Well, not everyone dies, but this is a game about death, after all. Sounds bad, but the opposite is true. This game is absolutely beautiful and brilliant. Anyone sufficiently skilled in using the simple system of WASD and a mouse ought to have no trouble with it. It took me five hours, but that's because I am not so skilled. The average playing time is supposed to be two to four hours, so don't let my ineptitude stop you!
I'm better now, however! Several of the last stories in the game require extensive use of WASD, and I definitely did improve. I ought to find another game of that kind to continue my progress. I will look at what I have.
On to the game! I had lots of trouble with Gus's kite story. However, it did help me with WASD--a lot. You can't get through this without developing some serious skillz in it. So, I took it less frantically on my second try (in the first try I crashed into the clothesline and couldn't get out). And I made it!
Requires good flying ability
I did this one before the baby, because I couldn't figure out how to turn the page on the clipboard to get to the baby, Gregory's, story. Um, you just press W. I was trying to do it with the mouse. Anyway, we're in this nice bathtub having loads of fun with bath toys:
We can make the frog jump!
Once again, this game is just so imaginative in how they use these simple controls, and in how they craft the stories. This one was super fun although once again, a bit tough to do. But you can just splash around until you get it.
After that there is more wandering around the house
The house.
and yes, we will make our way to the highest room. On our way up, we meet Milton, who apparently did not die, but disappeared. This is one of the easiest stories for anyone else--except for me. (Note that I did turn up the brightness in the game--it was just too dark in too many places.) We get into his room easily, but then all we have to do is flip through a notepad.
Milton's Room
The cartoon notepad
I had the devil of a time trying to get those pages to turn. Finally I just moved the mouse in a circle and managed to get it to work, although choppily. After I finished the game I watched CJU's video of this, and he just flipped through as though it really were a cartoon. How?
Anyway, on to perhaps the game's best story: Lewis. We find his room near the top of the tower, and go into quite a fantasy. Lewis works in a salmon factory. The action is in two parts. With our right hand we have to keep moving the mouse--yes almost all the way through the story--to chop the heads off salmon and push them onto a conveyor belt. With our left hand we have to do WASD to move through a marvelous fantasy world that Lewis concocts. It's challenging, but this really helped me to get the WASD movements. I made it!
The little guillotine. Chop chop.
Lewis is sailing a boat in that part of his fantasy. Later on it gets even more involved:
Lewis's kingdom
If you look, you can see a large cat on the right which has a nametag that says "Molly," so the game keeps up the family theme!
At last we reach the top room, and that is Edith. She takes us through her last night at the house, which includes part of her great-grandmother Edie's story.
Finding the library
We have to get into the library, at last. That is the first sealed-up room we found in the game. At last the story is tied together, mostly. And with that, we can go back and replay any of the stories (rather like the replayable games in 7th Guest and Shivers). I really like that feature. I might just replay the whole game sometime, also!
Note the line "Replay a story"
This game is just absolutely wonderful. It won't be any kind of challenge for most gamers, and the art and music and the fantastic imagination make it unforgettable. CJU said at one point in his video that it's a masterpiece.
I agree.
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