Hugo's House of Horrors (A Diary of Video Games)

Preamble: This isn't a review. It doesn't contain critical analysis, just the subjective opinions of one person. The intent is to remember the games I've come across in my life and share the nostalgia, nothing more. And some of those games I didn't play in great depth.

Hugo's House of Horrors

Developer: David Gray
Platform: PC (MS-DOS)
Release Year: 1990
Stephen's Rating: 6/10

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Hugo's House of Horrors is a parser based adventure game.

Basic Plot

The player takes on the role of Hugo, who has come to a haunted mansion to search for his girlfriend who has gone missing.

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The House of Horrors

Gameplay

The game involves moving Hugo around but the primary means of interaction is by typing commands for Hugo to complete. For example, you may find yourself in a room with a painting. You might type a command such as "look at painting" and Hugo will take a look to see if anything is unusual about it. This method of interaction makes the game very challenging. It's a lot about observation and lateral thinking.

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What is that dog doing?

Positives

There was definitely a sense of mystery in the game and if you're up for a challenge this is a good game for you. I had to use a walkhrough online to get past it.

Negatives

Although the parser style of interaction is what makes it unique, for a modern audience it's pretty difficult. Unless you're a programmer. Even then.

Memorable Moments

When I looked at some hints online and finally started getting through the game it felt incredible.

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BoRo June 26 2012 08:13. Posts 53

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I loved Hugo! I only played the Jungle one, but it is a fantastic little game.

DRTnOOber New Zealand. June 26 2012 08:36. Posts 402

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I found Jungle of Doom even harder than the original! Did you clock it?

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rebdomine June 26 2012 12:00. Posts 1809

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lol I remember playing a free horror RPG series, and for all but one of the 4 games in that series, the game was point-and-click.

And the one game that wasn't point-and-click? It was a text parser lol. God, that was horrifying to play. I fumbled around attempting to type commands that would not work lol. And then I would sometimes mess up and make a typo while I frantically typed commands while scary shit was going on in the screen lol.

Text-parser games generally tend to be pretty awesome though.