Witch House: Adventure and Madness in the World of Lovecraft

There’s something about a nun with a holy symbol and a Molotov cocktail, there just is. And she’s only one of six curious characters. Witch House is a horror, action RPG featuring procedurally generated levels, four-player cooperative play and encroaching madness. As detective, magician or cleric (and male or female), your class and corresponding items/abilities fundamentally underpin play.

 

Choose the detective and you’re really tough. The magician, however, has to rely on pyrotechnics to slow monsters, an evade move and the bonus provided by his lucky rabbit’s foot. As you move through the world, clues to an unfolding horror are found and beasties of different kinds get increasingly more dangerous. Tackling them directly, or without planning, is usually unwise.Useful items, like dynamite and bandages, are found in the world. Exploration yields more and, as looting takes time, it is smarter to find items away from enemy concentrations. We played the PAX build of the game and, although this is still early in development, it’s easy to see the potential for really enjoyable co-operative play, in a Diablo-y kind of a way.

Designer Frank Wong tells us, “Much as the film Cabin in the Woods lampooned the archetypical horror cast, here players represent the ragtag bunch of misfits that meet up and persevere against a force beyond their reckoning. Character skills are designed to complement one another, and certain puzzles and objectives will take teamwork to overcome.”

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