An Account of Your Visit to the Enchanted House & What You Found There by Mandy Benanav
Enchanted House – let’s face it, nobody is going to use the full title – is a link-based puzzle game set in a whimsically magical manor. Get invited by someone you don’t actually know… you’re host’s not there to greet you… need to solve puzzles to get through the mansion… hunt for objects… there’s a sense in which it’s all been done a hundred times before. But what Enchanted House lacks in bold premise, it makes up for in character, and especially, characters. This is not some abandoned house where we solve mechanical puzzles. Every room has an occupant, and they range from the strange (an octopus that does the dishes and loves opera) to the very strange (a librarian ghost who has been quarrelling with a room full of sentient furniture; a golem made of messy books and paperwork). The charm of the game lies in interacting with these beings. Solving the dispute involving the ghost is mechanically speaking a boring errand quest, but the writing and the absurdity of the situation made it actually quite enjoyable.
There are also nice touches throughout that show the care that has gone into the work. For instance, whenever you acquire an item, the game has a unique verb to describe that particular act of acquiring; and every room has its own phrase for checking one’s inventory. The book case was also good, and showed a good taste in fantasy literature.
The final flourish is perhaps the most important one, for now we learn that all these quests were not just random hoops we had to jump through, but rather exercises in befriending and taking care of the inhabitants of the house. I loved this idea.
It’s all fairly low-key and low-stakes, nothing earth-shattering. But not everything has to be. After some of the darker stuff I played, I didn’t mind a good plate of comfort food.