Behind the Door

This short Quest game has you go into a mysterious house. In that house, you have to solve a few short puzzles and meet a stranger.

This game felt insubstantial to me; I wished for more: more puzzles, more backstory, more descriptions, more conversation.

This feels like the seed of a bigger and better game. I could see a 2.0 version of this game being very enjoyable.

You’ve been receiving a series of weird postcards. In a bid to find the person behind them, you find yourself at a very strange house indeed.

It’s the archetypal start of a haunted house story. What follows, however, could well be set anywhere else.

The cover art had me primed for Alice in Wonderland-style whimsy. I think that was the intention of the author, with the non sequitur rooms, but this game gives me the overriding impression of being… benign. The prose is quite plain and functional. The puzzles work, without being too contrived, and are reasonably logical.

The Quest interface at least provides more than one way (well, most of the time) to perform basic parser-like actions, such as moving or manipulating objects, though this was inconsistent across rooms.

This generally reminds me of Transparent, which also involves a haunted house, albeit a much more malevolent one.

This was my favourite from last year's IFComp. I don't know Quest engine, but it was a fusion of parser and CYOA games as i can observe it. The story wasn't too overcomplicated, I liked it very much. It was a bit surreal, but it's okay. The Alice allusion wasn't bad, made a familiar atmosphere. The character of old man with the chess might have a deeper meaning. The twisty ending made me amazed, it worthed to play the game. When judging IFComp i gave You a 10, now i give you a 5. :-) My advice is not complicate things at the future either, just keep up the good work!