Recently, I got the opportunity to try out an upcoming project from the developer Patrones & Escondites titled Your House. Your House is a Narrative Puzzle-Thriller that utilizes a unique storytelling method while testing the player’s intellect as they attempt to solve increasingly difficult puzzles to discover what is taking place within the story of Your House.
Your House’s Story is Told in an Entirely Unique Way
Your House is a one-of-a-kind video game that has been released over recent years, as it doesn’t tell its story in a traditional manner but instead tasks the player with uncovering the story through the written word.
Straight off the bat, the player is tasked with uncovering the story like they are writing a book that has already been written. Due to this, it feels like the player is creating this story and making the decisions throughout the entirety of Your House as they make selections in a group of text to create different outcomes in a given situation.
However, Your House doesn’t just rely on the written word to tell its story; it also relies on its intense puzzles that slowly reveal each section of the story, answering numerous questions while causing the player to ask new ones.
Because of this, I found playing Your House to be quite a fun experience, as it combined my love of reading as well as playing games into one project. Additionally, sometimes these systems would tend to overlap, with puzzles requiring the player to read between the lines while using different items they found along the way to see things they couldn’t see before within the book they were writing/reading.
Your House Uses its Puzzles to Bring the Story to Life
As stated above, Your House manages to overlap some of its features to create a more immersive experience, but this doesn’t just end with the writing being interactive and the puzzles interacting with the writing; the writing itself was also used to create the world and story that Your House is set in.
Whether it be the page of the book going dark while in a pitch-black room, requiring a torch to reveal the words, or having the words begin large on the screen as they slowly get smaller as the player crawls through a tunnel.
These different methods of writing allow Your House to have a completely distinct view of the world the game takes place in as it makes the player feel like they are exploring this location. Not only that, but it helps to improve the player’s imagination as they can physically see the words grow smaller as they move the page, making the player feel as though they are moving through the tunnel themselves.
Due to this, I found it quite interesting to read the story of Your House, and it encouraged me to look for every minuscule detail that I could find within the text, as every piece of text could be the difference between solving a puzzle and being stuck there for hours on end.
Your House’s Puzzles Were Fun, But Often Frustrating
Throughout my time with Your House, there was one important feature that had me constantly excited, and that was the puzzles. As much as the way the writing was done and the story were incredibly fascinating and interesting, the puzzles are what drew me in the most.
What I found while playing Your House was the fact that every puzzle was unique, with very little if any of the puzzles sharing similar characteristics. This meant that each puzzle felt like a brand-new challenge that I had to overcome to find out more about this unique story I was dropped into. Unfortunately, some puzzles drew my attention for too long.
Many of the puzzles within Your House were very easy to understand and were solvable in a reasonable amount of time, but there were some puzzles that bounced from too hard to too easy. During my playthrough, there were some puzzles that I had accidentally brute-forced due to them being too simple, but on the other hand, there were some puzzles so complicated that it took up to 30 minutes to solve them.
Now keep in mind, after solving some of these puzzles, there would sometimes be a lightbulb moment in which I realized how simple the puzzles actually were, but on occasion there were a few puzzles that did manage to confuse and befuddle me, but that is not to say others will have that same issue, as that is the best part of a puzzle game; some people will struggle, some will strive. I, unfortunately, did a bit of both.
Your House
Your House is an upcoming title from the Indie developer Patrones & Escondites, and it is a Narrative Puzzle-Thriller that mixes video games with the written word to tell a unique and interesting story.
Summary
Overall, I enjoyed my time with Your House, as it was a lot of fun putting my puzzle-solving skills to the test while discovering an interesting story that is full of twists and turns as we uncover the secrets that are hidden within Your House.
HOURS PLAYED: 3
PLAYED ON: PC
- A method of storytelling that is unique and inventive.
- Interesting story that has so many plot twists that will have the player always guessing.
- Puzzles had a difficult balance between being simple and overly complicated.
Your House will be released on March 27th and will be released on PC, iOS, and Android.
For more Thumb Wars Gaming coverage, check out our review of Atomfall or our review of The First Berserker: Khazan.
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I am a long-time writer who enjoys talking about numerous different game genres as well as playing them. My main focuses are games like Helldivers 2, Warframe, and so much more.
