The Haunting of Corbitt House

This story is the direct adaptation of the Call of Cthulhu adventure "The Haunting," typically used as the first adventure in a campaign to get players used to the research-investigate-probably die cycle that the RPG follows. The game follows the investigation point-for-point, and quotes from the adventure repeatedly.

Nowhere in the game or its description do I see any mention of the original adventure, of the fact that this is an adaptation and not a fully original work, or any credit given to the original author. There is a vague reference on the itch.io page, but frankly, that's not enough.

In any case this is a poor adaptation.

The early part of the game functions similarly to Leisure Suit Larry, where you have to know the names of specific locations to drive there, but there is no friendly cabbie to let you know the list of locations if you TALK TO DRIVER.

When you do think of the proper locations, all you do is walk through maybe a single room with an under-detailed NPC and then SEARCH whatever's in the room beyond. You can't LOOK UP things in the card catalog, you can't effectively ask people for help, just get to SEARCHing. The game has a conversation topic sequence but you don't get enough words for it to make a difference.

For all that the room descriptions are lush and detailed, not much else is. There are piles of unimplemented objects and default responses to natural actions, you "see nothing special" about unusual objects, and the shallowness makes solving puzzles impossible without reading the author's mind. There are also situations where your PC "decides" not to do something that would be a natural action, or where only one of two synonymous commands has been implemented.

Finally, the game ends with a randomized combat sequence that is heavily weighted against the PC. I was only able to complete it with repeated undo's and retries.

All in all, this is not Ectocomp's shining hour. I'm honestly surprised nobody caught this, as "The Haunting" has been included as a sample adventure in several editions of Call of Cthulhu and is one of those "shared experience" adventures that most players have gone through and love to share their individual stories about.

This glulx game was entered in Ectocomp.

In it, you play a classic noir-style detective (who has, I believe, appeared in other games by the same author, as Castronegro was mentioned) who has been commissioned to investigate a haunted house.

The bulk of the game consists of investigating, first at places like libraries and courthouses and then at the house itself, which has more action pieces.

The writing is elaborate, fully leaning in to both noir style and early cosmic horror style. For instance:
'The house, wrapped in an aura of faded elegance, evokes a
bygone era through its windows and timeworn architecture. As the
wind stirs the leaves, a sense of mystery lingers, hinting at the secrets
hidden within its walls.'

At times it becomes a little too descriptive, where it can be difficult to piece together what's important and what's not.

The implementation is solid along a critical path but sketchy off that path. A lot of unimportant scenery is left unimplemented, but conversation is indicated fairly well through the use of a topics menu and bolding.

I struggled a bit in some of the actions scenes of the game, although the final results made sense. I believe the very end of the game has some randomization.

Overall, this was fun to play, although it could implement some more things.

Edit: This game is also an adaptation of a Call of Cthulhu module, I believe.