Home alone, and after having to eat frozen lasagne for want of
anything else, something goes bump in the night and so you begin. Not
much more than an hour later you get a rather silly end, that does
nothing to redeem what came before.
Which involves finding the keys or the means to unlock various doors,
draws and chests, in order to ultimately make a choice. An alternative
dimension adds to the number of doors etc. A few decent puzzles (the
best is the transportation device near the end) punctuate what is
largely a not terribly interesting hunt for the said keys and means.
None of the puzzles are hard, but some require a bit of thinking. Rather
oddly, one that randomises requires you to get the answer from outside
the game itself (and as far as I can tell I didn't miss the in-game
clue).
Each screen is static, some viewed from some interesting
perspectives, and you explore with the mouse. There are generally only a
few active areas in each screen, and the hotspots seem reasonably
generous. You will need to explore each room more than once, as things
can change (sometimes inexplicably) as you move through the game. The
original house is fairly bland, the one in the alternative dimension
less so. Blood and ickiness feature in that realm (which is presumably
why it describes itself as horror).
You find items and if you have the one you need (e.g. the key to a
chest), clicking the chest will automatically use the key. You can
examine your inventory but there is really no need. Items will disappear
when no longer useful (although the lockpick would have been much more
useful than the sole occasion it worked!).
You can save at will but only at the save point. You will find that
early on so don't worry. Just remember to go back there, which you will
do more than once in any event simply by progressing through the game.
There is no spoken word, but there is a score and ambient noise.
Nothing elaborate but it does the job.
While the choice at the end suggests two endings, the game says there
are actually six. Some googling reveals at least one is akin to an
Easter egg. I haven't tried to find them all, but did play the two
obvious ones.
Without Escape didn't do it for me.
I played on:
OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
Processor: Intel i7-6700 4GHz
