A House of Many Doors Demo

No matter how good a game’s mechanics are, it can get away with almost anything if the story and the atmosphere are good enough to make the players forget about everything else. When every step you take makes you even more curious about what’s happening, or when each dialog line has you glad that your character decided to say that, that’s when you know the game’s got something good going.

A House of Many Doors is an explorational role-playing game, which means that your main purpose is to wander around the game world and try to figure out how it works. Talking with other beings is a must as well, given the fact that you know little-to-nothing about where you are or why. Sanity comes in discrete quantities too, so you’d better keep an eye on yours and make sure that you don’t let yourself get too impressed by what you see.

In essence, the game is barely in a pre-alpha state right now, so many elements are not working as they should, and it makes the overall experience a bit difficult to judge. What’s certain is that there’s definitely something here, especially when you hear about the procedurally-generated poetry. Dialog is in fact vital to your survival, because making the wrong choices while talking with other creatures can quickly turn the chat into a skirmish.

Stealing and spying appear to be your goals, besides exploration. When you go stealing, on the other hand, you bound to get caught at some points, which is why combat is part of the deal as well. In essence, all you have to do is keep recharging the cannons and shoot at the enemy vessel as accurately as possible. The combat system is not brilliant either, but that’s subject to change too.

Probably the best way to describe A House of Many Doors is with a Pink Floyd album, maybe playing in the background while you read some H.P. Lovecraft. In fact, the author of the game has cited Lovecraft as one of his inspirations, so that’s no surprise. The artwork is striking as well, and it really stays with you. On the other hand, the level design is not much as of right now, so there’s not a lot to see in that department.

Whether A House of Many Doors is genius or madness, you can only tell after giving it a try, because words barely do it justice. The idea is good, and the Kickstarter project started to fund its development process has been successfully closed. Hence, it’s only a matter of time until this insanity is going to be on the market.