The Dead House Review (PC)

Dreams of grandeur, enriched with an undying desire to monopolize the social fabric of online streaming and entertainment. A YouTuber, equipped with little more than a flashlight and a camera. And a decaying mansion, shrouded in mysterious glimmers, decrepit rooms, and a bottomless pocket of tainted secrets. This is, in short, the basic premise behind The Dead House—a first-person psychological horror game that stems from the faithful soul of one determined developer.

Like, perhaps, several other indie horrors that have come before it, The Dead House casts its webbing over fickle dreams and unreachable realities—modern life, and the faint glimmer of hope that, with enough fuel and traction, even the most barebones of streaming channels can aspire to become something truly extraordinary. There are no underlying secrets etched in black and white; just an old estate, a disturbingly unsettling atmosphere, and a two-bit entertainer who yearns only to ascend into the highest tier of online entertainment.

With an ambitious content creator at the helm, and with two small but instrumental pieces of equipment in hand, The Dead House invites you in, and then it spits you back out. But before it does that, it compels you to dig a little deeper. It opens its doorway for you to traipse through, and it forces you to ponder that all-important question: How far am I willing to go for the sake of sustaining viewership and, with any luck, a launch platform for a successful career? If the risk of death is a contributing factor, then you’d naturally expect it to be a bit of a no-brainer. But these are YouTubers; failure is not an option. And if there are subscribers on the horizon, you can guarantee that there’ll be a sucker somewhere ready to risk it all.

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The Dead House isn’t so much of a predictable game, but it is one that, if you’re relatively familiar with most modern horror games, probably won’t surprise you. Like so, so many other psychological horrors, it starts out with an old stately home—a seemingly forsaken place in which a maiden’s tale resides. In this home, a harrowing case of unnatural disturbances and supernatural phenomena plague an otherwise well preserved history—a history cherished by an old couple who once owned and maintained the property. At the beginning of the game, however, it isn’t the old couple that pique your interest; it’s the tapestry of eerie happenings and unsettling auras that usher you forward. From there, equipped with a camera and a flashlight, you have one simple job: enter the home, and unveil its deepest, darkest secrets.

The game itself snowballs in a similar fashion as your typical corridor-crawling horror, with the player either having to comb through certain areas of an old home to unlock other points of internet to analyze, or thread the needle in some unsettling way, whether it’s by chaining disturbing events together or witnessing small supernatural moments unfold. Nevertheless, it plays out in a pretty traditional manner, much like a good old-fashioned walking simulator normally would. There’s a lot of aimless roaming involved, and a daisy chain-like series of occurrences that usher in various scenario. Again, nothing we haven’t already seen before. P.T., I suppose, ought to give you a rough idea.

Anything for the Fans

As far as the map goes, The Dead House is mostly made up of several dank and grubby quarters that are filled with the usual blood-splattered memorabilia and ritualistic artifacts that you’ve no doubt clocked in alternate realities. Not a lot to touch base on here; in fact, if you’ve seen your fair share of indie horrors in the past, then it’s highly unlikely that you’ll struggle to spot a few re-used assets here. Beds; portraits; generic furniture, etc. The Dead House has all of that and more, so, nothing to get overly excited about there.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of things that drag this particular game down — the lack of in-game options and settings, being the most noticeable. As well as that, there are a couple of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in the text. Does this spoil the immersion? A tad, yes, though not by leaps and bounds. In fact, when aligned next to its positive aspects—a smooth gameplay experience, polished audiovisual effects, and a good variety of genuinely engaging encounters, for instance—it’s hard to raise too much of a complaint. It’s an issue, I’ll admit, though nothing that can’t be fixed with a little extra time in the oven and some more elbow grease.

Verdict

Although The Dead House doesn’t instill any kind of special effects or sense of originality in its blueprint, it does lean on a lot of the same captivating elements that we both love and crave when it comes to clasping independent horrors. Again, it’s a rather short game that doesn’t do much to change the basic formula of a stereotypical home-based thriller. That said, with a few solid scares and a lashing of genuinely nail-biting B-list ambiance, there’s still a lot of good bits and pieces to admire here.

The Dead House isn’t exactly on the verge of stealing the spotlight from its adversaries’ innovative worlds, though to give credit where it’s due, it’s still a worthy palate cleanser that ought to give fans of the genre a few things to talk about. The mechanics are simple and intuitive, and the game flows in a way that you would naturally expect it to. But again, that doesn’t make its story any more compelling. As I said earlier, it’s all rather predictable, and sure enough, it does feature a handful of eye-rolling moments that don’t necessarily make it any more appealing. But it’s those small details that really make it pop, if only slightly.

If you’ve an hour or so to spare, then I’d suggest tucking into The Dead House to experience the full stream for yourself. It isn’t likely to make you a full-fledged subscriber, but it ought to scratch that itch just enough to warrant a quick slap of the Like button.