Lonely House Review (PC)

Nearest to the gloomiest crossroad where little to no foot traffic patrols the block, a small and seemingly desolate home sits with the faintest of light beaming from its curtains. Inside, there are no monsters, nor are there any secret chambers praying for the next wayward traveler to explore its inner sanctum. Instead, there are small rooms—cozy rooms, even. But, it isn’t what looms within that pulls you towards Lonely House; it’s the outside—the looking glass perspective that hawks over a single block and the ambiance of the quiet cubby that pulsates beneath the warmth of a single streetlight. It’s there, beneath the radiant moon, where you begin your journey in the lo-fi world of BAROV INTERACTIVE’s quaint sandbox.

Lonely House doesn’t bill itself as a jam-packed city-building game, but a simple, block-sized lo-fi ordeal that allows its creative dabblers to shuffle bricks and mortar to create a small but somewhat complex home on the crossroads. It doesn’t go much further than that, and it doesn’t allow you the creative freedom to venture beyond the exterior scope to tweak the details and make powerful adjustments to the foundations of the suburban district. That being said, it does offer a good selection of custom building blocks and petite set pieces that you can tailor to your own unique needs. Does it need more than that to be considered as a worthwhile investment? Eh, sort of.

At a Crossroads

While the concept here is accessible and easy to pick up and scrub through, Lonely House does fall short in terms of its scale and depth. See, while you can make small adjustments to the general landscape and even alter the weather conditions, the game does sadly lack the breadth of a full-fledged build ‘em up game. With no major interior decoration options or overarching goals to accomplish, Lonely House does unfortunately present most, if not all of its cards in the first fifteen minutes, after which it removes the deck from the table and leaves you to scrape whatever joy you can out of it. This isn’t a bad thing, but I’d also be lying if I said that it doesn’t leave something extra to keep you invested for the long haul.

The opening sequences here are as soothing as they are gracefully rendered. The building process, which more or less consists of shuffling layers of a street building and making minor changes to its exterior design, is easy to navigate and, thankfully, a lot of fun to work through. But then, just when it finds its feet, the experience hits something of a brick wall, and it leaves you wanting much, much more of a challenge. The home finds its axis, and just like that — you find yourself at a loose end with little more to do other than openly gaze at the foundation. And sadly, that’s sort of where Lonely House ends: at the foot of a hill that has little to no incline for you to climb. Simply put, you build your home, and then ponder the what ifs before ultimately abandoning it for an anticlimax.

Bricks & Bones

Lonely House establishes a basic composition that includes a small palette of custom floors, brick types, plants, trees, and signs. The goal here is to alternate between the decorations on your tool belt and build a home that satisfies your inner creative. You can add small embellishments, change the weather, and tweak small exterior areas to accommodate your basic Feng Shui needs. Is there more to it than that? Not really, no.

Suffice it to say here that, as an indie world-building game, Lonely House isn’t with the wealth of a jam-packed sandbox experience or the complex design of a triple-A build ‘em up. It’s short, to-the-point, and fairly compact, all things considered. The downside to this is that, as you begin to carve through the initial phases, the opportunities soon befall monotonous grounds and become a little dull. There’s fun to be had during the teething period, for sure, but Lonely House just doesn’t do much to keep you within the confines of its boroughs past the first hour.

In spite of all its shortcomings, Lonely House does offer a clean UI that touches on the lo-fi aesthetics and audiovisual elements of a therapeutic experience. It isn’t with the gift of natural-born beauty I’ll admit, though it is in receipt of some wholesome features and a bug-free system that allows you the chance to build without the trouble of encountering any technical issues. It isn’t perfect, but it gets the job done. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t bring more to the table to help elevate the few bones that it has in its skeletal frame.

Verdict

While Lonely House does illuminate some good ideas and creative ways to establish the groundwork for a personal lo-fi haven out on the moonlit crossroads, it also fails to highlight the finer details of a sandbox sim and the aspects that make it a worthwhile project. Don’t get me wrong, it has a pleasant atmosphere and a soulful toolkit to keep you entwined with its world, but without the weight of brick and mortar to fortify its foundation, it also struggles to keep invested for the long haul. And that’s a crying shame, really, as it has the capacity to be a much better place for people to call home.

Lonely House is a one-and-done affair that’ll no doubt keep you entertained for an hour while you wait idly by for another sandbox to present you with the shovel and concrete needed to shape worlds. It’s still a short game that will leave you wanting more, but for what it’s worth, it will give you an opportunity to trial and experiment with a multitude of architectural designs and synergies. If you think that’s enough to steer your creative wisdom, then you should find a sturdy hook to hang your tools here. However, if you’re looking for something with a little extra meat on the bones, so to speak, then you might be better off finding another street to drop your toolkit.