In my experience, visual novels have a mixed reputation. They’ve become relatively easy to make in the last decade, so there was a lot of dross in the field even before the genAI dipshits showed up, and many of them are so minimally interactive that they arguably don’t qualify as video games. For every Danganronpa or The Letter, there are a dozen or more shovelware VNs that drag down the average.
Your House, on the other hand, emphasizes the “novel” part of visual novels. It’s an adventure game/escape room that’s primarily told through text, which often twists or warps to match what’s happening to your character at the time. There’s a fascinating blueprint here for a much-needed reinvention of the overall VN format.
On its own merits, though, Your House is a mixed bag. It’s got a few clever puzzles, but I’ve got a couple of issues with its presentation and storyline.
Your House is set in what I assume is meant to be the United States, at some point in the early 21st century. On Debbie Clough’s 18th birthday, she’s friendless, alone, and about to get expelled from boarding school. The only birthday gifts she gets are a strange key and postcard that arrive in the mail.
Fed up with herself, her peers, and her distant father, Debbie steals a motorcycle and goes to investigate the return address on the postcard. It leads her to a strange but comfortable house with no one inside, but which hides a series of seemingly unconnected mysteries. Debbie resolves to figure out who owns the house and who sent her the key, all while a stranger watches her from outside.
My first real problem with Your House is Debbie herself, who’s written as a sort of Holden Caulfield figure. You’re supposed to be able to empathize with her, but not necessarily like her. That’s always been a tough lift for me as a reader. Your mileage may vary.
The second is that, like Urban Myth Dissolution Center, Your House is absolutely aimed at a younger audience. It’s one of those video games that seems aimed at people who have almost no familiarity with its genre, especially since there are a ton of incidental pop-culture references throughout the house that all relate back to the same subject. It’s a young-adult novel at heart, and anyone older will figure out most of its twists in the first half-hour or so.
Fortunately, it’s also got some solid puzzles. There’s a little bit of everything in Your House, from hidden-object games to word searches to locks that only open in response to sound effects. Each chapter is devoted to exploring one part of the house at once, so it’s divided up into a neatly bite-size format, and it never uses the same trick twice. It’s probably easiest to describe Your House as a virtual escape room, but Debbie is trying to figure out how to stay inside.
A couple of puzzles are rougher than others, though, and a few break their own rules in order to pose a greater challenge. For example, there’s one puzzle that involves a timed light and a desk drawer where all of the in-game hints actively lead you towards the wrong solution. I’m not sure if that was a problem with the translation or an actual design oversight, but it was obnoxious.
(There’s also a segment of the game that involves hunting for clues with night-vision goggles, which forces you to pick out red text against a green background. I’m color-blind, so this was a serious problem for me. However, I’m told that the developers are working on it.)
That being said, I’d primarily recommend Your House to anyone else who’s ever wanted to make a visual novel or interactive fiction. It plays with the format in several ways that ought to have an instant impact on the field, primarily by treating the process of reading the text as gameplay in its own right. You often have to pick the correct word out of a long paragraph, click the right phrase or noun to continue, chase down moving words under a time limit, or use a flashlight to illuminate darkened parts of a page.
It’s a smart use of unconventional mechanics, especially in a genre that’s usually content to be a choice-based slideshow, and I’d like to see more of it in future releases. This could be a game-changer for VNs if anyone’s willing to pay attention.
Your House is absolutely aimed at a teenage audience, and comes off in the end like a sort of starter mystery. It’s worth picking up for an interested kid, then playing alongside them to collaborate on some of the tougher puzzles. What I’d hope is for this to have a big influence going forward, and for more games from this team that continue to play with the medium.
[Your House, developed & published by Patrones & Escondites, is now available on PC via Steam for $9.99. This column was written using a Steam code sent to Hard Drive by a PR representative.]
