House of Creepy Monsters (R18+) Review

6 minutes of reading / By /

House of Creepy Monsters is a 2D point & click following the unfortunate luck of Nina, a student that got lost during a picnic with some friends and ended up having to sleep in the woods after getting lost. Upon waking up, she discovers that she is now completely naked in an unknown eerie room. Understandably confused, Nina decides that the first order of business is to find her clothes before she sets out to explore this foreboding house. It is a simple task to get us familiar with the control scheme. We simply click and hold our mouse cursor over the location we want to walk to, then click on an action prompt that pops out while near objects. Walking over to the left side of the room and promptly putting on the shirt & panties we found sees us now ready to face whatever lurks in these haunting halls.

The very first thing you are likely to notice is that cross-section view of the insides of Nina’s vagina on the bottom left of the screen. It is on full display whether you choose to wear clothes or not and serves no gameplay purpose. It just periodically quivers. A strange thing to have when not in a sexual scenario and one that could have functioned as some sort of visual-based life bar if enemies here didn’t instantly give you a game-over upon being discovered. Nina’s vagina aside, the drab environments you find yourself in do a great job instilling unease into the player. They have a slightly washed-out look, complimented by good use of lighting, that gives one a deep sense of unease in these near dream-like locales. Add in the hollow-sounding instruments and slightly off-tune strumming of the soundtrack, then you have an atmosphere that will put you on edge from the moment you start.

There is no combat or anything of the sort in this title. It solely focuses on exploration and solving puzzles to inch ever closer to discovering how to leave this hellish house. A good amount of the dread is lost when you encounter the first monster, only to realize that it never gives chase or ever becomes much of a threat. Minus one brief stealth section, the only way you’ll find yourself in any danger is if you mess up certain puzzles. Messing them up is an instant game-over that sets you back very briefly. If you were expecting a horror game, you will be sorely disappointed. This is primarily a puzzle game with a superficial horror atheistic. I don’t mean it as an insult. It is just easy to assume this has scares in-store for us due to how good its environments and atmosphere are. Instead, it tries to give off a sense of unease of the psychological kind and not of suspenseful dread. This works quite to create a morbid world where we play as an ordinary girl involuntarily facing a dangerous situation.

One aspect I loved about House of Creepy Monsters is that each enemy is unique. You will not find clones of a monster just scattered about. There is just one of each type found in the house, giving them a sense of purpose and makes encountering them more memorable. It lends these monstrosities a perception of belonging that nearly gets one feeling guilty when you kill one of them while they’re just chilling in their own house. I wish I could talk about the interesting ending in detail, but I will say it left me both kind of sympathetic and horrified. Most of the plot is told via environmental details. You will find notes scattered throughout, yet they are solely there to help you with the puzzles and situations. It is a title that heavily holds your hand throughout and will not require much brainpower on your part. I’d argue it is far too much. You will be made aware of situations and how to deal with them before they even happen. It also rail-roads you down a set path, making it, for all intents and purposes, a completely linear experience.

You can entirely ignore that ‘Items’ menu on the bottom right of the screen. Clicking on something will use the correct item it needs automatically. I don’t have a problem with that quality of life feature, but it just doesn’t have much in the way of engaging gameplay. It felt more akin to a walking sim with the puzzles being tacked on to give the player something to do. There is still a sense of accomplishment progressing further into the mansion despite the lack of much player involvement. I was just blind-sighted by the end of the game having a problem to solve, and it not giving a hint. You had to actually pay attention to the environment and come to a conclusion yourself. It wasn’t particularly difficult, yet it gave me a taste of what this experience could have been. This game is stylish, haunting, and memorable, but I wouldn’t call it fun.

There are six hentai scenes to unlock. Most of them will be gained by failing a puzzle or by walking into an enemy. Each features only a single position throughout its entirety with three stages to it. The first is slow thrusting. Reaching the second will increase the intensity and give our character a lewder expression. Finally, you have a climax. All of the text in the game has been adequately translated into English. The only voice acting comes in the form of moaning and panting. Along with the sound effects, it does a good job of immersing us in the sex scenes. They are very short, however. Sex will be done just as soon as it started, making it feel relatively light on H content. You’ll find most of the acts to be fairly vanilla vaginal penetration. One scene has oral and just oral. It is well done, but it just feels lacking. Another has pretty tame vore. They all suffer from their extreme brevity and a lack of good writing. Most of the text comes down to Nina saying, “Ngg, uhh, hah, ahh” and just ending after overusing those throughout all of the interaction.

This title doesn’t have much in the way of blood and guts. It uses them very sparingly. That, in combination with the fairly vanilla H content, really helped catch me off guard when they introduced a birthing scene. It is fetishized, yet is the only H scene that has to do with the story and is vital. I wouldn’t recommend writing this game off just due to that if you’re not into birthing. With all that said, House of Creepy Monsters only lasted me around twenty minutes and has no replay value other than wanting to experience it again. It is a title that is lacking in many regards. Namely with pretty much being given the answers to every puzzle and an overly guided journey that turns it into a linear ‘point A to B’ type of progression. There is little in the way of exploring or anything to compensate for the lack of gameplay involvement. With the disappointing amount of H content, what carries it is the masterful horror theme and atmosphere on display. There is great potential here, yet I’d only recommend playing it if you are looking for something more akin to a short linear Walking Simulator.

Rating:

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