At first glance, The Horror at Highrook seems like a game of supernatural Cluedo. As a team of investigators arrive at a spooky manor, you’re presented with a top-down floor plan of the mansion, and some player cards representing your intrepid explorers. But you’re not trying to work out if Colonel Mustard murdered Professor Plum in the dining room with a lead pipe here. Rather, your job is to figure out why Lord Ackeron and his family have mysteriously vanished from their ancestral home. It’s rumoured he sought support from a clandestine organisation called The Seekers Communion shortly before he went missing, and his son was also suffering from some strange, unknown malady as well.
The Horror at HighrookDeveloper: Nullpointer GamesPublisher: Nullpointer Games, OuterslothRelease: TBCDownload the demo on: Steam
Thus begins the game’s Steam Next Fest demo, which covers the first chapter of The Horror at Highrook and sees you getting acquainted with its various methods of detective work. Everything happens in real time, and you’re free to move characters to whatever room they’re needed in whenever you like without restriction. A clock constantly ticks away in the top corner of the screen, and you’ll need to keep track of their hunger and fatigue levels as the days wear on to make sure they’re performing at their best. If they’re tired, for example, then you can just shift them over to the guest rooms to have a snooze for a bit. Hunger, on the other hand, can only be kept at bay by first foraging for food out on the cliff top area, before cooking it in the kitchen, and then finally sitting down to eat it in the dining room.
Welcome to the Manor | The Horror at Highrook Trailer Watch on YouTube
It’s a delicate act of plate-spinning, but it’s never so tense or all-encompassing that it gets in the way of your investigation work. There’s plenty of time and space for your scholar Vitali, for instance, to continue noodling away in the archives and deciphering complex journals in the study, as well as for your mecanist Astor to bust open supply crates to unearth more equipment over in the machine room. Your doctor Caligar is also adept at cooking up concoctions in the manor’s laboratory – though you’ll need to open it first by studying the key code Caligar brings with her in the machine room.