Forgotten Hill Tales

About Forgotten Hill Tales

Forgotten Hill Tales is the first spin-off of FM Studio's Forgotten Hill series of point-and-click horror games. The tales first came out one by one from 2018, starting with Little Cabin in the Woods, and were gathered on Steam for Windows and Mac in April 2022. The collection is also on itch.io, the App Store and Google Play, where it is free to download with in-app purchases, and the maker offers the single tales to play on its own website.

It holds five stories set at different times in the same town: Little Cabin in the Woods, about a boy who has spent years locked in a cabin after a violent past event and means to get out whatever the cost; Portrait of an Obsession, about one of the founders of the Surgery Clinic and a strange painting; GrandMa's Delicious Cakes, where an exterminator answers an old woman's call about rodents; Rise of Pico, a delicate task for the Hofmeier butler; and The Left Behind, the one kidnapped child still trying to escape the horrors of the Museum.

You play in first person, clicking from view to view, picking up and combining items and solving puzzles, riddles and mini-games, with a hint button that helps with one click. The drawn rooms are dim and grimy, with Japanese temples and a rainy graveyard among the cabins, and the town's misshapen residents keep turning up. Jay is Games found Little Cabin in the Woods spooky and unsettling, with a couple of jump scares, but in the end more campy than frightening, and less polished than Rusty Lake or The Last Door.

It suits players who already know Forgotten Hill Mementoes, First Steps or Disillusion and want more of the town, or anyone who likes short, grim puzzle boxes in the Rusty Lake style.

How to play Forgotten Hill Tales

1. Buy it on Steam or itch.io, or install it free from the App Store or Google Play.
2. Choose a tale from the book on the title screen.
3. Click the arrows at the edges of the scene to turn and move from view to view.
4. Click on things to look closer, and take what you can; it goes to the inventory bar below the scene.
5. Select an item and click where to use it, combine items, and solve each puzzle to move the story on.
6. Press the question mark for a hint when you are stuck.

Tips

• Look in every corner of each view; small items hide in shadows and drawers.
• Notes and pictures on the walls often hold the code for a lock somewhere else.
• Each tale stands alone, so you can play them in any order.
• Play with sound on; a couple of the scares are timed to it.

Questions