Could Anything Be More Perfect For Halloween?
Haunted House is a very simple game at its core. Search the four floors of the house, room-by-room, until you find 3 pieces of a magical urn. After that all you need to do is get out of the house. Simple enough! You aren’t alone here though as you will have to avoid ghosts, tarantulas and bats on your journey. Using keys, matches, a magical scepter, and the coveted urn, you have all the tools you will need at your disposal.
Finding items in Haunted House is where most of your time will be spent and it’s not as easy as seeing it on your screen. The house is dark, real dark and you’ll have to use your matches to locate items near you. You have unlimited matches so don’t be stingy, but your pursuers have the ability to extinguish them out when they occupy a room with you. You must be quick and patient to reach your goal and Haunted House almost feels like a nice balance of survival horror and stealth. One feature that really changes up the gameplay is when the difficulty is increased the player can’t even see the walls of the rooms without a match which really keeps you on your toes. This really feels like the way the game was meant to be experienced and it’s almost a whole different game as you don’t know when enemies are approaching, but if your match goes out you had better run because something is around the corner.
Visually Haunted House doesn’t stand out from the crowd, but the cool effects that revolve around using your matches to find items and your location in a room is really neat. The sound effects are where this title really shines. The sounds of tension when an enemy approaches or you lose that precious light of your match really set a creepy mood and keep you on your toes.
Haunted House is a great game for players of all skill levels and depending upon how good you are it can be finished in a matter of minutes on easier difficulties. No other game really says October or Halloween quite like Haunted House.
Score: 75/100
Platform: Atari 2600
Publisher: Atari
Release: 1981
Players: 1
