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Review
I've been a fan of the author's work ever since The Curse of the Scarab. Some authors have a signature style where if you play one of their games without knowing it was created by them, you still think, huh, this reminds me of so-and-so's work. That's how I feel about this author. I love the custom parser and scenery-oriented puzzles that reward the player for paying close attention to details in their surroundings.
And so, I was delighted to try The Horrible Escape Room of Horror. It's an Ectocomp 2025 entry in the La Petite Mort category, which means it was created under four hours.
"Well Rhoda", you think to yourself, "this is even worse than that time four years ago in Egypt."
You are Rhoda. As in Rhoda Tarcrew who may sound familiar to anyone who has played The Curse of the Scarab. But instead of exploring an entire tomb, this adventure involves escaping a room after snatching the Staff of the Owl. (Spoiler - click to show)Well, two rooms, technically.
In a corner is a deep pit. There's also a cabinet here with a papyrus laying on top.
Despite what (Spoiler - click to show)the title suggests, I was delighted to see that there are two rooms available to us. While I'm going to steer clear from outright spoiling the puzzles, I still suggest that you try the game first before continuing.
(Spoiler - click to show)Puzzles for the first room were intuitive and streamlined, and I solved them quickly. The subtly of Staff of the Owl was a highlight. Second room was more difficult, largely due to implementation. Examining the table and then examining each of the four notches felt tedious. Then again, this was made in four hours.
I'll be honest. I have no clue as to how the wall mosaics correlate with the owl statuettes and the table notches, or why tasting the statuettes is supposed to be useful. I solved it by making a chart of possible combinations and went down the list. Luckily, it didn't take as long as I thought it would.
That said, the application of the vials was one of my favorite parts of the game. If you drink the vial depicting the cocktail glass, you become slightly intoxicated. To illustrate this, the text temporality blurs! Clever use of visual storytelling. Also, I quickly solved the skull puzzle and initially thought it was optional- something amusing to do- since I managed to light them before I discovered the wheel. However, players may struggle with lighting all six.
You have an uncanny feeling as you leave.
Nothing to worry about, I’m sure.
Story is limited to our objective of escaping. Instead, it focuses on puzzle solving, and I think this is a good balance considering it’s a rather short game. In fact, the (Spoiler - click to show)table puzzle took up most of my time.
That’s about it! I had a lot of fun stepping into Rhoda’s shoes once again. I’m taking off a star because the implementation could be sharper and I saw some spelling errors, but I do so reluctantly because the game was created under four hours. I was quite impressed.
