Haunt the House: Terrortown

Developer: SFB Games | Publisher: SFB Games | Release Date: 2014 | Genre: Indie / Action / Casual | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam / itch.io

The peaceful slumber of a little ghost is disturbed when the noise from a nearby town reaches its abandoned bell tower. The ghost is not pleased with this development at all and sets out to haunt the town residence that roused it from its sleep. While scaring the poor folks witless, it also decides that the lonely bell tower can do with a few more souls to keep it company.

Haunt The House is a stylish 2D side-scrolling puzzle title that gives you control of a little ghost. The ghost can make a few noises, but it is way too cute to seriously scare anyone. Fortunately, it has the ability to possess inanimate objects, and this is where the real fun begins. You can choose which location you want to haunt, with a museum, hospital, theatre, and cruise ship available right from the start. Each area has a few floors filled with rooms crammed with objects for you to possess, but sadly, no further locations are unlocked. After the game’s release, the developers rectified this by adding three more maps they made free to all Haunt the House owners. These include a holiday-themed department store, mansion house, and ghost train.

You aim to scare away the twenty people milling about inside each location by any means necessary. You can possess hundreds of different objects, and while initially you might only be able to rattle or move something, your powers increase as the spookiness of the atmosphere increases. Things start off quiet but soon become strange, unsettling, creepy, sinister, and finally terrifying as you work your ghostly magic.

Haunt The House is quite an easy game as your interaction is limited to hovering over an object, pressing a button to possess it, and then pressing another button mapped to whatever actions you can perform with said object. Of course, you want as many people as possible nearby when you let loose, as haunting something is not very scary when nobody is around to see it. The people in each location are constantly moving about, and your goal is to terrify them enough that they run screaming out of the exit. You can actually scare folks so much that they jump out of windows in fear, which is quite funny. There are also a few “special” people at each location that you can kill so that their souls go to the bell tower and become selectable characters.

We recommend you take your time while playing Haunt The House, as the game can be completed in less than an hour. If you just focus on possessing the same few objects and scaring everyone out of the buildings as quickly as possible, you will miss out on some of the great animations each possessed object delivers. Everything from tables dancing, lamps flickering, portraits moving, and mirrors cracking to dinosaurs dancing, polar bears roaring, and musical instruments playing is animated superbly. This is one of those games where the real joy comes from messing around with it and exploring all the possibilities instead of simply completing it. Since the game is so easy that anyone can complete it, focus on having as much fun with it instead of reaching the credits as fast as possible. After scaring or killing everyone in the four locations, you are shown your ranking for each area as well as some stats, such as your ghost of choice and favorite object to possess. We completed the game multiple times and still ended up with a playtime of just over two hours, but considering the low price and how much fun we had, we still feel that there is plenty of value for money here. The new levels added by the developers also help a great deal in this regard.

Haunt The House has a very unique visual style that blends creepy with cute. While the game’s theme is rather dark, the cute visuals and cartoon-style animations mean nothing here is too strong for younger players. The audio is also wonderful, with some catchy tunes and many sound effects. Virtually every object you can possess has its own sound effect, and you’ll also hear the screams of the town folk as they flee in terror. After the game’s release, the developers added the soundtrack as DLC, which existing owners received as a free upgrade.

How much you enjoy Haunt The House: Terrortown will depend on how much you can entertain yourself by messing around with all the objects that can be possessed. As we have mentioned, this is not a game that you should rush through with the goal of completing and discarding it. Overall, we really enjoyed our time with the game, and the new locations and achievements added by the developers after release were welcome surprises.