For Rent: Haunted House

Choice of Games started with Choice of the Dragon, which was a great game but pretty short at 30K words. From there, it's grown to where there are now games over 1 million words long. In the last year or two, though, they've commissioned two shorter games as a sort of free sample for their omnibus app (those games are Sky Pirates of Actorius and Zip! Speedster of Valiant City).

Besides those three games, this is the shortest among all Choice of Games titles at 56K words. It's also one of the earliest, the 6th game ever made.

I think it suffers a bit from early experimentation, which produced some amazing games and some that were more lessons for the future.

This is a very funny game, don't get me wrong. I enjoyed trying to keep my tenants from demonic rituals or getting possessed. But some parts really show their age.

For instance, there are only three main stats in the game: one relationship stat (with your boss, non-romantic), your Ruthlessness, and your Activity level. These, along with your income and work-life balance, are the only things visibly tracked by the game.

This hampered the classic Choice of Games scenario where you can strategize your statistics, making difficult choices between them. Instead, it felt more like a branch-and-bottleneck twine game, with exploration and trying to find 'the right option' in each case. Those things aren't bad, but it's not what I was hoping for here.

Also, the story kind of puts a snarky and competitive viewpoint on you, and I wish I had an option to choose not to be like that. But those kinds of options are the things that make games longer, and again, this is one of the shortest.

Gavin makes great games in general, though. He's written several Exceptional Stories for Fallen London and Hana Feels is one of my favorite hyperlink games, and one that's touched a lot of people.

I received a review copy of this game.

I was recommended this game, and it is one of the most enjoyable Choice Of games I've played. Unlike with many Choice Of games, you are not required to spend time at the beginning customizing you character, which can sometimes feel a bit arbitrary and uninvolving to me. Instead the game launches straight into the story, casting you as a harassed estate agent working for a small company in Edinburgh. You're charged with renting out a house with a mysterious history, and your whole livelihood depends upon making a success of it. The NPCs are both interesting and believable, and the choices you make have a real influence on the course of the story. There is enough branching to give the game plenty of replay value, which is one of the key things I look for in a choice-based story. It is also very funny. Of the Choice Of Games that I've played so far, this is my favourite, and I'll definitely be trying other games by this author.

With genuinely snarky and humorous writing, this game is a pretty entertaining read.

Without spoiling too much, you’re working as a real estate agent for your unreasonable and tyrannical boss. One day, she sets a challenge to deal with ‘overstaffing’ issues. You are given an awkward property to add to your portfolio, and you’ll have to try to make as much as you can from it. Fail to meet the cut, and you get the sack.

Most of the game is centered around making money off your property. It starts off pretty innocently as you struggle helplessly to rent the house to all manner of problematic tenants, before finding out some… supernatural… means to bring in the bacon with your haunted house.

Unfortunately, at its core, this is largely a simplified business sim, where you make decisions to maximize the money the house makes for you. There is little in the way of exploring relationships with other characters, save a rival whom you try to screw with on a few occasions. You do make a few slice of life type decisions here and there, but otherwise, the game is largely centered around the main goal of driving up that dollar number. It’s not strictly a bad thing, but I felt there was more that the game could’ve explored.

It’s a solid short story, and probably recommended for an easy and funny read.