Mobile game review: Night in the Unpleasant House

 Let’s try something a little different today: a game review!

Since “Night in the Unpleasant House” is interactive fiction, it’s not THAT far off from what I usually write about, but still. First game review!

I found this game by googling “iPhone games like Edith Finch,” for what it’s worth, and the two games are not entirely dissimilar. They both take place in weird, creepy houses, both involve Dark Secrets of the Past… but the gameplay in Unpleasant House wasn’t entirely like anything I’ve played before.

You play an unnamed, genderless (as far as I can tell) narrator, whose father disappeared ten years ago in the mysterious Mayor’s house. As one of the earliest choices in the game indicates, you’re either there for revenge or answers (maybe both). As you explore the house, you learn more about the mayor snd what happened to your father. Good stuff!

This is basically a text adventure, and I’ve played quite a few of those back in the day, but the game here gives you actions within the text to click on—no typing “open door”, “push door”, “pull door” and being told “I don’t understand door”. There are no visual images of the creepy house beyond the icons corresponding to each room, and even your inventory is text only.

Fortunately, the writing style is fun and descriptive, with a unique voice that does an excellent job of “coloring” both the house and the nameless narrator.

The story is mostly interesting. Exploring the house the first time was a lot of fun, and again the writing style really helps with this.

But my one misgiving with the game sort of comes with the endings.

There are apparently 13 possible endings. In the course of about 24 hours, I’ve managed to get three. One of those was just a “choose ‘give up’ early on” kind of ending… I wasn’t able to find any kind of walkthrough or strategy guide, so I’m not sure how many of the 13 are of that variety. Of the other two, one SEEMED like more of a “good ending” (“win the game” was one of the final choices), and the other probably more of a “bad” one.

Okay, slight edit. I went back and got a fourth ending, this one definitely a bad one. So there’s obviously SOMETHING about this game that makes me want to keep trying for something more. But it’s also not FUN to replay.

Obviously, YMMV with this one. I DO like games you can play again and again for different endings. Don’t get me started on how many, many hours I spent on Princess Maker 2. But with a game like that, seriously DIFFERENT things happen depending on how you play. You can focus on the arts or on fighting or magic, you can try to win all the contests at the festival or marry the dragon prince. But with Night in the Unpleasant House, aside for that one replay where I just gave up, I did MORE on that fourth play-through, but the only thing that was really DIFFERENT was the end. And because this is basically a text adventure, it amounted to reading the same book (albeit a short book) three times, rapid-clicking as fast as I could through the early “fill up your inventory” parts and the flashbacks.

Also, you can’t save. The game AUTOSAVES, so you can leave and come back. But you can’t deliberately save before a specific choice and then come right back to that moment to make a different one. You’ve got to go back and collect all the items and tap through the backstory again.

So while I did really enjoy the structure and the writing style, the endings I personally got and the replay value make this a mixed review from me.

Honestly, at this point I really just want to find a blog where someone has already gotten all 13 endings and see if there’s one where you really find out what happened to *redacted* and can help *redacted*. I don’t actually want to play through the whole thing again to get to the point at the end where I think a different choice might have taken me there?