Haunted House

Between remakes of Resident Evil 4, Silent Hill 2 and even Alone in the Dark, this has been a great year for survival horror games updated for the modern times. One remake that you might not have heard about is Haunted House, a brand-new take on Atari’s classic 1982 scare fest. It’s a game that traps you in a constantly-changing mansion full of ghouls, ghosts and things that goes bump in the night, all in the hopes that you’ll survive long enough to save your friends and uncover the house’s many mysteries. That’s a recipe for a spooky good time, but does this remake deliver the scares or is this a game that should have stayed in the 1980s? That’s what we’re about to find out when I review Haunted House from Atari.

Released at the beginning of the 1980s, Haunted House was one of the earliest attempts to scare players through the video game screen. While limited by the technology, Atari made the most out of the simple shapes and designs it was afforded at the time, creating a game where the player had to use their imagination to fill in the blanks. Although rudimentary by today’s standards, this addictive fright fest laid the groundwork for what would become the survival horror genre and helped to influence games like Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil.

This new Haunted House reimagines the classic game as a modern-day roguelike. It tells the tale of a bunch of school-age friends who visit the creepy old mansion on the hill in order to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Zachary Graves, a famous collector of supernatural objects and the uncle of one of the teens. This proves to be a disastrous plan, as Lyn gets herself trapped in the house and her four friends get caged up by whatever lurks in the shadows. It’s now up to Lyn to not only investigate what happened to her uncle, but also rescue her friends and defeat the evil spirits once and for all.

The good news is that we’re introduced to a benevolent ghost named Spooky who is ready to point our hero in the right direction. The ghost tells us that a sacred urn broke into three parts, and the most powerful ghosts took them to different parts of the house. If Lyn can somehow find the pieces and put the urn back together, she’ll be able to save her uncle and friends. But watch-out, because as Spooky tells us, the house is actively working against us. It’s one thing to deal with ghouls and ghosts, but it seems as though the house itself is changing shape every time we pass out or fall asleep.

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That’s a fun and clever way to set up the roguelike elements. This is the kind of game where you’ll slowly learn the ins and outs of the haunted house through exploration and discovery. Every playthrough is a little bit different, with the rooms rearranged every time, but the goal remains the same – survive long enough to collect the sacred objects and then use them to defeat the boss in order to earn part of the urn. If you can do that, you’ll be given a key to the basement, where you can free your caged up friends (and play as them in future playthroughs).

At its core, Haunted House is a stealth/action game. Lyn sneaks around a bunch of rooms, each filled with ghosts, gargoyles, scary dolls, wraiths, swamp creatures, Frankenstein’s monster, the Babadook and pretty much anything else that can invade your nightmares. Your trusty lantern will hurt them, but you definitely don’t want to take the direct route. The best strategy is to sneak up behind the monsters and light them up. Literally. It actually works almost exactly like subduing a guard in Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell or any other stealth game.

If you can’t sneak up behind the monster, then the next best thing is using one of the many traps and items we snag out of treasure chests. These will often freeze the enemies in place, allowing our hero to run up and use their lantern. There are other items that will speed up the character, soften their footsteps and, of course, refill their life. That’s an important one.

What I like about this game is how each room will have a unique challenge. The goal isn’t always to simply defeat the ghouls, but rather you’ll often need to find an item or complete a quest in order to open up the doors to the next room. Sometimes it’s as simple as finding and placing a relic, while other times you’ll need to chase down a racoon that has stolen the key. There are levels where you’ll need survive for a set amount of time, while other stages will want you to defeat the four or five ghosts that inhabit the room. This means that you’ll be interacting with the rooms in different ways, which shake up the action and keep you on your toes.

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The problem with this approach is that the difficulty level can shift wildly from one room to the next. You know that quest I just told you about where the goal is to find a relic and place it on the table? That turns out to be insanely easy. In fact, about half the time you’ll find the statue in the very first treasure chest, which means that you’ll be able to clear the level of monsters within seconds of entering the room. In the very next room you may be asked to defeat seven different bad guys, many of which will require traps and perfect timing. This is substantially more difficult than finding a statue or racing down a racoon. There needed to be a little more balance between the rooms.

I also had some minor issues with the gameplay, especially when it came to sneaking up to the ghosts. It’s easy enough when they are floating around the room, but things get a little dicey when they are asleep. You would think that this would be when they are at their least dangerous state, but you would be wrong. In order to sneak up and defeat them in a single hit, you need to be directly behind them. Not off to the side or in front, but sneaking up from behind. This makes no sense and makes these sleeping bad guys surprisingly frustrating. They are fast asleep, so shouldn’t you be able to sneak up on them in any direction? Why do I need to use a trap if they aren’t even conscious? And, most importantly, why is aiming the lantern so difficult?

For the most part, I was able to overlook the unpredictable difficulty spikes and weird gameplay choices. What really annoyed me about Haunted House were the technical problems, which seem to come in as many forms as the ghosts and ghouls that inhabit the constantly-changing mansion. These bugs come in all shapes and sizes, from the camera simply getting stuck to your map disappearing to everything slowing down to an absolute crawl for no reason. There are also bigger problems, like when the game gets confused about where the doors are supposed to lead. I ran into multiple problems where I would get trapped in a series of rooms because the game forgot to generate an exit. There’s also a room where you’re supposed to trigger a large statue in order to earn a perk. The problem is that if you enter that room a second time, it will still want you to interact with the already used statue. If you can’t activate the statue again, you can’t complete the quest, and if you can’t complete the quest, you can’t exit the room. The only solution is to give up and start over from the start.

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Even with those annoying bugs and glitches, Haunted House still remains a lot of fun. There’s a surprising amount to do and find here, including completing quests inside the mansion, unlocking all your friends and collecting gems to not only upgrade your character, but also spruce up the house. The bosses are also a lot of fun to fight, as it allows the game to shift from being about stealth to all-out action. Each of the boss encounters look great and are a little bit different, so you can’t just keep using the same strategy.

Speaking of things that look good, I dig the style of this game. It’s not the best-looking horror game on the market, but the rooms are detailed with all kinds of fun touches and references, and the enemies are appropriately goofy and cartoony. It reminds me a bit of something like Grabbed by the Ghoulies, which is a good tone for this type of horror game. They wisely gave the game a sense of humor, and that goes a long way.

Gamers fed up with roguelikes will probably not be convinced to take one step in the Haunted House, but everybody else should give it a chance. It’s easier than many games in the genre and has a great sense of humor. Couple that with a ton of upgrades and extras to unlock and you have a fun update to the 1982 classic. This is a game that retains the spirit of the original game, all while giving it enough depth to keep modern gamers interested. It may not be real scary, but Haunted House fans looking for a good time should be more than happy with this worthwhile remake.