An Account of Your Visit to the Enchanted House & What You Found There by Mandy Benanav
After a short string of bleak games, I was delighted to get The Enchanted House. It was a creamy lemon-mint sorbet - just a hint of sour at the start, but then once I got into it, the game was endlessly refreshing and sweet.
You are invited to a spooky house by an unknown individual for unknown purposes. Classic. But this is Addams Family spooky, not Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You soon find an entertaining ensemble of characters contained in a tight set of well-used locations. Initially I was skeptical - it had all the trappings of a parser puzzle romp, but it’s in Twine. The lighter puzzles fit the mood excellently, and abstracted away all the fumbling with items or conversations.
While only a little of this game I found outright funny — the writing desk joke tickled me immensely — it was thoroughly charming. All the writing was crisp and inventive. The characters were drawn well. Although… my eyebrows rose steadily higher when I explored the mansion and found both a cat and an octopus NPC… But I’ve already used my “mention my own work” token for this IF Comp. The rest of the house’s inhabitants were varied and colourful, and the coincidence was one instance too short to be a conspiracy.
But yes, the puzzles are light but unfold nicely. Every character introduction is unique and interesting. And the writing is just damn charming. I didn’t know what it had in store for the ending, but it had a sweet and poignant callback to the start of the story and a satisfying conclusion.
All in all, I was charmed by this game. Utterly charmed. Enchanted even.