Recently, Steam concluded its latest Steam Next Fest, and throughout, I got to experience numerous great indie game demos, including a couple of extraordinary point-and-click and visual novel adventures. But now that it’s over, I was left with an itch. That was fixed when I stumbled upon ‘Your House’, a visual novel detective thriller developed and published by Patrones & Escondites.

If you’ve never played one of these types of games, they are usually quite rich in story, which is no different here. In Your House, we live through the perspective of Debbie, a rebellious young adult trying to find her place in the world, when she finds a mysterious postcard with an address and a set of keys.

So after a particularly rough night, she escapes her dorm, steals the bike of someone she doesn’t like, and heads to the address on the postcard, hoping for just a little bit of freedom that has so far evaded her in life. After a long ride questioning her motives and what may await her, she finally arrives at the address and, to her surprise, finds a huge house waiting just for her.

Essentially squatting in this huge home, Debbie has seemingly found the freedom she has always been longing for, but that quickly shifts as the mysteries of the house start unravelling around her, and she starts to go down the rabbit hole of figuring out every single nook and cranny of this giant mansion.

Visual novels are games where narrative and gameplay are intertwined as one. In Your House, you interact with the story through text, almost like a book page, by clicking on certain words in sentences. For example, the text may imply something of interest is in the office. The word “office” will be highlighted in bold letters, meaning it’ll take you to the office if you click on the word.

This means you must pay attention to details in the text to solve some of the puzzles; narratively, this can impact the story slightly as you have to fit it in so it works with the gameplay mechanics, which the game mostly gets right. However, you get more fleshed cutscenes between chapters, adding even more context. At the end of the day, though, it is a bit of a cliche detective cluedo tale that doesn’t do anything drastic and can be predictable.

Clues to the puzzles can also be found in the images on the page, which can be interacted with, usually with a number hidden amongst it or some words you need to pay attention to. Puzzles are the core of this game, and figuring them out is rewarding since they are well thought out. One puzzle involved looking at the city’s grid layout on a map and pressing the associated slots via tiles in the bathroom to unlock a secret door.

Make sure you have a pen and paper near you for other puzzles; otherwise, you may have to make a frustrating trip back and forth between the clue and the puzzle. This is highlighted in Chapter 3, where there are so many rooms to visit and so many puzzles that going back and forth can feel like a bit of a slog, with everything tied to text-based traversal and little repeating cutscenes that play in between rooms, it can get tiring pretty quickly.

If you get stuck on a puzzle, don’t fret; a nice little hint system gives you a little motivation for what to look for. I liked that it didn’t solve the puzzle for you but gave you a little encouragement. I did encounter an annoying bug right at the end of the fourth chapter, which meant I had to restart the entire chapter. I also encountered typos at times throughout, which, for a text-based game, is quite essential, but besides these things, the game ran smoothly.

‘Your House’ is a short visual novel with well-designed puzzles and a clever hint system if you get stuck, but constant backtracking and a predictable story hold it back. Minor technical issues, like typos and a late-game bug, also detract from the experience. While it doesn’t break new ground, it’s an okay mystery for those who enjoy puzzle-driven narratives.

Written by: Dylan Kocins