The Charnel House Trilogy is a "horror themed" point and click game by Owl Cave Games, the developers behind Richard and Alice, I purchased this game on steam in a bundle on Steam for $7.99 that included both Richard and Alice and The Charnel House Trilogy. The name of the game is misleading it's one game, a short game at that, broken up into three easy to digest segments. If I were to sum up this review in just a handful of words, I'd say that this is the videogame equivalent of a 1-star Netflix horror movie. That said, a "1 star Netflix horror" is not always a bad thing though, my girlfriend loves binge watching them but as holds true with those types of movies, this game isn't going to be for everybody, even fans of the Point-n-Click genre. What drew me to this game was one, its horror-theme and secondly, one of my favorite games personalities on Youtube, Jim Sterling does voice-acting in this game, unfortunately its not that great, none of the voice acting really is besides Don, the Conductor voice by Jonathan Grier. The name Charnel House, refers to a home for the dead, in the game itself refers to the favorite book of the main character, I'm not sure if this is a fictional novel or a real one, side note, its also the title of a very creepy Picasso Painting.
The story revolves mainly around the character Alex (pictured right,) a young woman who just recently broke up with her boyfriend, you will here about this so frequently in the first act that it may be a bit too "angsty" but in its defense it really does paint a picture, even though its a bit much in its delivery. The first act takes place in her apartment, and could be completed in 20-30 mins, which is a huge plus it ended before it could overstay its welcome, take that as you like I see it as a huge positive that it didn't let me get sick of it. The end of this episode has her meeting Dr. Harold Lang at a Train Station, You take control of him in the Second act, the act takes place on the train and really starts to build the creepy-vibe this game is trying to establish, another 20-30 min act, and again that helps it not over stay its welcome because every puzzle in this act is just a series of traveling back and forth over and over and would otherwise have been very irritating. The last act puts you back in control of Alex and this is the longest act of the game lasting about 3 times longer than the others and is where the real meat of the story takes place, I don't want to spoil too much for those that play it but Jim Sterling's voice though I took shots at his VO work earlier, really helps solidify the creepy-vibe of the game. I felt as though it ended abruptly and could've done more but I would argue that, that is a subjective con.
The gameplay is almost a hybrid between a Point and Click and an Interactive Novel, I'm a huge fan of the controls you left-click to interact with an object and right-click to observe an object, it works well and is very intuitive. There are light puzzle-solving elements, inventory based puzzles, I felt as though all these puzzles were easy to solve, very self explanatory, never got stuck at any point, but its hard for me to say whether that is because of my familiarity with Point-n-Clicks and their tropes or game design geared towards a more casual player, I feel it somewhere in the middle really. The art style of this game is wonderful, the sprites have that "Yahtzee Crowshaw FreeWare Adventure Games Studio" look to them but the face-cards during conversations and the backgrounds are truely pixel-art, The musics fine, nothing I went out and downloaded but I never minded it. Despite its lackluster qualities, its at times cringe-worthy dialogue and voiceacting, I would recommend this game especially if you love Point-n-Clicks and those "1 star Netflix horrors," the game at no point scared me but it was very atmospheric. My overall score for it is a High 6 out of 10 and that said I am excited for its 2016 successor and will be buying and reviewing it, if you like what you read and you think a 3 hour experience is worth 6 dollars (8 dollars with Richard and Alice,) then this is the game for you, if you were to skip this game even though I enjoyed, I wouldn't blame you.
High 6/10
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