Murder House

About Murder House

Murder House is a game by Puppet Combo, the studio behind a run of low-poly slasher games. It came out on Steam in October 2020 and on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in October 2021, and the maker calls it the spiritual successor to Babysitter Bloodbath.

A prologue set in 1985 shows a boy locked in a shopping mall after closing, and the mall's Easter Bunny taking him. Then it is 1988. A small TV news team drives out to the empty house of Anthony Smith, the Easter Ripper, a child killer who was caught and executed, to shoot a story about the place for the evening news. You play Emma, the intern. The house is dark, the real estate agent never turns up, and before long the crew's van will not start and the gate is locked.

The game copies the survival horror of the fifth console generation on purpose. Movement uses tank controls, the camera cuts between fixed angles, doors open in short black-screen transitions, and you collect keys, weapons and puzzle items in a small inventory. There are no auto saves: you save with pencils, and there are only so many of them. A first-person mode is there for anyone who would rather not use the fixed cameras.

The fear comes from the killer. A man in a dirty pink bunny suit can appear in a doorway or behind you, and the clumsy controls make every chase tense. Low-poly faces, a fuzzy VHS filter and a synth soundtrack give it the feel of a rented 80s slasher tape. It suits players who enjoy Resident Evil-style exploring and do not mind blunt violence; the store page warns of blood, decapitation, evisceration, corpses and descriptions of child abuse, and it is rated Mature by the ESRB and 18 by PEGI.

HowLongToBeat puts the main story at about two and a half hours. The Steam version has English text and voices only, while GOG and the console versions add Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese. It was later released on PlayStation 5 as well, and Wikipedia notes that the Switch version was banned from the Japanese eShop when it came out.

How to play Murder House

1. Use tank controls: up moves forward in the direction Emma faces, left and right turn her on the spot.
2. Search each room for keys, tools and notes and check the inventory to use them on locked doors and puzzles.
3. Save your game by using a pencil, and keep some for later since they are limited.
4. When the bunny-masked killer appears, get away from him and keep moving toward the next goal.
5. Switch to first-person view in the options if the fixed camera angles trouble you.

Tips

• Save before opening doors to new parts of the house; a death sends you back to your last pencil.
• Read the notes and watch the tapes you find: they explain what the house wants from you.
• Play with a controller, as the game recommends; tank controls are easier on a stick or D-pad.
• Listen for the music and sounds that warn the killer is close.

Questions