About a year ago the developers of The Last Door contacted me and asked if I would be interested in trying out their new 8-bit horror game, available on devices that support Flash and as an app on the iPad. Since the 4 chapters that comprise “Season 1” have been released to the public, now is the perfect time to review the game.
Set in Great Britain during the 1890’s, players take control of a man who recieves a mysterious summons to the home of an old school friend. The gameplay is a classic point-and-click adventure game. The mouse controls your character’s movements, and there are hotspots and objects in the environment that can be manipulated or picked up.
Indie developers The Game Kitchen initially raised the funds for the first chapter of their free-to-play series on Kickstarter. Since then they’ve release 4 separate chapters, which are available on their website. Each chapter takes around 45 minutes – 60 minutes to complete.
The first thing you’ll notice when you fire up The Last Door is the 8-bit graphics. You might be skeptical that a horror game can pull off effective scares with such limited graphics, but don’t worry – The Last Door is a genuinely creepy game thanks to its excellent sound effects, music and story. To get the best experience, play this game with headphones on. The only trouble I had with the graphics occurred during instances where I had to find or pick up items; the smaller pieces are sometimes hard to distinguish from the background.
Those familiar with classic point-and-click computer games will feel right at home with the control scheme and the progression in The Last Door. The design of each chapter is very tight – each location holds some sort of important item or clue to your progression and each item that can be picked up will be used at some point in the chapter. The puzzles are well done for the most part. There’s only one way to solve each puzzle, which is not a bad thing except sometimes it can feel demoralizing to walk around the map multiple times and still not understand what you should be doing next. Overall, the difficulty level of the puzzles is good.
The story takes its inspiration from Lovecraft and Poe. Along the 4 chapters that make up Season 1, you’ll plunge headlong into a mystery involving murders, dark rituals, repressed memories, and other dimensions. Season 1 ends on a cliffhanger, so we’ll have to wait a while before we get to see the conclusion of the story.
The Last Door come highly recommended for gamers who love puzzle elements and dark stories. It’s free and you can play it on your internet browser, so you’ve got nothing to lose. Try it out!
