairs and gelatos, one dessert clearly
